"Shrew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Barlaam and Josaphat" was familiar in all the literatures of the Middle Ages. Combined with this in the plot is the tale of Abou Hassan from the "Arabian Nights," the main situations in which are turned to farcical purposes in the Induction to the Shakespearean "Taming of the Shrew." But with Calderon the theme is lifted altogether out of the atmosphere of comedy, and is worked up with poetic sentiment and a touch of mysticism into a symbolic drama of profound and ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... here is what I have sought for so long," he exclaimed, at last. "Hither! thou treasure, thou dear, defiant little shrew! Thou art more to me than all the wealth of ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... gentlemen, a wife is a very much harder pack to the back than the biggest heifer in Smithfield and, if I can prevent one of you from marrying, the 'Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.' will not be written in vain. Not that my Lady was a scold or a shrew, as some wives are; I could have managed to have cured her of that; but she was of a cowardly, crying, melancholy, maudlin temper, which is to me still more odious: do what one would to please her, she would never be happy or in good-humour. I left her alone after ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that those parts of the structure which determined the habits of life, and the general place of each being in the economy of nature, would be of very high importance in classification. Nothing can be more false. No one regards the external similarity of a mouse to a shrew, of a dugong to a whale, of a whale to a fish, as of any importance. These resemblances, though so intimately connected with the whole life of the being, are ranked as merely "adaptive or analogical characters;" but ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... Clouds, like the plains, come and water the earth. Sun, embrace the earth that she may be fruitful. Moon, lion of the north, bear of the west, badger of the south, wolf of the east, eagle of the heavens, shrew of the earth, elder war hero, younger war hero, warriors of the six mountains of the world, intercede with the Cloud People for us that they may water the earth. Medicine bowl, cloud bowl, and water vase give us your ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... Lord! you use this dalliance to excuse Your breach of promise to the Porpentine. I should have chid you for not bringing it, 50 But, like a shrew, you ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... though originally local deities, might obtain a wider reverence if the nome they belonged to rose to greater power. Animals of every size and kind were worshipped in Egypt. Besides the large animals we have mentioned, the ape, the dog, the little shrew-mouse, each had its local sacredness; also snakes, frogs, and various kinds of fishes. The beetle (scarab) can by no means be left without mention; and a number of trees and shrubs were also sacred,[1] but, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... a sweetheart, means an early marriage and fidelity. To row on rough waters you will have to tame a shrew before you attain connubial bliss. Affairs in the business world will prove disappointing after you dream of rowing in muddy waters. If the waters are shallow and swift, a hasty courtship or stolen pleasures, from which there can be no ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... what marriage gives—the right to destroy years and years of life. And the right, once given, it attracts —attracts! We have both suffered from it. So many rich years out of my life have been squandered by it. And out of his life, so much force, energy—spent in battling with the shrew, the termagant he has now fled from; strength never to be replenished, never ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... spirit, and its power, which stains The bloodless cheek, and vivifies the brains, I sing. Say, ye, its fiery vot'ries true, The jovial curate, and the shrill-tongued shrew; Ye, in the floods of limpid poison nurst, Where bowl the second charms like bowl the first; Say how, and why, the sparkling ill is shed, The heart which hardens, and which rules the head. When winter stern his gloomy front uprears, A sable void the barren earth appears; ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... —A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... single tear for her, and fell to composing an elegy in Latin verses over the rustic little beauty. He bade the dryads mourn and the river-nymphs deplore her. As her father followed the calling of Vulcan, he said that surely she was like a daughter of Venus, though Sievewright's wife was an ugly shrew, as he remembered to have heard afterwards. He made a long face, but, in truth, felt scarcely more sorrowful than a mute at a funeral. These first passions of men and women are mostly abortive; and are ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... and she did not see his lips pucker as for a long whistle. But he did not whistle. He replied very humbly; and so sweetly that Murguia quailed for the little shrew. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... boy." With a bright smile that revives him. "That is, at times, when you do not speak to me as though I were the fell destroyer of your peace or the veriest shrew that ever walked the earth. Sometimes, you know,"—with a sigh,—"you are a ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... Thou art well aware, O Prince of True Believers, that by Moslem custom none may look upon the face of his betrothed before the marriage contract? nor after wedlock can he complain should his bride prove a shrew or a fright: he must needs dwell with her in such content as he may and be thankful for his fate, be it fair or unfair. When I saw first the face of my bride and learnt that it was passing comely, I joyed with exceeding joy and gave thanks ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... subjects to my publisher, and he told me that his son, just returned from Oxford, had developed a keen interest in osteology and was making a collection of mammalian skulls from the whale and elephant and hippopotamus to the harvest- mouse and lesser shrew. This reminded me of the long-forgotten skull, and I told him I had something to send him for his boy's collection, but before sending it I would find out what it was. Accordingly I sent the skull to Mr. Frank E. Beddard, the prosector ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... no managing of the little shrew," he would say. "Neither man nor devil can bend or break her. If I smashed every bone in her carcass, she would die shrieking hell at me ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... every day," said Sidney gravely. "I cannot imagine why He should have given it me. I hope I am not fool enough to disparage His gifts, and pretend they are nothing: indeed, I love it with all my heart. I would as soon think of calling my wife ugly or a shrew." ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... by elderly gentlemen so circumstanced, makes us rejoice, at the end, that he has his young wife all to himself. The improvement in the character of Lady Teazle is still more marked and successful. Instead of an ill-bred young shrew, whose readiness to do wrong leaves the mind in but little uncertainty as to her fate, we have a lively and innocent, though imprudent country girl, transplanted into the midst of all that can bewilder and endanger her, but with still enough of the purity of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... of the laborers resembled that of Christopher Sly in "The Taming of the Shrew." They were bewildered with astonishment at the appointments of their surroundings and the service of their attendants. A champagne headache was a natural accompaniment to the previous night's drinking and gorging; so that fashionable "coffee and rolls," though served in ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... should I gain?—Knowledge? Matter for further speculation? I can think sitting still as well as standing up. And what is knowledge? What are our learned men save the descendants of witches and hermits who crouched in caves and in woods brewing herbs, interrogating shrew-mice and writing down the language of the stars? And the less we honour them as our superstitions dwindle and our respect for beauty and health of mind increases.... Yes, one could imagine a very pleasant world. A quiet, spacious ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... costly brocades, and other profitable returns to his foreign adventures. But, alas!—and whose heart holdeth not communion with that word!—Cornelius was unhappy. He had one daughter, whom "he loved passing well;" yet, as common report did acknowledge, the veriest shrew that ever went unbridled. In vain did his riches and his revenues increase; in vain was plenty poured into his lap, and all that wealth could compass accumulate in lavish profusion. Of what avail was this ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... everything. In making me a slave, and making yourself a laughing-stock. Its not fair. You get me the name of being a shrew with your meek ways, always talking as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. And just because I look a big strong woman, and because I'm good-hearted and a bit hasty, and because you're always driving me to do things I'm sorry for afterwards, ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... liest, thou thread, thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter cricket thou; Braved in my own house by a skein of thread! Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant!" (Taming of the Shrew, Act 4, Sc. 3.) ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... point of view had been changing; a group of white foxgloves, like ghost-flames, that she had seen in a coppice, the creeping of a bright eyed shrew mouse through last year's leaves at her feet, the hundreds of little rabbits with curved-in backs that ran with their curious rocking action over the dewy fields at evening—all these things gave her a shock of ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... from other treatment. He'd been forced to remove her inflamed tonsils a few months before. She'd whined and complained because he couldn't spend all his time attending her. She was a nag, a shrew, and a totally selfish woman. But that was her husband's ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... the Heiress of Belmont The Thane's Daughter Helena; the Physician's Orphan Desdemona; the Magnifico's Child Meg and Alice; the Merry Maids of Windsor. Isabella; the Votaress Katharina and Bianca; the Shrew and the Demure Ophelia; the Rose of Elsinore Rosalind and Celia; the Friends Juliet; the White Dove of Verona Beatrice and Hero; the Cousins Olivia; the Lady of Illyria Hermione; the Russian Princess Viola; the Twin Imogen; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... his victims would be an annoying problem in identification when found, for there would be nothing left but well-gnawed bones. And "time to spare," in this case meant twenty or thirty minutes. The Nipe had, if nothing else, a very efficient digestive tract. He ate like a shrew. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... had pierced thy heart, and thou hadst died! So had the Trojans respite from their toils 465 Enjoy'd, who, now, shudder at sight of thee Like she-goats when the lion is at hand. To whom, undaunted, Diomede replied. Archer shrew-tongued! spie-maiden! man of curls![14] Shouldst thou in arms attempt me face to face, 470 Thy bow and arrows should avail thee nought. Vain boaster! thou hast scratch'd my foot—no more— And I regard it as I might the stroke Of a weak woman or a simple ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... had his poor little body stuffed, and propped him up with wire in the way they thought he looked nicest, and wrote a brand new ticket for him—SOREX MINUTUS. The lesser shrew. ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... voice.) I have got a shrew of a wife shut up there. For by that name I formerly falsely called myself, in order that you might not chance indiscreetly to blab it out of doors, and then my wife, by some means or other, might come to ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... is hooded; I could hear but that floweth The great hood below its mouth:" then the bird made reply. "If they know not, more's the pity, for the little shrew-mouse knoweth, And the kite knows, and the eagle, and the glead ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... dunderhead!" Skipper John scolded. "I believes ye! Dang if I don't! Go to! Shift them wet clothes, sir, an' come t' supper. I hopes a shrew hooks ye. Dang if ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... species are found. They include three monkeys, eight of the cat tribe, two civet cats, one tree cat, two mongooses, two of the dog tribe, five pole-cats and weasels, one ferret-badger, three otters, one cat-bear, two bears, one tree-shrew, one mole, six shrews, two water-shrews, twelve bats, four squirrels, two marmots, eight rats and mice, one vole, one porcupine, four deer, two forest-goats, one goat, one ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... up through her tears, "I am the daughter of a poor man in the castle town. My mother died when I was seven years old, and my father has now wedded a shrew, who loathes and ill-uses me; and in the midst of my grief he is gone far away on his business, so I was left alone with my stepmother; and this very night she spited and beat me till I could bear it no longer, and was on my way to my aunt's, who dwells in yonder village, when ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... any more, it will make my poor Muse sick. This night I came home with a very cold dew sick, And I wish I may soon be not of an ague sick; But I hope I shall ne'er be like you, of a shrew sick, Who often has made ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... wear her Sabbath face, putting off the mask of the shrew, which hid not from him the angel countenance. To-night he could in very truth call his wife (as the Rabbi in the Talmud did) "not wife, but home." To-night she would be in very truth Simcha—rejoicing. A cheerful warmth ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... MARQUISE DE, a scientific lady and friend of Voltaire's, born in Paris; "a too fascinating shrew," as he at length found ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... them ready at his hand as Ariel was ready to serve Prospero? Lear, Prospero, Brutus, Cassius, Falstaff, Iago, Macbeth, Hamlet, are as crowning creations as Cleopatra, Miranda, Lady Macbeth, Katharine the Shrew, Imogen, or Cordelia. We know not which to choose, as one who looks through a mountain vista to the sea, declaring each view fairer than the last, yet knowing if he might choose any one for a perpetual possession he could not make ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... to listen and laugh at a droll story or tell one? If he might not go a-fishing when all the forces of nature invited and the jay-bird called from the tree and gave forth saucy banter like the fiery, blue shrew ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... learning to smile, pinning and unpinning, making grimaces and striking attitudes. Many a coy wench was there who knew not how to open her lips to speak, much less to eat, or from very ceremony, how to look under foot; and many a ragged shrew who would contend that she was equal to the best lady in the street, and many an ambling fop who might winnow beans by the wind of ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... agricultural labours of spring, a Shrew-mouse, Field-mouse, Mole, Frog, Adder, or Lizard, will provide us with the most vigorous and famous of these expurgators of the soil. This is the Burying-beetle, the Necrophorus, so different from the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... one might idly glance at a shrew-mouse in the path. He saw a brown body pitifully lean, a shock black head, a pair of piercing grey eyes. Further, he saw that the child had not on a stitch of clothing, and that he was splashed to the knees with ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... enough not to understand. The forehead of the shrew unknotted a bit, and a look of satisfaction animated ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... you are. I'd like to see you do it. But the part of Katherine would be the thing for you—fascinating shrew ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... brood of sons submissive, keen to avenge Their father's wrongs, and count his friends their own. But who begets unprofitable sons, He verily breeds trouble for himself, And for his foes much laughter. Son, be warned And let no woman fool away thy wits. Ill fares the husband mated with a shrew, And her embraces very soon wax cold. For what can wound so surely to the quick As a false friend? So spue and cast her off, Bid her go find a husband with the dead. For since I caught her openly rebelling, Of all my subjects the one malcontent, I will not prove ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... Confederate has done played out, Shrew ball, shrew ball, Ole Confederate has done played out Shrew ball say I, An' ole Gen'l. Lee can't fight no mo'; We'll all drink stone blind Johnnies ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... rat found only in the Cinnamon Gardens at Colombo, Mus Ceylonus, Kelaart; and a mouse which Dr. Kelaart discovered at Trincomalie, M. fulvidiventris, Blyth, both peculiar to Ceylon. Dr. TEMPLETON has noticed a little shrew (Corsira purpurascens, Mag. Nat. Hist. 1855, p. 238) at Neuera-ellia, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... be married by that time," continued the Egyptian, frowning at this interruption, "for I see your wife. She is a shrew. She marries you in your dotage. She lauchs at you in company. She ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... wise hag wouldn't hear of the whipster; Not merely because, as a shrew, he eclipst her, And nature had given him, to keep him still young, Much tongue in his head and no head in his tongue; But because she well knew that, for change ever ready, He'd not even to mischief keep properly steady: That soon even the wrong side would cease to delight, And, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... The shrew turns on her heel, truculent: "Would you have me ruin myself by this miserable war? I've about enough of losing money ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... water in her mouth, to regain her husband's love by silence, had its source in the same farrago; and that there is an odd similitude between my Lord's trick upon Sly the Tinker, in Shakspeare's 'Taming of the Shrew,' and some stuff I have ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... devote sisters. The irresistibleness to this class of the feminine sex (and indeed by no means to this class only) of a strapping and handsome footman is a commonplace of satire with eighteenth-century writers, both French and English. It is exercised possibly on both sisters, though the elder is a shrew; certainly on the younger, and also on their elderly bonne, Catherine. But it necessarily leads to trouble. The younger, Mlle. Habert (the curious hiding of Christian names reappears here), wants to retain Jacob in the joint service, and Catherine at least makes no objection, for obvious ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... few flowers. But for the most part there is no finding her population without seeking for it. Hundreds of her flowers are hidden from the lazy eye, and we may pass a lifetime without seeing so common a bird as a tree-creeper or so common an animal as a shrew-mouse. How seldom it is one sees even a rat! There are human beings who will never discover an early flower, however many miles they cover in their country walks. They take no pleasure in finding a wild-strawberry flower in January ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... at least once a fortnight were to be imprisoned and their goods seized. Englishmen who married Irish women were to be accounted guilty of high treason, and hung, drawn, and quartered at the convenience of the viceroy. Such feeble ferocity tells its own tale. Like some angry shrew the unhappy executive was getting louder and shriller the less its denunciations ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... three kings!" cried one, "here is an old dotard shrew to have so goodly a crutch! Use the leg that God hath given you, man, and do not bear so heavily ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... personage in his early married life. His wife, while not a shrew, had undoubted force of character, but there was not much attrition; and his little daughter was, in John's estimation, the fairest child upon the continent. Personally, he was content with all the world, though his wife was somewhat less so. John had his failings. He ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... been kind to him. His wife, however, led him a dog's life. The only interest she seemed to have in his music was to keep him writing numbers for the priests, who clustered around her, eating Haydn out of house and home. Frau Haydn was a shrew, and he finally gave up trying to live at home, seeking his consolation at court with a young and beautiful Neapolitan singer, who was unhappily married to a poor fiddler, named Polzelli. The two lovers made little secret ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... Highland grandmother of yours, and when a man has that there's never any knowing where it will break out, or what dance it will lead him, especially when it comes to this love-making business. You are just as likely as not to lose your head over some little fool or shrew for the sake of her outward favour and make yourself miserable for life. When you pick you a wife please remember that I shall reserve the right to pass a ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was far from fulfilling the Athenian ideal of beauty, being short of stature, corpulent, with protruding eyes, upturned nose, large mouth, and thick lips. His domestic life was not happy, his wife, Xantippe, being a noted shrew. His failure to provide for the material welfare of his family, though quite natural in a man to whom all material things seemed unessential, must have sorely tried her patience. But Socrates bore her scolding with resignation. Indeed, he seemed to regard it as ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... good and evil; as, by help of his benevolent forehead and a clear dogged voice, he always seemed to our audience to be the wiser and better man of the two, he was very well pleased with our disputes. This gentleman had an only daughter,—an awful shrew, with a face like a hatchet but philosophers overcome personal defects; and thinking only of the good her wealth might enable me to do to my fellow-creatures, I secretly made love to her. You will ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... held patriarchal views on household matters, the proper subordination of the wife being a prime article of his faith. Mrs. Wesley, however, entertained different views. She is therefore described as a frightful shrew, and rated for her inordinate jealousy, although her husband's attentions to other ladies ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... observe any man or woman of our acquaintance when that person supposed himself or herself to be absolutely alone, we should be astonished and often horrified at the unconscious revelations we would receive. The woman with the Madonna face may unmask and show the lineaments of a common shrew in her chamber. And the virago may soften into the gentleness of a saint as she gives way to the penitence of her own thoughts. The dignified man with the air of virtue and authority might show himself as a nimble-motioned rascal, timid and furtive, if he believed only God ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... time has written plays that are remembered. The John Lacy whom Charles II. admired so much that he had his picture painted in three of his characters, died in 1681, leaving four comedies and an alteration of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. He was a handsome man: first dancing-master, then quarter-master, then an admired comedian. Henley would hardly have used a blank in referring to a well-known writer who died thirty years before. There was another John Lacy advertising in the Post Boy, Aug. 3, 1714, The Steeleids, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... realistic to the last degree. Sometimes devils were put upon the stage: flames issued from their mouths: they performed tricks of buffoonery: they dragged off sinners to their doom. Sometimes comic scenes were introduced, as in the play of the 'Flood,' where it was common to represent Noah's wife as a shrew who beats her husband and refuses to ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... from any share in it. Consequently I am made use of, and the fortune is placed in my hands with instructions to hasten to lay it at the feet of this 'fair lady.' Nothing seems easier or more natural. But suppose the 'fair lady' should be ugly, hunchbacked, a shrew, or a troublesome coquette. In this case, you know, with my ideas about women and marriage, I should feel myself ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... and yet imprudent enough to consent to marry him. This had the effect of rendering him at once and surprisingly prudent. As the poet puts it, "he had found out a flat for his fair," and as he himself put it, "We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow: but be-shrew me, we never thought of making my bank-manager one of the party, to break him in to our ways; the consequence being that Elinor's maid will have to stick a bedroom-suite priced five-pounds-ten, while the other ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... trail with just any other creature; and, the highway being, as I have said, a sort of public affair, he met first a mouse gone astray, then a mole asleep, then a long-tailed wood-mouse, then a short-tailed field-vole, then a shrew about as big as your little finger. But they must have heard the scrape of the snake's scales down that echoing tunnel following hard behind, for they avoided our bank-vole like the plague, and dived up one or other of the thousand and one side-tunnels, which opened on to the main ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Beroe, for shame! they're quite the worst That any head can possibly contain! And then her cheeks of green and yellow hues, The obvious penalty of poisonous envy— Zeus oft complains to me that that same shrew Each night torments him with her nauseous love, And with her jealous whims,—enough, I'm sure, Into Ixion's ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Edward, Edward! Kiss me, you minx! Fair, I wish that my dear friend, your father, were alive. Well, well, patience does it, and the Lord knows, Unity, he's been patient! Oh, you black-eyed piece, you need a bit and bridle! Here's Edward! Edward, the shrew's tamed at last! Such a ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... presence of this new-comer seemed to fill her with resentment, making of her an irrepressible young shrew who gloated ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... sober, her temper was little better, and her tormenting tongue seemed to have been hung in the middle, so that it might run at both ends. It is related of Foote, the comedian, that when once suffering from the tongue of a shrew, he replied—"I have heard of Tartars, and Brimstones, madam; and by Jove you are the cream of the one, and the flour of the other." And next to the Grecian lady above mentioned, the Tartar who bearded Foote, ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... exclaimed old lady Chia. "I always said that that girl wasn't anything like that artful shrew! Well, in that case, she is to be pitied, for she has had to bear the brunt of her anger, and all through no fault of hers!" Calling Hu Po to her, "Go," she added, "and tell P'ing Erh all I enjoin you; 'that I know that she has been insulted ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... on, laugh on, my happy child, ('Twas thus the mother sung;) The shrew, Experience, has not yet With envious gesture flung Aside the enchanted veil which hides Life's pale and dreary look; An angel lurks in every stream, A heaven ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... said to have three white stripes: our sailors caught one, but it got away again. The mole here is larger than in Europe; the upper part of the body is of a greyish brown, the lower part an ash grey; the legs are covered with a white fur, and the taper tail is one-fifth of the length of the body. A shrew-mouse also was caught. Two or three kinds of large cats are said to have been seen; a mustela, something of the nature of the Lutreola, was shot near the Rio Sacramento. The sea-otter still abounds here, but its hair is brownish, and ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... time of the campaign of 1890 she was a tall, mannish-looking, but not unattractive woman of thirty-seven years, the mother of four children. She was characterized by her friends as refined, magnetic, and witty; by her enemies of the Republican party as a hard, unlovely shrew. The hostile press made the most of popular prejudice against a woman stump speaker and attempted by ridicule and invective to drive her from the stage. But Mrs. Lease continued to talk. She it was who told the Kansas farmers that what they ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... the Straits of Dover or the Irish Channel, to graze anew over deposits in which the bones and horns of their remote ancestors had been entombed long ages before, the feat would have been surely far beyond the power of such feeble natives of the soil as the mole, the hedgehog, the shrew, the dormouse, and ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... you," he bellowed in the shriek of the gale. "But I guess I'd as lief have it this way. It's better than a flat sea an' fog, which is mostly the alternative this time o' year. The Atlantic don't offer much choice about now. She's like a shrew woman. Her smile ain't ever easy. An' when you get it you've most always got to pay good. She can blow herself sick with this homeward bound breeze for ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... character-study is attempted. The Taming of the Shrew no doubt passed for a light comedy in Shakespeare's day, though we describe it by a briefer name. Its rapid, bustling action is possible because we are always ready to take the character of a shrew for granted. It would have been a very different play had the poet required to account for Katharine's peculiarities of temper by a retrospective study of her heredity and upbringing. Many eighteenth-century comedies are single-adventure plays, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... dead;' and was imposingly introduced to me, by a quasi near 'relative,' as being only too happy to learn that she was one half of the eternal unit of which I was the complement. I began to be as lordly and self-satisfied as the bewildered sot in the 'Taming of the Shrew.' After exhausting my small stock of writing paper, I concluded to allow my new friends to spend their loquacity on some old college note books, the handiwork of a relative—every other page being blank. The venerable ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... person of a house full of sordid shames and cares, with an upper room in which that abased figure was infecting even innocent sleep with sensual brutality and degradation. The doll's dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew; of the world, worldly; of the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... we reluctantly accept the conclusion that Chaucer was unhappy as a husband, we must at the same time decline, because the husband was a poet, and one of the most genial of poets, to cast all the blame upon the wife, and to write her down a shrew. It is unfortunate, no doubt, but it is likewise inevitable, that at so great a distance of time the rights and wrongs of a conjugal disagreement or estrangement cannot with safety be adjusted. Yet again, because we refuse ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... mouldiness. In Italy they arm the tops of long poles with nails and iron for the purpose, and believe the beating improves the tree; which I no more believe, than I do that discipline would reform a perverse shrew: Those nuts which come not easily out of their husks, should be laid to mellow in heaps, and the rest expos'd in the sun, till the shells dry, else they will be apt to perish the kernel: Some again preserve them in their own leaves, or in a chest made of walnut-tree wood; ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... has made him, is indicated by the cow's horns; which are so placed as to become his own. The hopes of the family, with a cockade in his hat, and riding upon papa's cane, seems much dissatisfied with female sway. A face with more of the shrew in embryo than that of the girl, it is scarcely possible to conceive. Upon such a character the most casual observer pronounces with the decision of ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... sort—no mammal, as I understand your men of science call them—was ever stranded alive upon the shores of my islands. For twenty or thirty centuries indeed, I waited patiently, examining every piece of driftwood cast up upon our beaches, in the faint hope that perhaps some tiny mouse or shrew or water-vole might lurk half drowned in some cranny or crevice of the bark or trunk. But it was all in vain. I ought to have known beforehand that terrestrial animals of the higher types never by any chance reach ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... continue till the last fire shall devour all learning"; the author is distinguished by the surname of "The Judicious" for his calm wisdom; he was not judicious, it would seem, in the choice of a wife, who was a shrew and a scold (1554-1600). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... wishing to win Dorothy Ratcliffe's favour. I would to Heaven he may do so, and then I shall at any rate have peace and quiet, and be free from hearing my mother lay plans of what she will do when I bring Dorothy as mistress of Hillside. Marry Dorothy, forsooth! I pity any man who is tied to that shrew for life.' ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... things rather than persons; smell, and inspect a new piece of furniture several times; are attached to houses, and are extremely fond of scents, especially certain kinds emanating from plants. They seldom eat the rats which they kill, although they devour mice. If they should swallow a shrew, which is very rare, they almost immediately reject it. They will sit hour after hour watching at the mouth of a hole, and after seizing their prey, bring it to their favourites in the house to show their prowess, and strut about with ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... disputatious crew Each evening meet; the sot, the cheat, the shrew; Riots are nightly heard:—the curse, the cries Of beaten wife, perverse in her replies, While shrieking children hold each threat'ning hand, And sometimes life, and sometimes food demand; Boys, in their first-stol'n rags, to swear begin; And girls, who heed not ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... long legs she walks with the uncertain step common to all young things. She hunts field-mice, shrew-mice—even partridge, and this hard work in the fields has toughened her young muscles and given a rather ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... Their promises of correspondence were redeemed by Elinor with very long letters at uncertain intervals, and by Marian with shorter epistles notifying all her important movements. Marian, often called upon to defend her cousin from the charge of being a little shrew, was led to dwell upon her better qualities. Elinor found in Marian what she had never found at her own home, a friend, and in her uncle's house a refuge from that of her father, which she hated. She had been ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... sxangxi plumojn. Mound remparo, digo. Mount supreniri. Mount monteto. Mountain monto. Mountaineer montano. Mountainous monta. Mountain-range montaro. Mountebank jxonglisto. Mourn malgxoji, ploregi. Mournful funebra. Mourning (dress) funebra vesto. Mouse muso. Mouse, shrew soriko. Mouse-trap muskaptilo. Moustache lipharoj. Mouth busxo. Mouth (of river) enfluo. Movable movebla. Move movi. Move (furniture) translogxigxi. Move in (dwelling) enlogxi. Move out (dwelling) ellogxigxi. Move ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... woman called Thordis—and a shrew she was—who lived at Spakonufell (Spaequean's-fell), in Skagastrand. She, having foresight of Cormac's goings, came that very day to Muli, and answered this matter on his behalf, saying, "Never give him yon false woman. She is a fool, and not fit ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... bitter smile. "So you've had your fool's paradise? Well, once I had mine, though 'twas not your kind. 'Tis a pretty country, Audrey, but it's not long before they turn you out." She laughed somewhat drearily, then in a moment turned shrew again. "He never knew what people were saying?" she cried. "You little fool, do you suppose he cared? 'Twas you that played your cards all wrong with your Governor's ball last night!—setting up for a lady, forsooth!—bringing all the town about your ears! You might ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... be found in Newgate under condemnation for robbing a house; his arguments would not very unjustly lose much of their force, from the circumstances he lay under. So, when Milton writ his book of divorces, it was presently rejected as an occasional treatise; because every body knew, he had a shrew for his wife. Neither can there be any reason imagined, why he might not, after he was blind, have writ another upon the danger and inconvenience of eyes. But, it is a piece of logic which will hardly pass on the world; that because one man hath a sore nose, therefore all the town ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... young man or the old, the latter of whom soon grew into an object of local compassion as "a harmless, dacint, poor crathur," while his son came in for the frank-eyed looking-down-upon which is the portion of an able-bodied man, shrew-ridden through sheer supineness and "polthroonery." But what Lisconnel often said that it "thought badder of" was the stepmotherly treatment which seemed to be the lot of the little girl Katty. Of course the situation was one which, under the circumstances, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... away a Field-mouse was seen for a moment dodging about in the grass, and shortly afterward a Shrew-mole, not so big as the Mouse, was seen in hot ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... not so sure that it is appropriate," he rejoined. "I think on the whole I would rather love a Juliet than tame a shrew." ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... wild animals, ranging in size from the great, powerful, timid grizzly bear, now almost extinct here, whose Indian name, by the way, is Yosemite, to the tiny shrew of the lowlands, the most frequently seen are the black or brown bear, and the deer, both of which, as compared with their kind in neighborhoods where hunting is permitted, are unterrified if not friendly. Notwithstanding its able protection, the Yosemite will need generations to ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... alike, which are now restricted to the female. It is so even with 'girl', which was once a young person of either sex{212}; while other words in this list, such for instance as 'hoyden'{213} (Milton, prose), 'shrew' (Chaucer), 'coquet' (Phillips, New World of Words), 'witch' (Wiclif), 'termagant' (Bale), 'scold', 'jade', 'slut' (Gower), must be regarded in their present exclusive appropriation to the female sex as evidences of men's rudeness, and not of ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... had a long and varied history and has answered to many aliases. When Shakespeare called a man "humorous" he meant that he was changeable and capricious, not that he was given to a facetious turn of thought or to a "sportive" exercise of the imagination. When he talks in "The Taming of the Shrew" of "her mad and head-strong humor" he doesn't mean to imply that Kate is a practical joker. It is interesting to note in passing that the old meaning of the word still lingers in the verb "to humor." A woman still humors her spoiled child and her cantankerous husband ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... nursing his knee and looking about him. "Let that pass for a moment. You have the prettiest woodland parlor, child! Tell me, do they treat you well over there?" with a jerk of his thumb toward the glebe house. "Madam the shrew and his reverence the bully, are they kind to you? Though they let you go like a beggar maid,"—he glanced kindly enough at her bare feet and torn gown,—"yet they starve you not, nor beat you, nor ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... almost, like Shakespeare's moonlight, to 'sleep upon the bank,' I can hardly conceive how so gentle-looking a dwelling can continue to send forth such an incessant clatter of obstreperous sound through its honeysuckle-fringed windows. It really reminds me of a pretty shrew, whose amiable smiles would hardly allow a casual observer to suspect the possibility of so fair a surface being occasionally ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... lodging for Claire in a freshly painted but otherwise rather decrepit lodging-house, just north of the ferry-slip. Its chief advantage was that it seemed quite too stagnant to be anything but respectable, and the suppressed grumbling of the old shrew whom they routed out confirmed their estimate. She didn't approve of couples who dragged God-fearing old women out of bed at unholy hours in the morning, and it was only the generous tip from Stillman and the assurance that he intended ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... been breathing forth my grief, In hopes thereby to get me some relief, I heard, methought, his voice say, "Cease to mourn: I live; and though the veil of flesh once worn Be now stript off, dissolved, and laid aside, My spirit's with thee, and shall so abide." This satisfied me; down I shrew my quill, Willing to be resigned to God's ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... the drama published at Madrid (1872), tells that "La Vida es Sueno", is founded on a story which turns out to be substantially the same as that with which English students are familiar as the foundation of the famous Induction to the "Taming of the Shrew". Calderon found it however in a different work from that in which Shakespeare met with it, or rather his predecessor, the anonymous author of "The Taming of a Shrew", whose work supplied to Shakespeare the ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... of spavined old croakers. Old Plain Talk had a shrew for a wife, and that's made him shrewish; and Old Prudence, when a boy, broke down in an apple-stall, and that discouraged him for life. No better sport for a knowing spark like me than to hear Old Plain Talk wheeze out his sour old saws, while Old Prudence ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... is he that weds a Shrew; One that will talk, and wear the Breeches too; Governs, insults, do's what e'er she thinks fit, And he good Man, must to her Will submit; Mannages all Affairs at home, abroad, While he a Cypher seems, and stands for naught; When e'er he speaks, she snaps him, and crys, Pray hold your ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... I found it past four o'clock, and went immediately to bed. It is now ten A.M. I have been up since seven, penning these memoranda for the benefit of my family and of mankind. The former I shall behold no more. My wife is a shrew. The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life and of the nineteenth century in general. I am convinced that every thing is going wrong. Besides, I am anxious to know who will be President in 2045. As soon, therefore, as I shave and swallow ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and family head, unlike most Malaitans, was fat. And of his fatness it would seem had been begotten his good nature with its allied laziness. But as the fly in his ointment of jovial irresponsibility was his wife, Lenerengo—the prize shrew of Somo, who was as lean about the middle and all the rest of her as her husband was rotund; who was as remarkably sharp-spoken as he was soft-spoken; who was as ceaselessly energetic as he was unceasingly idle; and who ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... in her most regal array, seemed to have left her dignity downstairs with her opera cloak, for with skirts gathered closely about her, tiara all askew, and face full of fear and anger, she stood upon a chair and scolded like any shrew. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... whole, or the worst. The Egyptian was taught to pay a religious regard to animals. In one place goats, in another sheep, in a third hippopotami, in a fourth crocodiles, in a fifth vultures, in a sixth frogs, in a seventh shrew-mice, were sacred creatures, to be treated with respect and honour, and under no circumstances to be slain, under the penalty of death to the slayer. And besides this local animal-cult, there was a cult which was general. Cows, cats, dogs, ibises, hawks, and cynocephalous ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... give rise to a repugnance which often changes into fear. It is quite wrong to have any dread of them; as a matter of fact, the bird you have just seen is, like all its species, more useful than injurious to man, for it destroys a vast number of small mammals—jerboas, shrew-mice, dormice, and field-mice, which ravage the farmer's crops. You will recollect that the owl, among the ancient Greeks, was the bird of Minerva; with the Aztecs it ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... "The muckle shrew!" quoth Master Jonson. "Why, I'll have this out with him! By Jupiter, I'll read him reason with a vengeance!" With a clink of his rapier he made as if to ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... said, and I gave our boy five francs to fetch the oats, but the old shrew took the money from him and handed it to ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... a modern edition of 'The Taming of the Shrew.' Y'u'll find me, sweet, as apt at the part as old Petruchio." He paced complacently up the room and back, ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... primroses too faint to catch A weary bee. And scarce it pushes Its gentle way through strangling rushes Where the glossy kingfisher Flutters when noon-heats are near, 105 Glad the shelving banks to shun, Red and steaming in the sun, Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat Burrows, and the speckled stoat; Where the quick sandpipers flit 110 In and out the marl and grit That seems to breed them, brown as they. Naught disturbs its quiet way, Save some lazy stork that springs, Trailing it with legs and wings, 115 Whom the shy fox ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... better,' exclaimed his mother. 'How I have longed to free him from that little shrew, whose tricks were the plague of my life! Now there is nothing between him and ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... barrack life, where his authority was unquestioned, to the henpecked existence he led at home. "Ella era l y l era ella," says Patricio de Escosura in speaking of this couple; for Doa Mara was something of a shrew. She was a good business woman who combined energy with executive ability, as she later proved by managing successfully a livery-stable business. But, however formidable she may have been to her hostlers, her son Jos found her indulgent. He, the only surviving son of a mature ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... from abroad penniless. Soon after he married, almost as early and quite as imprudently as Shakespeare. He told Drummond curtly that "his wife was a shrew, yet honest"; for some years he lived apart from her in the household of Lord Albany. Yet two touching epitaphs among Jonson's 'Epigrams', "On my first daughter," and "On my first son," attest the warmth of the poet's family affections. ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... of Verona. The Merry Wives of Windsor. Measure for Measure. The Comedy of Errours. Much adoo about Nothing Loves Labour lost. Midsommer Nights Dreame. The Merchant of Venice. As you Like it. The Taming of the Shrew. All is well, that Ends well. Twelfe-Night, or what you ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... crows, all of which died, not from inattention, but because I did not know how to care for them. Again, I have come across animals that I could not find a name for. For instance, last summer I came across two animals, one that resembled a shrew, another that looked somewhat like a mouse. Now if I had had a book like this proposed one on hand, I would simply have looked up its habits, would have found its name, would have known how to tame and feed it, and would have had a new addition to ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... betwixt those forces it filleth all the mountain ghyll, and there is no foothold for man, nay for goat, save at a hundred foot or more above the water, and that evil and perilous; and is the running of a winter millstream to the beetles and shrew-mice that haunt the greensward beside it, so is the running of that flood to the sons of Adam and the beasts that serve them: and none has been so bold as to strive to cast a ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... right! That's all you've brought! Try and eat them, will you?" said the owner, an insolent old shrew with an enormous scar on her cheek, who told them she had already lain with a dead man, "to cure her from ever feeling ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... doing the same thing day after day, year after year, seems to bring the meanness right out. I've seen lots of instances of that, and I'm perfectly sure that if I were a farmer's wife, and had to work like a slave I'd be a perfect shrew and there'd be no ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... distribution of the characters of the cast, did not notice much novelty or eccentricity. The life and soul of the evening's entertainment was Miss ADA REHAN, a talented lady, who (so I was told) has made her mark in Rosalind, in As You Like It, and Katharina, in the Taming of the Shrew. I can quite believe that Miss REHAN is a great success in parts of the calibre of the Shakspearian heroines I have mentioned; nay, more, I fancy she would do something with Lady Macbeth, and be quite in her element as Emilia, in Othello. But, as she had to play an ingenue, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... mainly as an encyclopaedia of the medical knowledge of his time and as a review of the work of his predecessors. There is a great deal of information in his books about his own life. He was born at Pergamos in A.D. 130 in the reign of Hadrian. His father was a scholar and his mother somewhat of a shrew. Galen, in his boyhood, learned much from his father's example and instruction, and at the age of 15 was taught by philosophers of the Stoic, Platonist, Peripatetic, and Epicurean schools. He became initiated, writes Dr. Moore, into "the idealism ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... threatening action of an angry scorpion. Now, as a matter of fact, the devil's coach-horse is quite harmless, but I have often seen, not only little boys and girls, but also chickens, small birds, and shrew-mice, evidently alarmed at his minatory attitude. So, too, the bumble-bee flies, which are inoffensive insects got up in sedulous imitation of various species of wild bee, flit about and buzz angrily in the sunlight, quite after the fashion of the insects ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... to touch, the skies: Not the most distant mark of fear, No sign of axe or scaffold near, Not one cursed thought to cross his will Of such a place as Tower Hill. 680 Curse on this Muse, a flippant jade, A shrew, like every other maid Who turns the corner of nineteen, Devour'd with peevishness and spleen; Her tongue (for as, when bound for life, The husband suffers for the wife, So if in any works of rhyme Perchance there blunders out a crime, Poor culprit bards must always rue it, Although ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... is dough; but I'll in among the rest; Out of hope of all, but my share in the feast." Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, act v., sc. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Gildon mangled "Measure for Measure" and provided it with "musical entertainments." The Duke of Buckingham divided "Julius Caesar" into two tragedies with choruses. Worsdale reduced "The Taming of the Shrew" to a vaudeville, and Lampe "trimmed 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' into an opera." Garrick adapted "Romeo and Juliet" to the stage of his time, by allowing Juliet to awake before Romeo had died of the poison, "The Tempest" by furnishing it with songs, "The Taming ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... cudgell'd one day by his wife, He took to the street, and fled for his life: Tom's three dearest friends came by in the squabble, And saved him at once from the shrew and the rabble; Then ventured to give him some sober advice— But Tom is a person of honour so nice, Too wise to take counsel, too proud to take warning, That he sent to all three a challenge next morning. Three duels he fought, thrice ventur'd ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... CINEREOUS SHREW.—Two male shrews were trapped on April 7, 1952, among rocks along an old railroad fill, 4 mi. N, 1/2 mi. E of Octavia, Butler County, thus extending the known geographic range of S. c. haydeni approximately 60 miles southward from a line connecting Perch, ...
— Distribution of Some Nebraskan Mammals • J. Knox Jones
... creature had climbed up in the same way. Curious to know what it might have been, the boys hailed Lucien and Norman, telling them to come down. These, followed by Marengo, soon arrived upon the spot. When Lucien saw the tracks, he pronounced them at once to be those of the little shrew-mouse, the smallest of all the quadrupeds of America. Several of them had evidently been out upon the snow—as there were other dotted lines—and the tops of many stalks of grass were seen above the surface, each of which had formed a little hole around it, by which the mice were enabled ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Scriptures say, all wives should do. But the lust of brandy overcame wifely obedience, and Brinsden, hoping for the best, was constrained to cut a hole in her skull. The next day she was as impudent as ever, until Matthias rose yet more fiercely in his wrath, and the shrew perished. Then was Thomas Pureney's opportunity, and the Sunday following the miscreant's condemnation he delivered unto him and seventeen other malefactors the moving ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... comedy of 'All's Well that Ends Well,' which may be tentatively assigned to 1595. Meres, writing three years later, attributed to Shakespeare a piece called 'Love's Labour's Won.' This title, which is not otherwise known, may well be applied to 'All's Well.' 'The Taming of The Shrew,' which has also been identified with 'Love's Labour's Won,' has far slighter claim to the designation. The plot of 'All's Well,' like that of 'Romeo and Juliet,' was drawn from Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure' (No. xxxviii.) The original source is Boccaccio's 'Decamerone' ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... EPHESUS. Good Lord, you use this dalliance to excuse Your breach of promise to the Porcupine: I should have chid you for not bringing it, But, like a shrew, ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... coloring virtually invisible to every eye that does not know he is there. Probably my own is the only eye that has ever penetrated his secret, and mine never would have done so had I not chanced on one occasion to see him leave his retreat and make a raid upon a shrike that was impaling a shrew-mouse upon a thorn in a neighboring tree, and which I was watching. I was first advised of the owl's presence by seeing him approaching swiftly on silent, level wing. The shrike did not see him till the owl was almost within the branches. He then dropped his game, and darted back into the ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Ramsden, so don't attempt to dissuade me; we are not married yet, and I must not be thwarted in my short supremacy. Surely you ought not to be displeased at my desire to 'tame a shrew.' I give a fair promise not to fall into an error which I so ardently detest: now, send for the chaise, write a letter to Doctor Beddington, and leave me ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that foggy night, but he could express very little. Many of his defects sprang from his not having been on the stage as a child. He was stiff with self-consciousness; his eyes were dull and his face heavy. The piece we played was Garrick's boiled-down version of "The Taming of the Shrew," and he, as Petruchio, appreciated the humor and everything else far more than I did, as Katherine; yet he played badly, nearly as badly as I did; and how much more to blame I was, for I was at this time much more easy and skillful from ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... O my lord?" she cried, in tone and manner more the European shrew than the submissive Eastern slave. "Is Sakr-el-Bahr to go upon this expedition against the ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... fume. I should observe that she was a brisk, coquettish woman; a little of a shrew, and something of a slammerkin, but very pretty withal; with a nincompoop for a husband, as shrews are apt to have. She rated the servants roundly for their negligence in sending up so bad a breakfast, but said not a word against the stout gentleman; ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... such scolds as they sound," answered Uncle Blair gaily. "If they would but 'tak a thought and mend' their shrew-like ways they would be ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Lucanor is the production of a statesman, instructing a grave and serious nation in lessons of policy and morality in the form of apologues. These stories have suggested many subjects for the Spanish stage, and one of them contains the groundwork of Shakspeare's "Taming of the Shrew." ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Yangtsze-kiang is generically identical with its Mississippi relative. The spoon-beaked sturgeon of the Yangtsze and Hwang-ho is, however, now separated, as Psephurus, from the closely allied American Polyodon. Among insectivorous mammals the Chinese and Japanese shrew-moles, respectively forming the genera Uropsilus and Urotrichus, are represented in America by Neurotrichus. The giant salamander of the rivers of China and Japan and the Chinese mandarin duck are by some included in the same genera as their American representatives, while by others they ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... I mind some babblement About a wedding: but, nowadays, words tumble Through my old head like turnips through a slicer; And naught I ken who the bowdykite's to wed— Some bletherskite he's picked up in a ditch, Some fond fligary flirtigig, clarty-fine, Who'll turn a slattern-shrew and a cap-river Within a week, if I ken aught of Jim. Unless ... ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... mind leaping backwards over the hard years to my childhood, and the sound of my mother's voice. No wonder; I had scarce once heard the mellow sound of a good woman's voice since I ran away to sea five years before, only the hard voices of hard men, and, now and then, the shrill voice of some shrew ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... would not be a stander-by to hear My sovereign mistress clouded so, without My present vengeance taken: 'shrew my heart, You never spoke what did become you less Than this; which to reiterate were sin As deep as ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... a weazel-faced man, who had been plagued for twenty years by a shrew of a wife, who popped off one day from an overdose of whiskey. He came to beseech me not to bring back his plague to the world; and, pitying the poor man's case, I gave him my promise readily, without accepting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... journey was Richard when he rode to London on a hard-paced nag, that he might be in time to preach his first sermon at St. Paul's. And was not this, the hastier of his journeys, the most unlucky in his life, seeing that it brought him acquainted with that foul shrew, Joan, his wife, who made his after-days as bitter to him, patient and godly though he were, as wormwood and coloquintida? Are not these goodly examples, Christian and Heathen? Let the Train rush along, you and I will travel at ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... cried at last; "put a check upon thy froward tongue! Who ever heard such impertinence as this! A plague on the shrew and on her pudding! Would to heaven it hung at ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... Ray had ridden forth without ever asking or knowing why, and so, unknowing, was ill prepared to grapple with the problem set before him. It is easier to stem a torrent with a shingle than convince a lover that his idol is a shrew. ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... acres and a cabin will not harm me. Valencia, if he marries the daughter of Carlos (as the senora says will come to pass), will be glad to have a cabin to live in apart from the mother of his wife, who is a shrew and will be disquieting in any man's household. Therefore, Senor Hunter, you may order the peons to assist the big hombre and his beautiful senora, that they may soon have a hut to shelter them from the rains. It is not good to see so gentle a woman endure hardship within ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... minks and weasels are on the hunt all winter. Our native mice are also active. That pretty stitching upon the coverlet of the winter snow in the woods is made by our white-footed mouse and by the little shrew mouse. The former often has large stores of nuts hidden in some cavity in a tree; what supply of food the latter has, if any, I do not know. In the winter the short-tailed meadow or field mice come out of their retreat in the ground and beneath stones and lead gay, fearless ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... that trembled. "It's because if I let myself get cross-grained and ugly now, p'r'aps someone else—some day—will be cross-grained and ugly too. And I should never forgive myself for that. I should always feel it was my fault. Fancy if it turned out a shrew like me, ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... drops. Sometimes it would brawl and fret along a ravine in the matted shade of a forest, filling it with murmurs, and after this termagant career would steal forth into open day with the most placid, demure face imaginable, as I have seen some pestilent shrew of a housewife, after filling her home with uproar and ill-humor, come dimpling out of doors, swimming and curtseying and ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... the accomplish'd Squire endu'd With gifts and knowledge, per'lous shrew'd. Never did trusty Squire with Knight, Or Knight with Squire, e'er jump more right. 625 Their arms and equipage did fit, As well as virtues, parts, and wit. Their valours too were of a rate; And out they sally'd at the gate. 630 Few miles on horseback had they jogged, But Fortune unto them ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... everything that flatters," returned he, "it would tell a falsehood. A shrew can provoke a man who detests her. As to Miss Dundas, notwithstanding her parade of learning, she generally espouses the wrong side of the argument; and I may say with somebody, whose name I have forgotten, that any one who knows Diana Dundas never ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... berlandieri (Baird). Comparison of this specimen, Texas Cooperative Wildlife Collections, No. 2765, with 8 specimens of C. micrura from various parts of northern Veracruz and with 9 C. parva from southern Tamaulipas reveals that the shrew from Boca del Rio is referable to Cryptotis micrura. The series of 8 specimens in the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History from Altamira, Tamaulipas, provides the southernmost known record of Cryptotis parva berlandieri. These 8 specimens are typical of C. p. berlandieri and show ...
— Taxonomy and Distribution of Some American Shrews • James S Findley
... suspicion, and govern the stormy sea of soliloquies. From these frightful tempests which ravage a woman's heart springs an ignoble, unworthy resolution, one which every woman, the duchess as well as the shopkeeper's wife, the baroness as well as the stockbroker's lady, the angel as well as the shrew, the indifferent as well as the passionate, at once puts into execution. They imitate the government, every one of them; they resort to espionage. What the State has invented in the public interest, they consider legal, legitimate and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... immortal prototype of farce comedy, this play of the "Taming of the Shrew." In the hands of a lesser author it would have lost its comedy and degenerated purely into farce, restricting itself to more ignoble aims and to a more indulgent public. For farce, after all, is farcical, and the mood for its appreciation is not one which is sympathetic to any ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... is that,' he said, 'you handsome shrew? Handsomer so, than any other woman in her ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... will mention as a curiosity the shrew or sand-mouse, which, in spite of its name, is no mouse at all, but has the honor, if honor it be, of being the smallest animal known ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... a creature!" said Chichikov to himself, for he was beginning to lose patience. "Bless her heart, I may as well be going. She has thrown me into a perfect sweat, the cursed old shrew!" ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... tell us, Emperor Jurgen," said they all, "your wife was an acidulous shrew, and the sort of woman who believes that whatever she ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... smile, moving pins and making gestures and putting themselves in attitudes. There was many a vain creature there, who did not know how to open her lips to speak, or to eat, nor, from sheer pride, to look under her feet; and many a ragged shrew, who would insist that she was as good a gentlewoman as the best in the street; and many an ambling fop, who could winnow beans with the mere wind ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... a termagant or a shrew for all this; she had the kindliest heart in the world, and acted towards me in particular in a truly maternal manner, occasionally putting some little morsel of choice food into my hand, some outlandish ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... priestly vestments, had no tenderness, no embrace for him,—only a mockery and a prophecy, a cold and cynical prediction that I should soon tire of his shrill voice. Yes, Cheri, your sweet silver trills, your rippling June-brook warbles, were to him only a shrew's scolding. I took the bird wrathfully, his name had been Cherry, and rechristened him on the spot Cheri, in anticipation of the new life that was to dawn upon him, no longer despised Cherry, but ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... about the little shrew being thoroughly game, and yet her act was less striking as evidence of her bravery, than as testifying her confidence in the chivalry of the rough men before her. And, indeed, it was comical to see ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy |
