That gives not half so great a blow to hear,

As will a chesnut in a farmer's fire?"

Not all Petruchio's rhetoric would persuade more than " some dozen followers" to be of this heretical way of thinking. He unfolds his scheme for the Taming of the Shrew, on a principle of contradiction, thus:

"I'll woo her with some spirit when she comes.
Say that she rail, why then I'll tell her plain
She sings as sweetly as a nightingale;
Say that she frown, I'll say she looks as clear
As morning roses newly wash'd with dew;
Say she be mute, and will not speak a word,
Then I'll commend her volubility,
And say she uttereth piercing eloquence:
If she do bid me pack, I'll give her thanks,
As tho' she bid me stay by her a week;

If she deny to wed, I'll crave the day,

When I shall ask the banns, and when be married?"

He accordingly gains her consent to the match, by telling her father that he has got it; disappoints her by not returning at the time he has promised to wed her, and when he returns, creates no small consternation by the oddity of his dress and equipage. This however is nothing to the astonishment excited by his madbrained behavior at the marriage. Here is the account of it by an eye-witness :

"GREMIO. Tut, she's a lamb, a dove, a fool to him: I'll tell you, Sir Lucentio; when the priest

Should ask if Katherine should be his wife?

Ay, by gog's woons, quoth he; and swore so loud,
That, all amaz'd, the priest let fall the book;

And as he stooped again to take it up,

This mad-brain'd bridegroom took him such a cuff,
That down fell priest and book, and book and priest.

Now take them up, quoth he, if any list.

TRANIO. What said the wench when he rose up again?

GREMIO. Trembled and shook; for why, he stamp'd and swore As if the vicar meant to cozen him.

But after many ceremonies done,

He calls for wine: a health, quoth he; as if

He 'ad been aboard carousing with his mates

After a storm; quaft off the muscadel,
And threw the sops all in the sexton's face;
Having no other cause but that his beard
Grew thin and hungerly, and seem'd to ask
His sops as he was drinking. This done, he took
The bride about the neck, and kiss'd her lips
With such a clamorous smack, that at their parting
All the church echoed: and I seeing this,
Came thence for very shame; and after me,

I know, the rout is coming;

Such a mad marriage never was before!"

The most striking and at the same time laughable feature in the character of Petruchio throughout is the studied approxima. tion to the intractable character of real madness, his apparent insensibility to all external considerations, and utter indifference to everything but the wild and extravagant freaks of his own self-will. There is no contending with a person on whom nothing makes an impression but his own purposes, and who is bent on his own whims just in proportion as they seem to want common sense. With him a thing's being plain and reasonable is a reason against it. The airs he gives himself are infinite, and his caprices as sudden as they are groundless. The whole of his treatment of his wife at home is in the same spirit of ironical attention and inverted gallantry. Every thing flies before his will, like a conjuror's wand, and he only metamorphoses his wife's temper by metamorphosing her senses and all the objects she looks upon at a word's speaking. Such are his insisting that it is the moon, and not the sun, which they see, &c. This extravagance reaches its most pleasant and poetical height in the scene where, on their return to her father's, they meet old Vincontio, whom Petruchio immediately addresses as a young lady:

"PETRUCHIO. Good morrow, gentle mistress, where away?
Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too,
Hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman?
Such war of white and red within her cheeks;
What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty,
As those two eyes become that heavenly face!
Fair lovely maid, once more good day to thee:
Sweet Kate, embrace her for her beauty's sake.

HORTENSIO. He'll make the man mad to make a woman of him.

KATHERINE. Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet,
Whither away, or where is thy abode ?

Happy the parents of so fair a child;
Happier the man whom favorable stars

Allot thee for his lovely bed-fellow.

PETRUCHIO. Why, how now, Kate, I hope thou art not mad:
This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, wither'd,

And not a maiden, as thou say'st he is.

KATHERINE. Pardon, old father, my mistaken eyes,

That have been so bedazzled with the sun

That everything I look on seemeth green.

Now I perceive thou art a reverend father.”

The whole is carried off with equal spirit, as if the poet's comic

Muse had wings of fire. It is strange how one man could be so many things; but so it is. The concluding scene, in which trial is made of the obedience of the new-married wives (so triumphantly for Petruchio) is a very happy one.-In some parts of this play there is a little too much about music-masters and masters of philosophy. They were things of greater rarity in those days than they are now. Nothing, however, can be better than the advice which Tranio gives his master for the prosecution of bis studies :

"The mathematics, and the metaphysics,

Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you:
No profit grows, where is no pleasure ta’en :
In brief, sir, study what you most affect."

We have heard the Honey-Moon called "an elegant Katherine and Petruchio." We suspect we do not understand this word elegant in the sense that many people do. But in our sense of the word, we should call Lucentio's description of his mistress. elegant :

"Tranio, I saw her coral lips to move,

And with her breath she did perfume the air :
Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her."

When Biondello tells the same Lucentio for his encouragement, "I knew a wench married in an afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit, and so may you, sir ;"-there

is nothing elegant in this, and yet we hardly know which of the two passages is the best.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW is a play within a play. It is supposed to be a play acted for the benefit of Sly the tinker, who is made to believe himself a lord, when he wakes after a drunken brawl. The character of Sly, and the remarks with which he accompanies the play, are as good as the play itself. His answer, when he is asked how he likes it, “Indifferent well; 'tis a good piece of work, would 'twere done," is in good keeping, as if he were thinking of his Saturday night's job. Sly does not change his tastes with his new situation, but in the midst of splendor and luxury still calls out lustily and repeatedly “for a pot o' the smallest ale." He is very slow in giving up his personal identity in his sudden advancement-"I am Christo phero Sly, call me not honor nor lordship. I ne'er drank sack in my life and if you give me any conserves, give me conserves of beef: ne'er ask me what raiment I'll wear, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet, nay, sometimes more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the over-leather. What, would you make me mad? Am not I Christophero Sly, old Sly's son of Burton-heath, by birth a pedlar, by education a card. maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present pro. fession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not; if she say I am not fourteen-pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying'st knave in Christendom."

This is honest. "The Slies are no rogues," as he says of himself. We have a great predilection for this representative of the family; and what makes us like him the better is, that we take him to be of kin (not many degrees removed) to Sancho Panza.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

THIS is a play as full of genius as it is of wisdom. Yet there is an original sin in the nature of the subject, which prevents us from taking a cordial interest in it. "The height of moral argument" which the author has here maintained in the intervals of passion, or blended with the more powerful impulses of nature, is hardly surpassed in any of his plays. But there is in general a want of passion; the affections are at a stand; our sympathies are repulsed and defeated in all directions. The only passion which influences the story is that of Angelo; and yet he seems to have a much greater passion for hypocrisy than for his mistress. Neither are we greatly enamored of Isabella's rigid chastity, though she could not act otherwise than she did. We do not feel the same confidence in the virtue that is "sublimely good" at another's expense, as if it had been put to some less disinterested trial. As to the Duke, who makes a very imposing and mysterious stage-character, he is more absorbed in his own plots and gravity than anxious for the welfare of the state; more tenacious of his own character than attentive to the feelings and apprehensions of others. Claudio is the only person who feels naturally; and yet he is placed in circumstances of distress which almost preclude the wish for his deliverance. Mariana is also in love with Angelo, whom we hate. In this respect, there may be said to be a general system of cross-purposes between the feelings of the different characters and the sympathy of the reader or the audience. This principle of repugnance seems to have reached its height in the character of Master Barnardine, who not only sets at defiance the opinions of others, but has even thrown off all self-regard," one that apprehends