O me unhappy!
She faints
PROTEUS
Look to the boy.
VALENTINE Why, boy!
Why wag, how now? What’s the matter? Look up. Speak.
JULIA O good sir, my master charged me to deliver a ring to Madam Silvia, which out of my neglect was never done.
PROTEUS Where is that ring, boy?
JULIA Here ’tis. This is it.
She gives Proteus the ring
PROTEUS How, let me see!
Why, this is the ring I gave to Julia.
JULIA
O, cry you mercy, sir, I have mistook.
She offers Proteus another ring
This is the ring you sent to Silvia.
PROTEUS
But how cam’st thou by this ring? At my depart
I gave this unto Julia.
JULIA
And Julia herself did give it me,
And Julia herself hath brought it hither.
PROTEUS How? Julia?
JULIA
Behold her that gave aim to all thy oaths
And entertained ’em deeply in her heart.
How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root?
O Proteus, let this habit make thee blush.
Be thou ashamed that I have took upon me
Such an immodest raiment, if shame live
In a disguise of love.
It is the lesser blot, modesty finds,
Women to change their shapes than men their minds.
PROTEUS
Than men their minds! ‘Tis true. O heaven, were man
But constant, he were perfect. That one error
Fills him with faults, makes him run through all th’
sins;
Inconstancy falls off ere it begins.
What is in Silvia’s face but I may spy
More fresh in Julia’s, with a constant eye?
VALENTINE Come, come, a hand from either.
Let me be blessed to make this happy close.
’Twere pity two such friends should be long foes.
Julia and Proteus join hands
PROTEUS
Bear witness, heaven, I have my wish for ever.
JULIA
And I mine.
Enter the Outlaws with the Duke and Thurio as captives
OUTLAWS
A prize, a prize, a prize!
VALENTINE
Forbear, forbear, I say. It is my lord the Duke.
The Outlaws release the Duke and Thurio
(To the Duke) Your grace is welcome to a man
disgraced,
Banished Valentine.
DUKE Sir Valentine!
THURIO
Yonder is Silvia, and Silvia’s mine.
VALENTINE
Thurio, give back, or else embrace thy death.
Come not within the measure of my wrath.
Do not name Silvia thine. If once again,
Verona shall not hold thee. Here she stands.
Take but possession of her with a touch—
I dare thee but to breathe upon my love.
THURIO
Sir Valentine, I care not for her, I.
I hold him but a fool that will endanger
His body for a girl that loves him not.
I claim her not, and therefore she is thine.
DUKE
The more degenerate and base art thou
To make such means for her as thou hast done,
And leave her on such slight conditions.
Now by the honour of my ancestry
I do applaud thy spirit, Valentine,
And think thee worthy of an empress’ love.
Know then I here forget all former griefs,
Cancel all grudge, repeal thee home again,
Plead a new state in thy unrivalled merit,
To which I thus subscribe: Sir Valentine,
Thou art a gentleman, and well derived.
Take thou thy Silvia, for thou hast deserved her.
VALENTINE
I thank your grace. The gift hath made me happy.
I now beseech you, for your daughter’s sake,
To grant one boon that I shall ask of you.
DUKE
I grant it, for thine own, whate’er it be.
VALENTINE
These banished men that I have kept withal
Are men endowed with worthy qualities.
Forgive them what they have committed here,
And let them be recalled from their exile.
They are reformed, civil, full of good,
And fit for great employment, worthy lord.
DUKE
Thou hast prevailed. I pardon them and thee.
Dispose of them as thou know’st their deserts.
Come, let us go. We will include all jars
With triumphs, mirth, and rare solemnity.
VALENTINE
And as we walk along I dare be bold
With our discourse to make your grace to smile.
What think you of this page, my lord?
DUKE
I think the boy hath grace in him. He blushes.
VALENTINE
I warrant you, my lord, more grace than boy.
DUKE What mean you by that saying?
VALENTINE
Please you, I’ll tell you as we pass along,
That you will wonder what hath fortunèd.
Come, Proteus, ’tis your penance but to hear
The story of your loves discovered.
That done, our day of marriage shall be yours,
One feast, one house, one mutual happiness.
Exeunt
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
The Taming of the Shrew was first published in the 1623 Folio, but a related play, shorter and simpler, with the title The Taming of a Shrew, had appeared in print in 1594. The exact relationship of these plays is disputed. A Shrew has sometimes been regarded as the source for The Shrew; some scholars have believed that both plays derive independently from an earlier play, now lost; it has even been suggested that Shakespeare wrote both plays. In our view Shakespeare’s play was written first, not necessarily on the foundation of an earlier play, and A Shrew is an anonymous imitation, written in the hope of capitalizing on the success of Shakespeare’s play. The difference between the titles is probably no more significant than the fact that The Winter’s Tale is even now often loosely referred to as A Winter’s Tale, or The Comedy of Errors as A Comedy of Errors.
The plot of The Taming of the Shrew has three main strands. First comes the Induction showing how a drunken tinker, Christopher Sly, is made to believe himself a lord for whose entertainment a play is to be presented. This resembles an episode in The Arabian Nights, in which Caliph Haroun al Raschid plays a similar trick on Abu Hassan. A Latin version of this story was known in Shakespeare’s England; it may also have circulated by word of mouth. Second comes the principal plot of the play performed for Sly, in which the shrewish Katherine is wooed, won, and tamed by the fortune-hunting Petruccio. This is a popular narrative theme; Shakespeare may have known a ballad called ‘A merry jest of a shrewd and curst wife lapped in morel’s skin for her good behaviour’, printed around 1550. The third strand of the play involves Lucentio, Gremio, and Hortensio, all of them suitors for the hand of Katherine’s sister, Bianca. This is based on the first English prose comedy, George Gascoigne’s Supposes, translated from Ludovico Ariosto’s I Suppositi (1509), acted in 1566, and published in 1573. In The Taming of the Shrew as printed in the 1623 Folio Christopher Sly fades out after Act 1, Scene 1, in A Shrew he makes other appearances, and rounds off the play. These episodes may derive from a version of Shakespeare’s play different from that preserved in the Folio; we print them as Additional Passages.