before him, but that when they were alone he had found her very fond
and loving; and he said to her: 'Give me your hand, Kate; I will go to
Venice to buy you fine apparel against our wedding day. Provide the
feast, father, and bid the wedding guests. I will be sure to bring
rings, fine array, and rich clothes, that my Katharine may be fine; and
kiss me, Kate, for we will be married on Sunday.'

On the Sunday all the wedding guests were assembled, but they waited
long before Petruchio came, and Katharine wept for vexation to think
that Petruchio had only been making a jest of her. At last, however, he
appeared; but he brought none of the bridal finery he had promised
Katharine, nor was he dressed himself like a bridegroom, but in strange
disordered attire, as if he meant to make a sport of the serious
business he came about; and his servant and the very horses on which
they rode were in like manner in mean and fantastic fashion habited.

Petruchio could not be persuaded to change his dress; he said Katharine
was to be married to him, and not to his clothes; and finding it was in
vain to argue with him, to the church they went, he still behaving in
the same mad way, for when the priest asked Petruchio if Katharine
should be his wife, he swore so loud that she should, that, all amazed,
the priest let fall his book, and as he stooped to take it up, this
mad-brained bridegroom gave him such a cuff, that down fell the priest
and his book again. And all the while they were being married he
stamped and swore so, that the high-spirited Katharine trembled and
shook with fear. After the ceremony was over, while they were yet in
the church, he called for wine, and drank a loud health to the company,
and threw a sop which was at the bottom of the glass full in the
sexton's face, giving no other reason for this strange act, than that
the sexton's beard grew thin and hungerly, and seemed to ask the sop as
he was drinking. Never sure was there such a mad marriage; but
Petruchio did but put this wildness on, the better to succeed in the
plot he had formed to tame his shrewish wife.

Baptista had provided a sumptuous marriage feast, but when they
returned from church, Petruchio, taking hold of Katharine, declared his
intention of carrying his wife home instantly: and no remonstrance of
his father-in-law, or angry words of the enraged Katharine, could make
him change his purpose. He claimed a husband's right to dispose of his
wife as