Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  “I know she is an irksome brawling scold,” said Petruchio.

  Gremio shrugged his shoulders. “If you have a stomach,” he said, “to it a God’s name! you shall have me assisting you in all.”

  Then Hortensio, finding himself lagging behind Gremio yet again, made the same offer; and Petruchio sighed with relief. He had been wondering where the money would come from to pay the cost of wooing.

  They were preparing to set off for Baptista’s house, when matters took yet another turn. A personage in a brightly coloured cloak and hat, came mincing down the street like a sunburst. He greeted them ceremoniously, and announced himself as yet another suitor to the fair Bianca. The two rivals were indignant. Who was this impudent newcomer? He declared that he was one Lucentio of Pisa, and very rich; though anyone with half an eye could have seen that he was Tranio in his master’s clothes, and guessed that his master had put him up to it; but they believed him.

  “Did you yet ever see Baptista’s daughter?” demanded Hortensio.

  “No, sir,” replied Tranio; but he had heard that she was beautiful and wealthy, and that was enough for him.

  The rivals looked at one another. They sighed. Honey-sweet Bianca was gathering suitors like bees. They had no right to send the new one away, but, nonetheless, he ought to pay his share towards the cost of getting rid of that fierce impediment, Katherine. “You must,” said Hortensio, gesturing towards Petruchio, “as we do, gratify this gentleman . . .”

  Tranio, cheerfully making free with his master’s money, agreed. Petruchio beamed. He felt a new man. But those who knew better, felt that Katherine would soon make an old one of him.

  The door of Baptista’s house flew open, and out came Bianca, weeping like April with the fury of March close behind. Her sister, by means of horrible threats and superior strength, had tied her hands together and pushed her out into the street. Loudly she jeered at Bianca for her suitors, while gentle Bianca wept and meekly pleaded to be set free.

  “You have but jested with me all this while,” she ventured, smiling bravely through her tears. “I prithee, sister Kate, untie my hands.”

  Katherine hit her, bringing down her hair like a tumbled sheaf of corn. Bianca shrieked; and out of the house came Baptista. He saw his angel bound and weeping, and was outraged. Tenderly he untied her and demanded of her cruel persecutor: “When did she cross thee with a bitter word?”

  “Her silence flouts me!” answered Katherine, and, with upraised fists, flew at her sister yet again.

  “Bianca, get thee in!” urged Baptista, stepping hastily between his children and allowing Bianca to escape.

  “I see she is your treasure!” shouted Katherine; and, her breast heaving with indignation, she rushed away to weep and plot revenge.

  “Was ever gentleman thus grieved as I?” groaned Baptista; and then hurriedly composed himself for visitors were approaching.

  They were Signior Gremio, Bianca’s elderly suitor, smiling like a crumpled face in a tapestry, with some half dozen strangers, all of whom were smiling too. But then, why not? The sun was bright and, doubtless, none of them had daughters. Then the morning, which had begun so stormily for Baptista, turned radiant!

  Not only had that good Signior Gremio brought him a schoolmaster for Bianca, wise in Latin and Greek, but also, and most marvellously, a suitor for Katherine! He was a fine-looking young fellow by name of Petruchio of Verona. Baptista had known his father, so he was no idle scrap of nonsense off the streets. On the contrary, he was well-dressed and courteous, and had inquired most civilly: “Pray have you not a daughter called Katherina, fair and virtuous?”

  “I have a daughter, sir,” Baptista had responded, “called Katherina,” and had left it at that. He did not wish to misrepresent his eldest child; particularly as none could fail to hear her stormy passage through the house. But Petruchio was not put off; and he, too, had brought a schoolmaster, skilled in music and mathematics, whom he offered like an academic bouquet. Baptista stared. He had never seen a more learned looking man in all his life. Solemnly gowned in black, he peered out at the world through spectacles as thick as bottles and he was whiskered like a broom. A man like that must have had a whole university in his head!

  Baptista was delighted; but his morning’s good fortune was not over yet. Another of the strangers, a young gentleman in a brightly coloured hat and cloak, bowed low and presented himself as Lucentio of Pisa, who was enormously rich. It was his earnest desire to be numbered among the suitors to the fair Bianca, and he pressed upon Baptista, with his best wishes, a pudding-faced boy bearing a pile of Greek and Latin volumes, and a lute.

  What a morning! Baptista, who had never before got anything by having daughters, save aggravation and distress, now found himself the happy possessor of two more suitors—one for each child—two schoolmasters, and the instruments of their craft! And all in a matter of minutes! Beaming, he despatched lute, books and scholars into his house, so that his daughters’ improvement might begin without delay. Then he turned eagerly to Petruchio to settle the matter of Katherine’s dowry, before the young man could change his mind.

  “Well mayst thou woo,” said Baptista, warmly shaking Petruchio by the hand when matters were settled, “and happy be thy speed . . .” Then his hope of seeing his eldest daughter married and in Verona, received a set-back.

  The door burst open and out staggered Petruchio’s learned gift. He was clutching his brow, which was decorated with a lute-string and splinters of wood. Katherine had broken his lute over his head.

  Baptista sighed; and, comforting the dazed scholar as best he could, prepared to lead him back into the house to try for better things with the gentle Bianca. “Signior Petruchio,” he asked uncomfortably, “will you go with us, or shall I send my daughter Kate to you?”

  “I pray you do,” said Petruchio; and off went the father, marvelling greatly.

  Kate came out. She was divided between anger at having been sent for, and curiosity to see why. She had never had a suitor before, and she did not like the look of him. He smirked at her as if she was a joint of lamb.

  “Good morrow, Kate, for that’s your name, I hear,” he said.

  “Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing,” she answered coldly; “they call me Katherine that do talk of me.”

  “You lie, in faith,” said he, returning her cold look with a warm one, “for you are called plain Kate, and bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst; but Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom!” He spoke the truth, for she was indeed beautiful; and when he concluded by saying: “Myself am moved to woo thee for my wife,” he meant it.

  She replied, contemptuously. He countered amiably. She frowned; he smiled. She called him an ass; he called her a woman. She told him to be off.

  “Nay, come again,” said he, “good Kate, I am a gentleman—”

  “That I’ll try!” she cried, and hit him as hard as she could.

  “I swear I’ll cuff you,” said Petruchio, rubbing his burning cheek and keeping his temper with difficulty, “if you strike again.”

  She scowled; and lowered her hand.

  “Nay, come, Kate, come,” said he, coaxingly, “you must not look so sour.”

  “It is my fashion when I see a crab,” she answered; and so the courtship proceeded, sweet as vinegar, and gentle as a raging sea: she the wind, and he the mariner fighting to contain her blasts.

  “Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn!” he panted, pinioning her arms and struggling to avoid her kicks. “I am he am born to tame you, Kate, and bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate conformable as other household Kates!”

  Suddenly he set her free; her father was coming, together with Bianca’s suitors.

  “Now, Signior Petruchio,” inquired Baptista, looking uneasily from flushed face to flushed and glaring face, “how speed you with my daughter?”

  “How but well, sir?” responded Petruchio, to the father’s relief. “How but well?”

  “Why, how now, daug
hter Katherine?” asked Baptista tenderly, perceiving that his eldest child looked somewhat despondent. “In your dumps?”

  “Call you me daughter?” shrieked Katherine, and went on to abuse the poor man for daring to thrust her upon, as she put it, “one half lunatic, a madcap ruffian and a swearing Jack!” She pointed a trembling finger at Petruchio, so there should be no mistake about who she meant.

  Father and suitors looked dismayed; but Petruchio, with the utmost cheerfulness assured them that all was well. He and Kate had agreed that, in company she should be perverse, while in private they were the best of lovers. Furthermore, matters had proceeded so swiftly between them, that he was off to Venice to buy wedding clothes, for they were to be married on Sunday!

  “And kiss me, Kate!” he cried, seizing the speechless Katherine round the waist and holding her tightly: “We will be married o’ Sunday!” Then he whirled her away, leaving father and suitors overwhelmed with joy.

  “Faith, gentlemen, now I play a merchant’s part,” said Baptista, addressing himself to Bianca’s suitors; for now it remained only for him to dispose of his other child.

  Gremio, by reason of having been first in the field, claimed the prior right; but Tranio, in his master’s hat and cloak, claimed a better love. Gremio sneered at his rival for being too young; and Tranio jeered at Gremio for being too old. So Baptista, exercising his rights of judgement, declared that Bianca’s love was a prize to be won, not by words but by deeds. Whoever offered most should have her. Gleefully Gremio rushed in with a list of his considerable property, all of which he was willing to make over to Bianca. Tranio, with the reckless generosity of one who promises in another’s name, outbid him to the tune of two more houses and two thousand ducats a year. Gremio staggered, but bravely came up with more land and an argosy in Marseilles. Then Tranio sank him with three argosies, and a whole fleet besides. Gremio was finished, and the father shook the victor by the hand. “Your offer is the best,” he said, affectionately; “and let your father make her the assurance, she is your own.”

  Bianca was learning Latin. While the sage of music and mathematics watched suspiciously from the other side of the room, and twangled on his new lute, Bianca’s head was bent so close to the other sage’s, that she might have got knowledge through seepage. They murmured low; and it was wonderful, Bianca discovered, what interesting meanings might be got from Ovid. For instance, when Penelope wrote to Ulysses, she saw fit to tell him that her name was Lucentio, son of Vicentio of Pisa, that he had disguised himself to make love to her, and that his man Tranio was disguised as himself in order to get rid of old Gremio.

  Bianca nodded, and, learning fast, translated the same passage again, when it appeared that Penelope wrote to tell Ulysses that . . . she knew him not, that she trusted him not, that he was to speak soft lest the musical sage overheard them; and that he was not to give up hope. She smiled, and he smiled, and Ovid, had he known the use to which his work had been put, would not have been displeased.

  Next came the turn of the music master; and he did not lag far behind. He instructed his fair pupil in the scale, which, in accordance with a new system of fingering, invented by himself, revealed that her whiskered and bottled-eyed teacher was Hortensio in disguise, that he loved her, and that he would surely perish if she refused him.

  “Tut! I like it not!” said Bianca, pushing aside the mysteriously legible lute. “Old fashions please me best. I am not so nice, to change true rules for odd inventions.” She gazed fondly at the Latinist, and Hortensio scowled.

  Kate’s wedding Sunday had come, and was nearly gone; and it had been a day that neither bride, nor bride’s people, nor priest nor sexton nor church itself was ever likely to forget. And not on account of joy.

  The groom was late, so late that it was feared he would not come. Kate was thrown into an agony of mortification, for the shame of being abandoned was worse than the shame of being married. Then he came, and it would have been better if he hadn’t; for the shame of being married turned out to be ten times worse than shame of being left. Petruchio came to his wedding in rags and rubbish, in old patched clothes, odd boots and a broken sword, and he rode upon a horse that could scarcely stagger.

  “Good sooth,” said he in surprise, when his attire was called into question, “to me she’s married, not unto my clothes.”

  But all this was no more than a mild prologue to the wedding itself. When asked if he would take Katherine for his wife, he answered so loud and with such swearing, that the priest dropped the book in amazement; and Petruchio cuffed him soundly as he bent to pick it up! After which, he called for wine, drank some, and threw the rest over the sexton. “This done,” related the shocked Gremio, who had been witness to everything, “he took the bride about the neck, and kissed her lips with such a clamorous smack that at the parting all the church did echo!”

  It had indeed been a wedding to remember, with a mad bridegroom and a bride so terrified that she dared not speak for fear of what might happen next. Then came the wedding feast, which was over before it had begun. Petruchio would not stay, and Katherine would not go. “Do what thou canst,” she said, “I will not go today.” She turned to the wedding guests. “Gentlemen, forward to the bridal dinner . . .”

  “They shall go forward, Kate, at thy command,” agreed Petruchio. “But for my bonny Kate, she must with me!” Then, seizing her round the waist, and waving his battered sword as if to defy all the world, he heaved her out of the house!

  The wedding guests stared at the violently swinging door. Some smiled, some laughed, some rose to follow. “Nay, let them go,” said old Baptista, more frightened of his daughter than for her; “a couple of quiet ones.”

  The journey to Petruchio’s house was long, hard and muddy; and, when bride and bridegroom arrived, Kate was faint and quiet from weariness and hunger. But Petruchio was in the best of spirits. He sang, and cuffed his servants and swore at them, and, in general, behaved as if he was back in church.

  “Sit down, Kate,” he roared, “and welcome! Food, food, food, food!”

  Kate regarded her shabby husband and his shabby house with hatred; nonetheless, she sat, for hunger was a strict master, even over the most turbulent of spirits.

  Food came, and Kate brightened; but alas! the food was not to Petruchio’s liking. It was ill-prepared and burnt; and he flung it back in his servants’ faces. “Be patient,” he said to his enraged and starving bride. “Tomorrow’t shall be mended, and for this night we’ll fast for company. Come, I will bring thee to thy bridal chamber.” She went as mildly as a tiger, and with such a look that those who saw it might have supposed she meant to dine upon her husband as he slept.

  Petruchio smiled. He had got Kate’s dowry, but now he was greedy and wanted more. He wanted her heart as well. But Kate’s heart, like gold or any precious thing, was buried deep, and needed mining for, with strength and resolution, and loud explosions. Accordingly he kept her awake all night, with lectures and complaints about the ill-made bed.

  Hortensio was disgusted. Bianca, in spite of her claim to be pleased by old fashions, had turned from him, the seasoned admirer, and bestowed her favours on the wretched young teacher of Latin. Bitterly he had watched them exchange looks and sighs, and steal sly kisses, like furtive apples. At length, he could endure it no longer; and his deathless love, for want of fuel, flickered and died. There was a rich widow he knew, and he would marry her; but first he would go to see how his friend Petruchio was faring, with his fierce Kate. As whiskers, spectacles and lutes had done him no good, he felt he had much to learn before he tried again.

  Petruchio’s wife was not well pleased.

  “Mistress, what cheer?” inquired Hortensio, cautiously.

  “Faith, as cold as can be,” came the bitter reply. She was hungry. Her husband, all concern, brought her food he had prepared himself. She looked at it, as if it might vanish before her eyes.

  “What, not a word?” asked Petruchio, disappointed by the reception of his e
fforts. “Nay then, thou love’st it not. Here, take away this dish.”

  “I pray you, let it stand,” cried Katherine quickly, her bright tongue moistening her eager lips.

  “The poorest service is repaid with thanks,” said Petruchio.

  “I thank you, sir,” said Katherine; and Hortensio stared.

  She began to eat, as one who has not eaten for many days; but was stopped, it seemed, almost as soon as she had begun. A tailor came in, laden with rich gowns for the lady. Kate eyed them with interest; but Petruchio was enraged. Everything the tailor showed was at fault. There was nothing, in all his stock, that was good enough for Kate.

  “I never saw a better fashioned gown,” pleaded Katherine, as the tailor displayed the choicest garment she had seen.

  “He means to make a puppet of thee!” said Petruchio contemptuously; and dismissed the tailor and all his wares. “Well, come, my Kate,” he said, comfortingly, “we will unto your father’s even in these honest mean habiliments. ’Tis the mind that makes the body rich.”

  Kate’s eyes filled with tears. Her gown was the gown she had come in, and was somewhat the worse for wear. Petruchio called for horses, for it was in his mind to set out directly for Padua and old Baptista’s house.

  “Let’s see,” he said, “I think ’tis now some seven o’clock . . .”

  “I dare assure you, sir,” corrected Kate, “ ’tis almost two . . .”

  Petruchio frowned. “It shall be what o’clock I say it is.”

  “Why,” murmured Hortensio, shaking his head, “so this gallant will command the sun!”

  And so he did, upon the long and tedious journey back to Padua.

  “Good Lord!” he cried out suddenly. “How bright and goodly shines the moon!”

  “The moon? The sun!” protested Kate. “It is not moonlight now.”

  “I say it is the moon!”

  “I know it is the sun.”

  “It shall be moon, or star, or what I list,” said Petruchio firmly; “Or e’er I journey to your father’s house.”