Brick Shakespeare: The Comedies—A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew (89 page)

KATHARINA

Would Katharina had never seen him though!

BAPTISTA

Go, girl; I cannot blame thee now to weep;

For such an injury would vex a very saint,

Much more a shrew of thy impatient humour.

BIONDELLO

Master, master! news, old news, and such news as you never heard of!

BAPTISTA

Is it new and old too? how may that be?

BIONDELLO

Why, is it not news, to hear of Petruchio’s coming?

BAPTISTA

Is he come?

BIONDELLO

Why, no, sir.

BAPTISTA

What then?

BIONDELLO

He is coming.

BAPTISTA

When will he be here?

BIONDELLO

When he stands where I am and sees you there.

TRANIO

But say, what to thine old news?

BIONDELLO

Why, Petruchio is coming in a new hat and an old jerkin, a pair of old breeches thrice turned, a pair of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled, another laced, an old rusty sword ta’en out of the town-armory, with a broken hilt, and chapeless; with two broken points: his horse hipped with an old mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred; besides, possessed with the glanders and like to mose in the chine; troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of wingdalls, sped with spavins, rayed with yellows, past cure of the fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, swayed in the back and shoulder-shotten; near-legged before and with, a half-chequed bit and a head-stall of sheep’s leather which, being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often burst and now repaired with knots; one girth six time pieced and a woman’s crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her name fairly set down in studs, and here and there pieced with packthread.

BAPTISTA

Who comes with him?

BIONDELLO

O, sir, his lackey, for all the world caparisoned like the horse; with a linen stock on one leg and a kersey boot-hose on the other, gartered with a red and blue list; an old hat and “the humour of forty fancies” pricked in’t for a feather: a monster, a very monster in apparel, and not like a Christian footboy or a gentleman’s lackey.

TRANIO

’Tis some odd humour pricks him to this fashion;

Yet oftentimes he goes but mean-apparell’d.

BAPTISTA

I am glad he’s come, howsoe’er he comes.

BIONDELLO