Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/345

Rh And threw the sops all in the sexton's face; Having no other cause but that his beard Grew thin and hungerly, and seem'd to ask His sops as he was drinking. This done, he took The bride about the neck, and kiss'd her lips With such a clamourous smack, that at their parting All the church echoed: and I seeing this, Came thence for very shame; and after me, I know, the rout is coming; Such a mad marriage never was before."

The most striking and at the same time laughable feature in the character of Petruchio throughout is the studied approximation to the intractable character of real madness, his apparent insensibility to all external considerations, and utter indifference to every thing but the wild and extravagant freaks of his own self will. There is no contending with a person on whom nothing makes any impression but his own purposes, and who is bent on his own whims just in proportion as they seem to want common sense. With him a thing's being plain and reasonable is a reason against it. The airs he gives himself are infinite, and his caprices as sudden as they are groundless. The whole of his treatment of his wife at home is in the same spirit of ironical attention and inverted gallantry. Every thing flies before his will, like a conjuror's wand, and he only metamorphoses his wife's temper by metamorphosing her senses and all the objects