Brick Shakespeare: The Comedies—A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew (95 page)

HORTENSIO

That will not be in haste.

KATHARINA

Why, sir, I trust I may have leave to speak;

And speak I will; I am no child, no babe:

Your betters have endured me say my mind,

And if you cannot, best you stop your ears.

My tongue will tell the anger of my heart,

Or else my heart concealing it will break,

And rather than it shall, I will be free

Even to the uttermost, as I please, in words.

PETRUCHIO

Why, thou say’st true; it is a paltry cap,

A custard-coffin, a bauble, a silken pie:

I love thee well, in that thou likest it not.

KATHARINA

Love me or love me not, I like the cap;

And it I will have, or I will have none.

PETRUCHIO

Thy gown? why, ay: come, tailor, let us see’t.

O mercy, God! what masquing stuff is here?

What’s this? a sleeve? ’tis like a demi-cannon:

What, up and down, carved like an apple-tart?

Here’s snip and nip and cut and slish and slash,

Like to a censer in a barber’s shop:

Why, what, i’ devil’s name, tailor, call’st thou this?

HORTENSIO

I see she’s like to have neither cap nor gown.

TAILOR

You bid me make it orderly and well,

According to the fashion and the time.

PETRUCHIO

Marry, and did; but if you be remember’d,

I did not bid you mar it to the time.

Go, hop me over every kennel home,

For you shall hop without my custom, sir:

I’ll none of it: hence! make your best of it.

KATHARINA

I never saw a better-fashion’d gown,

More quaint, more pleasing, nor more commendable:

Belike you mean to make a puppet of me.

PETRUCHIO

Why, true; he means to make a puppet of thee.

TAILOR

She says your worship means to make a puppet of her.

PETRUCHIO

O monstrous arrogance! Thou liest, thou thread, thou thimble,

Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail!

Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket thou!

Braved in mine own house with a skein of thread?

Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant;

Or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard

As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou livest!

I tell thee, I, that thou hast marr’d her gown.

TAILOR

Your worship is deceived; the gown is made

Just as my master had direction:

Grumio gave order how it should be done.

GRUMIO

I gave him no order; I gave him the stuff.