_Pet._ (to _Vincentio_). Good morrow, gentle mistress; where away?
Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too,
Hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman?...
Fair lovely maid, once more good day to thee;
Sweet Kate, embrace her for her beauty’s sake.
_Hor._ ‘A will make the man mad, to make a woman of him.
_Kath._ 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 bedfellow!
_Pet._ 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.
_Kath._ Pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes,
That have been so bedazzled by the sun,
That everything I look on seemeth green;
Now, I perceive, thou art a reverend father....
The resemblance between the English dramatist and the Spanish
story-teller is certainly odd, the more so because there is hardly any
possibility that either was indebted to the other. Shakespeare’s play
was first printed in 1664, and founded on an older play at that, “The
Taming of ‘a’ Shrew,” while El “Conde Lucanor,” written in the
fourteenth century, was not published till near the close of the
sixteenth, in the folio of Seville, 1575. Both writers seem to have
drawn their materials from a common stock. Indeed, the story in one form
or other was probably in vogue through all the languages of Europe.