"Shrew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... English Mysteries Noah's wife is an untamed shrew, who refuses to enter the ark. In the York collection, Noah being ordered by "Deus" to build his boat, wonders ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... 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 glowed at his heart, love for all ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... made him, and he must pass for a man: what his wife 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 ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... Swift's tale of the woman that holds 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 been ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... made dim pictures as if the past was struggling fitfully to remain somehow alive.... His good-bye to Mathilde. And long, stupid weeks in Berlin. The girl had been absurd. Absurd, an impulsive little shrew. With demands. Four months of Mathilde. Unsuspected variants of boredom. Clothed in her unrelenting love like an Indian in full war dress. Yet to part with ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... 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 to blame Philippa, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... ornament, is bold and vigorous in style, and, when devoted to satire, is keen and vehement. The ballad of "Watty and Meg," though exception may be taken to the moral, is an admirable picture of human nature, and one of the most graphic narratives of the "taming of a shrew" in the language. Allan Cunningham writes: "It has been excelled by none in lively, graphic fidelity of touch: whatever was present to his eye and manifest to his ear, he could paint with a life and a humour which Burns seems alone to excel."[41] In private life, Wilson was a model of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... was not good, 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
... ceremony, she was asked if she willingly received Henry of Bourbon for her husband, she pouted, coquettishly tossed her proud head, and was silent. The question was repeated. The spirit of Marguerite was now roused, and all the powers of Europe could not tame the shrew. She fixed her eyes defiantly upon the officiating bishop, and refusing, by look, or word, or gesture, to express the slightest assent, remained as immovable as a statue. Embarrassment and delay ensued. Her royal brother, Charles IX., fully aware of his sister's ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Luck, she is never a lady, But the cursedest quean alive, Tricksy, wincing, and jady— Kittle to lead or drive. Greet her—she's hailing a stranger! Meet her—she's busking to leave! Let her alone for a shrew to the bone And the hussy comes plucking your sleeve! Largesse! Largesse, O Fortune! Give or hold at your will. If I've no care for Fortune, Fortune must ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... morning the awakening 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 ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... 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 ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... shall be better tempered than I. Everybody hath spoiled me, and I am a shrew. No man will ever want to marry me, and I am glad ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... this I hear, 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 Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Dr. W. Bulleyne says "it keepeth clothes from moths and wormes." This is the great preventive used by cloth manufacturers. "Furthermore," adds Gerard, "taken in wine it is good against the biting of the shrew mouse, and of the sea dragon. It may be applied against the Squincie, or inflammation of the throat, with honey and water: likewise, after the same manner, to dim eyes, and ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... 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 ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... is a 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
... public edifices, we found more than the usual amount of Galician filth and misery. The posada was one of the most wretched description, and to mend the matter, the hostess was a most intolerable scold and shrew. Antonio having found fault with the quality of some provision which she produced, she cursed him most immoderately in the country language, which was the only one she spoke, and threatened, if he attempted to breed any disturbance in her house, to turn the horses, himself, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... 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 Pithom. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... reverend care of her; And, in conclusion, she shall have her rights, If she will cease to rise, and rail, and brawl, And with her clangour keep the world awake. This is the way to kill her wrath with kindness, And thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humour.— He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Let him speak out! 'Tis time the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... foole, thar't a foole, bee rulde by mine host, shew thy self a brave man, of the true seede of Troy, a gallant Agamemnon; tha'st a shrew to thy wife, if shee crosse thy brave humors, kicke thy heele at her ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... "That thing 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, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... was miraculously meek and dumb; all the scold was quelled within her; the word "blood" was the Petruchio that tamed that shrew; she could see a plenty of those ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... desirous of a young husband, the slattern Catherina Meigengra, the market-woman who plays the pandero in the market-place, the peasant girls with pretentious names coming down to market basket on head from the hills, the shrew Branca and the timid wife Marta, the two irrepressible Lisbon fishwives, the voluble saloia who sells milk well watered and charges cruel prices for her eggs and other wares, the country priest's greedy 'wife' who eats the baptism cake and is continually ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... not to understand. The forehead of the shrew unknotted a bit, and a look of satisfaction ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... 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 a ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... does not pay, he will go—and tilled 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 my boundary. ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... their supper, Lizzie tried to bring the child round again to that prettier and better state. But the charm was broken. The dolls' dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew, of the world, worldly; of ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... English king only gave greater boldness to Olaf Triggvison, who very naturally considered that the monarch who would thus allow an alien foe to settle upon his shores must be a very child in weakness—a man with no more spirit than a shrew mouse. ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... herself her 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 pleasure so keen it surprised her. Till now she had not admitted her own artificiality ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... 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
... shaped like a pear, with a prodigious self-important manner that came of associating with great men: and all the knowledge I had of him was pick'd up on the rare occasions (about twice a year) that I din'd at his table. He had early married and lost an aged shrew, whose money had been the making of him: and had more respect for law and authority than any three men in Oxford. So that I reflected, with a kind of desperate hilarity, on the greeting he ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... browbeaten lump of a private fresh from the depot was very small indeed. The sergeants, seeing these things, told him secrets generally hid from young officers. His words were quoted as barrack authority on bets in canteen and at tea; and the veriest shrew of the corps, bursting with charges against other women who had used the cooking-ranges out of turn, forbore to speak when Cottar, as the regulations ordained, asked of a morning if ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... the whitefooted mouse, and the little continuous line between them was made by his dragging tail. The legend is like this, :-:-:-:-:-. Farther on are similar tracks, but alternate instead of opposite, like this,',',','. They were made by the short-tailed shrew. Still farther along a queer little ridge is seen in the snow across the wood road. It is the tunnel of the meadow mouse. Part of its fragile roof has fallen in and you may stoop and look into the little round tunnel which ran from the burrow to some granary ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... The shrew turns on her heel, truculent: "Would you have me ruin myself by this miserable war? I've about enough of losing ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... was too much fatigued with liquor to annoy him. When awake and 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, seemed, in my ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... woman, sickly 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
... poised on 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 gloomy expression ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... or Catherine Hall, was a slattern and a minx, Mrs. Score was a far superior shrew; and for the seven years of her apprenticeship the girl was completely at her mistress's mercy. Yet though wondrously stingy, jealous, and violent, while her maid was idle and extravagant, and her husband seemed to abet the girl, Mrs. Score ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... are not half 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 dear, lovable ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of them had tasted the bastinado and been tamed; most of them had been wise enough to tame themselves. If Shakespeare had been a Turk he would probably have written a very different version of the Taming of the Shrew! ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... "I've given my wife her first American friend and I've done a shrew stroke of business in nabbing the best business ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... has 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 ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... infer again, facile consilium damus aliis, we can easily give counsel to others; every man, as the saying is, can tame a shrew but he that hath her; si hic esses, aliter sentires; if you were in our misery, you would find it otherwise, 'tis not so easily performed. We know this to be true; we should moderate ourselves, but we are furiously carried, we cannot make use of such precepts, we are overcome, sick, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... inhabitants, to see Yan Yost Vanderscamp seated at the helm, and his man Pluto tugging at the oars! Vanderscamp, however, was apparently an altered man. He brought home with him a wife, who seemed to be a shrew, and to have the upper-hand of him. He no longer was the swaggering, bully ruffian, but affected the regular merchant, and talked of retiring from business, and settling down quietly, to pass the rest of his days in ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... will, I am convinced, hold most true, if applied to the most venomous individuals of human insects. A tyrant, a trickster, and a bully, generally wear the marks of their several dispositions in their countenances; so do the vixen, the shrew, the scold, and all other females of the like kind. But, perhaps, nature hath never afforded a stronger example of all this than in the case of Mrs. Francis. She was a short, squat woman; her head was closely joined to ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... shall be perils dire and deadly. O bethink thee, lest she change thee into a swine, or black dog, aye, or even a small shrew-mouse—I've heard of such ere now—or blast thee with fire, or loathly ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... had I, rather I lay that I might watch her (furtively, beneath my arm) where she sat head aloft, cheeks flushed and bosom tempestuous. And (despite her beauty) a very termagant shrew I thought her. Then, all at once, I saw a tear fall and another; and she that had sung undaunted to the tempest and outfaced its fury, sat bitterly weeping like any heart-broke maid, yet giving due heed to our course none the less. Presently, chancing ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... green virgin, Cropp'd like a rose before 'tis fully blown, Or half its worth disclosed. Strange medley here! Here garrulous old age winds up his tale; And jovial youth, of lightsome vacant heart, 530 Whose every day was made of melody, Hears not the voice of mirth.—The shrill-tongued shrew, Meek as the turtle-dove, forgets her chiding. Here are the wise, the generous, and the brave; The just, the good, the worthless, the profane; The downright clown, and perfectly well-bred; The fool, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... advertisements take up so much space in our newspapers. Plato, in the "Laws," says that "The Gods, pitying the toils which our race is born to undergo, have appointed holy festivals in which men rest from their labors." Lucentio, in "The Taming of the Shrew," advances the same opinion in more definite and ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... was 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 kind of savage sweetmeat or pastry, like a doting ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... dwindled into inconspicuous survivals or be still found only in the embryo; so that only great knowledge and sagacity can identify them; yet upon ancient traits, though hidden, classification depends. The seal seems nearer allied to the porpoise than to the tiger, the shrew nearer to the mouse than to the hedgehog; and the Tasmanian wolf looks more like a true wolf, the Tasmanian devil more like a badger, than like a kangaroo: yet the seal is nearer akin to the tiger, the shrew to the hedgehog, and the Tasmanian flesh-eaters are marsupial, like the kangaroo. ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... more modern date, I ought equally to doubt the co-existence of all the other living species, such as the red deer, roe, wild cat, wild boar, wolf, fox, weasel, beaver, hare, rabbit, hedgehog, mole, dormouse, field-mouse, water-rat, shrew, and others, the bones of which he had found scattered everywhere indiscriminately through the same mud with the extinct quadrupeds. The year after this conversation I cited Schmerling's opinions, and the facts bearing on the antiquity of Man, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... able to reflect upon Laurence getting his head bumped and then gratefully apologizing to the darling shrew who did it, without a cold wind stirring my hair. And yet—Laurence, and I, too, love her all the more dearly for ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... 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, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... "The little shrew!" Don Pedro exclaimed, who, like an amiable old man, was always on the side of the young folk. "But my friends," he added, "you are but poor Lotharios to be flouted by a young girl; you must follow her ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... pollard ash down the middle, the two parts were held back, the child was passed through the opening, and then the tree was tied up again. Ash-trees that have been cut in this way to get a cure are still to be seen here and there about the country. There are also noticeable shrew-trees, as they are called, in which a hole had been cut to receive a shrew mouse, owing to an old notion that, by being hidden there, this little animal ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... Tom Tyler and his Wife, which passed with such general applause that it was reprinted in the year 1661. and has been Acted divers times by private persons; the chief Argument whereof is, Tyler his marrying to a Shrew, which, that you may the better understand, take it in the Author's own words, speaking in ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... a barn, that two Irish reapers coom down, and murthered her for the money—and if you lost aught she'd vind it, so sure as the church—and a mighty hand to cure burns; and they two villains coom back, after harvest, seventy mile to do it—and when my vather's cows was shrew-struck, she made un be draed under a brimble as growed together at the both ends, she a praying like mad all the time; and they never got nothing but fourteen shilling and a crooked sixpence; for why, the devil carried off all the rest of her money; and I seen um both ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... road from Manfaloot. Seti and his bobtailed Arab, two shameless ones, worked their way to the front. Not Seti's strong right arm alone and his naboot were at work, but the bobtailed Arab, like an iron-handed razor toothed shrew, struck and bit his way, his eyes bloodred like Seti's. The superstitious Dervishes fell back before this pair of demons; for their madness was like the madness of those who at the Dosah throw themselves beneath the feet of the Sheikh's horse by the mosque of El ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shoulders; but take my word for it, young unmarried 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 a while; and because, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hardly human figure; it fell, perhaps finally, for English drama. That manner of man—Arlecchino, or Harlequin—had outlived his playmates, Pantaleone, Brighella, Colombina, and the Clown. A little of Pantaleone survives in old Capulet, a little in the father of the Shrew, but the life of Mercutio in the one play, and of the subordinate Tranio in the other, is less quickly spent, less easily put out, than the smouldering of the old man. Arlecchino frolics in and out of the tragedy and comedy of Shakespeare, until he thus dies ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... the Shrew."—I cannot help thinking that Christopher Sly merely means that he is fourteenpence on the score for sheer ale,—nothing but ale; neither bread nor meat, horse housing, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... 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 need be ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... a shrew of a wife—shrill, vehement, and fluent. 'Rogue,' 'old miser,' 'old sneak,' and a great many worse names, she called him. Good Mrs. Irons was old, fat, and ugly, and she knew it; and that knowledge made her ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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 ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... Thou 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, ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... would? If he might not stop midway the furrow 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
... were, I dare say, no less than fifty young men who knew her well, any one of whom would have jumped at the chance to get her for a wife, and made but little account of the risk of her turning out a shrew. To be sure, when I first knew her, she had rather a high and mighty way with her, at which some people took offence, calling her proud and disdainful; but those whom she wished to please never failed to like her; and I used to observe she seldom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... do no such thing!" said the imperious voice of the queenly shrew. "We will have neither trials nor anything else until after supper, which has already been delayed four full minutes. My lord chamberlain, have the goodness to step in and see that ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... to that, if the truth was known, I know where the blame would lie—your daughter will not be the shrew and scold to him that my blister was to ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... 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, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... beyond, from which few ever returned. Old birds are not caught with such wiles. I did succeed in gaining the ear of one of the gossips, and asking him what he could tell me of the good dame and her inn. It seemeth that she is somewhat of a shrew upon occasion, and that her tongue had more to do with her husband's death than the dropsy which the leech put it down to. Again, a new inn hath been started in the village, which is well-managed, and is like ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... th' lass. And, now that I think o' th' lass, comrade, I am not so sure that a scolding wife is not well paid for by a duteous daughter. Nay, I am sure o't. Methinks I would 'a' been wed twice, and each time to a shrew, could I but 'a' had my Keren o' one o' 'em. ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... person he 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. ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... honestly to control her quick anger, but it would now and then assert itself in spite of her, and Embury delighted to liken her to Katherine, and declared that he must tame her as Petruchio tamed his shrew. ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... waiting for the darkness to deepen before venturing forth. I was first advised of his 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, which proved to be a part of a shrew-mouse, and darted back into the thick cover uttering a loud, discordant squawk, as one would say, "Scat! scat! scat!" The owl alighted, and was, perhaps, looking about him for the shrike's impaled game, when I drew near. On ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... 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 ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... worse and not the better parts of both their characters were getting the upper hand; and it was but too possible that after a while the hero might sink into the ruffian, the lady into a slattern and a shrew. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Maggie?" answered the peace-officer, smiling and shaking his head with an ironical emphasis on the adjective, and a calmness calculated to provoke to madness the furious old shrew. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... '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 ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... rage, indignation, ire, frenzy; virago, termagant, shrew, vixen, beldame, Xantippe; agitation, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of the 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 cadaveric mob ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... the transient breath of poetic incense that women want; each can receive that from a lover. It is not life-long sway; it needs but to become a coquette, a shrew, or a good cook, to be sure of that. It is not money, nor notoriety, nor the badges of authority which men have appropriated to themselves. If demands, made in their behalf, lay stress on any of these ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Marlborough, to whom he bears some resemblance in personal character, he strengthened his position at court by marrying the Lady Antonina, the beautiful favourite of the Empress Theodora, though she was as fierce a shrew as the Duchess Sarah, and wherewithal not so modest, if we give credit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... his daughter remain, but the shrew was determined to be rid of her, and gave him no peace. At last, when he could gainsay her no longer, he placed his daughter in a sledge and drove her to the open fields. Here he left her, with nothing to shield her from the ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... 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
... entered the shop, where sheets of lead and tins of paint and putty stood about, varied by sheets of glass and fancy paper. Lottie Witham, Arthur's wife, appeared. She was a woman of thirty-five, a bit of a shrew, with social ambitions and ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... it had been permissible would have implored the Creator for a new one, but not daring to trouble Him about such trifles, did not know whom to choose, and was thinking that his wealth would be a great trouble to him, when he met in his path a pretty little shrew-mouse of the noble race of shrew-mice, who bear all gules on an azure ground. By the gods! be sure that it was a splendid animal, with the finest tail of the whole family, and was strutting about in the sun like a brave shrew-mouse. It was ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... of 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
... starring tour under the personal direction of Charles Frohman, Miss Adams combined with a revival of "Quality Street" a clever skit by Barrie called "The Ladies' Shakespeare," the subtitle being, "One Woman's Reading of 'The Taming of the Shrew.'" With an occasional appearance in Barrie's "Rosalind," it rounded out her stellar career ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... thin one!" said Pete Murphy. "She's a pippin, if you please. Quick as a cat! Graceful as they make them. And look at that mop of red hair! Isn't that a holocaust? I bet she's a shrew." ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... in the season of light operas, and one ballet, the latter Delibes's "Sylvia." The operas were Goetz's "Taming of the Shrew" (five times), Gluck's "Orpheus" (thirteen times), Wagner's "Lohengrin" (ten times), Mozart's "Magic Flute" (six times), Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor" (nine times), Delibes's "Lakm" (eleven times), Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" (seven times), and Mass's "Marriage of Jeannette" (in conjunction ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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, would have made ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... 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
... 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 universal ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... 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]
... from thirty to fifty miles wide; and five hoofed animals, including the Tapir, two species of rhinoceros, and an elephant. Besides these there are thirteen Rodents and four Insectivora, including a shrew-mouse and six squirrels, whose unaided passage over twenty miles of sea is even more inconceivable than that ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... while very neat and industrious, was a terrible termagant and shrew. Her daughter Panfila, on the contrary, was so lazy and thoughtless, that once, when the old woman burnt herself badly because her daughter was listening to some lads singing outside, instead of helping her mother with ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... happy. No painter had more honour in his own day, and none had a greater number of pupils, but these stopped with him only a short time, owing to the demeanour towards them of Andrea's wife, who developed into a flirt and shrew, dowered with a thousand jealousies. Andrea, the son of a tailor, was born in 1486 and apprenticed to a goldsmith. Showing, however, more drawing than designing ability, he was transferred to a painter named Barile and then passed to that curious ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... 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 ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... woman's rights have crazed thee? Would'st thou be A Winter Amazon, more fierce than he? Can Summer birds thy shrew-heroics sing? Wilt tend no more the daisies on the lea, Nor wake thy cowslips up on ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... really so!" 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 ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the Shrew, by Samuel Hickson Proverbial Sayings and their Origins William Basse and his Poems Folk Lore:—Something else about Salting. Norfolk Weather Proverb, Irish Medical Charms. Death-bed Superstitions Note on Herodotus by Dean Swift Herrick's Hesperides, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... I 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 of the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... contrary to the effect produced in general 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... 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 ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... bloodthirsty 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 lives ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... plays, varying the program by choosing first a Shakespeare drama and then a modern play. Each act is cast separately, so that all the girls may have a chance to take part, and in this way we read "Twelfth night," "Romeo and Juliet," "The taming of the Shrew," "Macbeth," "The bluebird," "The scarcecrow," and "Cyrano ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine |
