THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.

INDUCTION.

"Sly. I'll pheese you, in faith."

Comment is made on this word "pheese." Johnson says it means, 'to separate a twist into single threads;' and bases his opinion on the definition of Sir T. Smith De Sermone Anglico. "To feize means in fila deducere." Gifford says it means "to beat, chastise or humble;" and Mr. Charles Knight says that in this sense Shakespeare uses it in the line,

"An he be proud with me I'll pheese his pride."
Troilus & Cressida.

All wrong, as any Yankee' could tell the learned gentlemen. The word has survived here with many others which have died out in England, and are thence called Americanisms. To pheese,' is 'to irritate,' 'to worry.' Nothing is more common than for a New England housewife to come in, irritated by some domestic conflict, and plumping down in her rocking chair and beginning to fan herself with her apron, to break out, "Plague on that hussy! she's put me all in a pheese." Sly has just had a war

of words with Mistress Hacket, and he enters, threatening to worry her to her heart's content. The toping tinker has no thought of chastising the good ale-wife.

ACT I. SCENE 1.

"Tran. Only, good master, while we do admire

This virtue and this moral discipline,

Let's be no stoics, nor no stocks, I pray;

Or so devote to Aristotle's checks,

As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured.

Balk logic with acquaintance that you have,
And practise rhetoric in your common talk."

This passage has, strangely enough, been thought obscure by some critics. Blackstone, Mr. Collier's folio corrector Mr. Singer, and strangest of all, Mr. Dyce, read "Aristotle's ethicks" for "Aristotle's checks." "What are 'Aristotle's checks ?" asks Mr. Collier. Plainly, they are Aristotle's ethical principles, which check the propensities that Master Tranio's more favored author, Ovid, stimulate. Lucentio has but just said;

"for the time I study,

Virtue and that part of philosophy,
Will I apply, that treats of happiness
By virtue specially to be achiev'd."

To which Tranio immediately replies:

"Mi perdonate, gentle master mine,
I am in all affected as yourself.
Glad that you thus continue your resolve,
To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy.
Only, good master, while we do admire
This virtue, and this moral discipline,
Let's be no stoics, nor no stocks, I pray;
Or so devote to Aristotle's checks
As Ovid be an outcast quite abjur'd:"

Surely a clearer passage was never written, or an apter word ever chosen. Blackstone's conjecture is both ingenious and plausible. Ingenuity and plausibility are very well; but it is not well to "let them appear when there is no need of such vanity."

"Balk logic" of the original has been presumptuously changed to "Talk logic" in most editions; in spite of the fact that 'to balk' means 'to puzzle,' 'to deal in cross purposes; and in spite of this instance of its use by Spenser, which is quoted by Boswell in the Variorum Edition:

"But to occasion him to further talke,

To feed her humor with his pleasing style,
Her list in stryfull termes with him to balke."
Faerie Queene, B. III. Can. 2, Stan. xii.

The word "angel" has always presented a difficulty. The most plausible conjectural change which has been made, is that of Sir Thomas Hanmer, who would read engle, 'a gull,' from the French engluer, to catch with bird lime.' The worst change is that in Mr. Collier's folio,ambler, than which nothing can be more tame and puerile. Gifford supports engle in a note on Ben Jonson's Poetaster, in which he quotes, in addition to Jonson's own use of the word, the parallel passages from Gascoigne's Supposes, `which was the source of a part of Shakespeare's plot. In this the messenger judged from the habit and the looks of the old man, that he was "a good soul," "none of the wisest," "a man of small sapientia," "a cod's head." But hear Mr. Dyce:

"I never felt quite satisfied with the emendation 'enghle' (ingeniously as it is supported by Gifford, note on B. Jonson's Works, ii. 430); nor does that of the Manuscript-corrector appear to me so certain as it does to Mr. Collier.

After all, is angel' the right reading (though not in the sense of messenger, which is quite unsuited to the passage),— an ancient angel' being equivalent to an ancient worthy, or simply to an old fellow? I must not be understood as answering this query in the affirmative when I cite from Cotgrave's Dict. 'Angelot à la grosse escaille. An old Angell; and by metaphor, a fellow of th' old, sound, honest, and worthie stamp.""

A Few Notes, &c. p. 71.

Plausible and well supported as engle is, this forbids us to make the change; for here is a perfectly apt and congruous signification for the original word, furnished by a contemporary English lexicographer."

SCENE 4.

"Tran. I thank you, sir: Where then do you know best We be affied?" &c.

The suggestion in Mr. Collier's folio that we should read,

seems to be an ingenious and judicious correction of a probable error of the press.

Mr. Dyce, writing only for critics, thinks it needless to give any information about Cotgrave's Dictionary. It is a very carefully compiled and copious French and English Lexicon, published in London in 1611. The author, Randle Cotgrave, appears from passages in his dedication of the work to "Sir WILLIAM CECIL Knight, Lord Burghley and sonne, and heire apparent vnto the Earle of Exeter," to have been a tutor in the family of that Nobleman.

This line, about which some have found sufficient obscurity to alter "see" to fee, and which even Mr. Knight interprets," I'll notice you when you stand up," seems to me very easy of comprehension, and to mean 'I would have thee to stand up.'

What is the meaning of the last line and the previous half-line? With every help I can make out nothing which approaches intelligibility, unless we read with Boswell,

"nor worse of worst extended."

Even this is obscure, and can hardly be received as Shakespeare's. But it should be remarked that this blindest of passages, the one which, perhaps, is most hopelessly cor