Brick Shakespeare: The Comedies—A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew (99 page)

BIONDELLO

She says you have some goodly jest in hand:

She will not come: she bids you come to her.

PETRUCHIO

Worse and worse; she will not come! O vile,

Intolerable, not to be endured!

Sirrah Grumio, go to your mistress;

Say, I command her to come to me.

HORTENSIO

I know her answer.

PETRUCHIO

What?

HORTENSIO

She will not.

PETRUCHIO

The fouler fortune mine, and there an end.

BAPTISTA

Now, by my holidame, here comes Katharina!

KATHARINA

What is your will, sir, that you send for me?

PETRUCHIO

Where is your sister, and Hortensio’s wife?

KATHARINA

They sit conferring by the parlor fire.

PETRUCHIO

Go fetch them hither: if they deny to come.

Swinge me them soundly forth unto their husbands:

Away, I say, and bring them hither straight.

LUCENTIO

Here is a wonder, if you talk of a wonder.

HORTENSIO

And so it is: I wonder what it bodes.

PETRUCHIO

Marry, peace it bodes, and love and quiet life,

And awful rule and right supremacy;

And, to be short, what not, that’s sweet and happy?

BAPTISTA

Now, fair befal thee, good Petruchio!

The wager thou hast won; and I will add

Unto their losses twenty thousand crowns;

Another dowry to another daughter,

For she is changed, as she had never been.

PETRUCHIO

Nay, I will win my wager better yet

And show more sign of her obedience,

Her new-built virtue and obedience.

See where she comes and brings your froward wives

As prisoners to her womanly persuasion.

PETRUCHIO (cont.)

Katharina, that cap of yours becomes you not:

Off with that bauble, throw it under-foot.

WIDOW

Lord, let me never have a cause to sigh,

Till I be brought to such a silly pass!

BIANCA

Fie! what a foolish duty call you this?