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Introduction.

6

"THE TAMING OF THE SHREW' was first printed in the folio collection of Shakspere's Plays in 1623. In 1594 'A plesant conceited Historie called the Taming of a Shrew' was printed. This play, it is thought, preceded Shakspere's Taming of the Shrew.' This comedy of some unknown author opens with an Induction, the characters of which are a Lord, Slie, a Tapster, Page, Players, and Huntsmen. The incidents are precisely the same as those of the play which we call Shakspere's. The scene of The Taming of a Shrew is laid at Athens; that of Shakspere's at Padua. The Athens of the one and the Padua of the other are resorts of learning. Alfonso, a merchant of Athens, (the Baptista of Shakspere,) has three daughters, Kate, Emelia, and Phylema. Aurelius, son of the Duke of Cestus (Sestos), is enamoured of one, Polidor of another, and Ferando (the Petrucio of Shakspere) of Kate, the Shrew. The merchant hath sworn, before he will allow his two younger daughters to be addressed by suitors, that

"His eldest daughter first shall be espous'd." The wooing of Kate by Ferando is exactly in the same spirit as the wooing by Petrucio; so is the marriage; so the lenten entertainment of the bride in Ferando's

country-house; so the scene with the Tailor and Haberdasher; so the prostrate obedience of the tamed Shrew. The under-plot, however, is different. But all parties are ultimately happy and pleased; and the comedy ends with the wager, as in Shakspere, about the obedience of the several wives. This undoubted resemblance involves some necessity for conjecture, with very little guide from evidence. The first and most obvious hypothesis is, that The Taming of a Shrew' was an older play than Shakspere's; and that he bor rowed from that comedy. But we propose another theory. Was there not an older play than "The Taming of a Shrew,' which furnished the main plot, some of the characters, and a small part of the dialogue, both to the author of The Taming of a Shrew' and the author of

The Taming of the Shrew?' This play we may believe, without any violation of fact or probability, to have been used as the rude material for both authors to work upon. Whether the author or improver of the play printed in 1594 be Marlowe or Greene (to each of whom the comedy has been assigned), there can be little question as to the characteristic superiority of Shakspere's work.

But there is a third theory-that of Tieck-that 'The Taming of a Shrew' was a youthful work of Shakspere himself. To our minds that play is totally different from the imagery and the versification of Shakspere.

Shakspere's Taming of the Shrew' was produced in a "taming" age. Men tamed each other by the axe and the fagot; parents tamed their children by

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