The following passages give a lively picture of what a music-master
might have to put up with from young ladies of quality.
_Shrew._ II, i, 142. Re-enter HORTENSIO with his head broken.
_Bap._ How now, my friend? why dost thou look so pale?
_Hor._ For fear, I promise you, if I look pale.
_Bap._ What, will my daughter [Kate] prove a good musician?
_Hor._ I think, she'll sooner prove a soldier:
Iron may hold her, but never _lutes_.
_Bap._ Why, then thou canst not _break her_ to the lute?
_Hor._ Why, no, for _she hath broke the lute to me_.
I did but tell her she _mistook her frets_,
And bow'd her hand to _teach her fingering_,
When, with a most impatient, devilish spirit,
"_Frets_ call you these?" quoth she; "I'll _fume_ with them;"
And with that word she struck me on the head,
And _through the instrument my pate made way_;
And there I stood amazed for a while,
_As on a pillory, looking through the lute_,
While she did call me _rascal fiddler_,
And, _twangling Jack_, with twenty such vile terms,
As had she studied to misuse me so.
_Shrew_ II, i, 277.
_Bap._ Why, how now, daughter Katherine? in your _dumps_?
_Shrew._ Act III. i. Hortensio and Lucentio, the sham musical and
classical tutors, give a lesson to Bianca. They quarrel which is to
start first.
_Lucentio._ _Fiddler, forbear_: you grow too forward, sir.
* * * * *
_Hortensio._ But, wrangling pedant, _this is
The patroness of heavenly harmony_;
Then give me leave to have prerogative,
And _when in music we have spent an hour_,
Your lecture shall have leisure for as much.
_Luc._ Preposterous ass, that never read so far
To know the cause why music was ordained!
Was it not to refresh the mind of man,
_After his studies_, or his usual pain?
Then give me leave to read philosophy,
And _while I pause, serve in your harmony_.
Bianca settles the question, and orders Hortensio (l. 22):
Take you your instrument, _play you the whiles_;
His lecture will be done, _ere you have tun'd_.
_Hor._ You'll leave his lecture, when I am in tune?
_Luc._ _That will be never_: tune your instrument.