From The Taming of the Shrew. Ed. William J. Rolfe. New York: American Book Co.
These appear to be limited to the old play and Gascoigne's Supposes, already mentioned. The latter was "englished"
from Ariosto in 1566. Holt White compares the story of the
Induction with a part of Sir Richard Barckley's Discourse on
the Felicitie of Man, 1598; Malone with a tale in Goulart's
Tresor d' Histoires, etc. (translated by E.Grimstone, 1607, but
some of the tales may have appeared in English much earlier); and Steevens, with a story quoted from Marco Paolo by Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621.
T. Warton
says that it is to be found in a collection of short comic
stories, printed in black letter in 1570, "sett forth by maister
Richard Edwards, mayster of her Maiesties revels;" and that
it is like "an incident which Heuterus relates from an epistle
of Ludovicus Vives to have actually happened at the marriage of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, about the year
1440." Percy, in his Reliques, gives an old ballad on the
same subject, The Frolicsome Duke, or the Tinker's Good Fortune, the date of which is not known. Knight remarks that
the story is in all probability of Eastern origin, being found in the Thousand and One Nights; and Mr. Lane conjectures
that it is founded on fact.
How to cite this article:
Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew. Ed. William J. Rolfe. New York: American Book Company, 1897. Shakespeare Online. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sources/tamingsources.html >.
The Taming of the Shrew Glossary - A to K