Page 1456 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

How but well, sir? How but well? [275]
It were impossible I should speed amiss.

BAPT IST A

Why, how now, daughter Katherine? In your dumps?

KAT HERINA

Call you me daughter? Now I promise you
You have show’d a tender fatherly regard
To wish me wed to one half lunatic, [280]
A madcap ruffian and a swearing Jack,
That thinks with oaths to face the matter out.

PET RUCHIO

Father, ’tis thus: yourself and all the world
That talk’d of her have talk’d amiss of her.
If she be curst it is for policy, [285]
For she’s not froward, but modest as the dove.
She is not hot, but temperate as the morn.
For patience she will prove a second Grissel,
And Roman Lucrece for her chastity.
And to conclude, we have ’greed so well together [290]
That upon Sunday is the wedding-day.

KAT HERINA

I’ll see thee hang’d on Sunday first.

GREMIO

Hark, Petruchio, she says she’ll see thee hang’d first.

T RANIO

Is this your speeding? Nay then, good night our part.

PET RUCHIO

Be patient, gentlemen, I choose her for myself. [295]
If she and I be pleas’d, what’s that to you?
’Tis bargain’d ’twixt us twain, being alone,
That she shall still be curst in company.
I tell you ’tis incredible to believe
How much she loves me. O, the kindest Kate! [300]