Passages from The Taming of the Shrew

Being starved by someone who calls it love.

The more my wrong, the more his spite appears:What, did he marry me to famish me?Beggars, that come unto my father’s door,Upon entreaty have a present aims;If not, elsewhere they meet with charity:But I, who never knew how to entreat,Nor never needed that I should entreat,Am starved for meat, giddy for lack of sleep,With oaths kept waking and with brawling fed:And that which spites me more than all these wants,He does it under name of perfect love;As who should say, if I should sleep or eat,’Twere deadly sickness or else present death.

The argument that silence is the more dangerous choice.

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

Some men measure every new noise against the loudest thing they've survived.

Why came I hither but to that intent?Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?Have I not in my time heard lions roar?Have I not heard the sea puff’d up with windsRage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,And heaven’s artillery thunder in the skies?Have I not in a pitched battle heardLoud ’larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets’ clang?And do you tell me of a woman’s tongue,That gives not half so great a blow to hearAs will a chestnut in a farmer’s fire?Tush, tush! fear boys with bugs.

How quickly a man accepts a life he hasn't earned.

Am I a lord? and have I such a lady?Or do I dream? or have I dream’d till now?I do not sleep: I see, I hear, I speak;I smell sweet savours and I feel soft things:Upon my life, I am a lord indeedAnd not a tinker nor Christophero Sly.Well, bring our lady hither to our sight;And once again, a pot o’ the smallest ale.

The case for marrying purely for money, argued without apology.

Signior Hortensio, ’twixt such friends as weFew words suffice; and therefore, if thou knowOne rich enough to be Petruchio’s wife,As wealth is burden of my wooing dance,Be she as foul as was Florentius’ love,As old as Sibyl and as curst and shrewdAs Socrates’ Xanthippe, or a worse,She moves me not, or not removes, at least,Affection’s edge in me, were she as roughAs are the swelling Adriatic seas:I come to wive it wealthily in Padua;If wealthily, then happily in Padua.

What it costs to agree with everything a person says.

Then, God be bless’d, it is the blessed sun:But sun it is not, when you say it is not;And the moon changes even as your mind.What you will have it named, even that it is;And so it shall be so for Katharine.

What happens when the pupil decides the instrument is the problem.

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 fiddlerAnd twangling Jack; with twenty such vile terms,As had she studied to misuse me so.

An argument for dressing badly that isn't about humility at all.

Well, come, my Kate; we will unto your father’sEven in these honest mean habiliments:Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor;For ’tis the mind that makes the body rich;And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,So honour peereth in the meanest habit.What is the jay more precious than the lark,Because his fathers are more beautiful?Or is the adder better than the eel,Because his painted skin contents the eye?O, no, good Kate; neither art thou the worseFor this poor furniture and mean array.

A plan to win an argument by agreeing with everything, on purpose.

I will attend her here,And woo her with some spirit when she comes.Say that she rail; why then I’ll tell her plainShe sings as sweetly as a nightingale:Say that she frown; I’ll say she looks as clearAs morning roses newly wash’d with dew:Say she be mute and will not speak a word:Then I’ll commend her volubility,And say she uttereth piercing eloquence:If she do bid me pack, I’ll give her thanks,As though she bid me stay by her a week:If she deny to wed, I’ll crave the dayWhen I shall ask the banns and when be married.