Note 113 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
Shakspeare, it is well known, took the materials for his “Taming of the Shrew,” with little ceremony, from a play with the same title, printed in 1594. But the story, in its different parts, seems to have been familiar in the East from the earliest times, and was, I suppose, found there among the traditions of Persia by Sir John Malcolm. (Sketches of Persia, London, 1827, 8vo, Vol. II. p. 54.) In Europe I am not aware that it can be detected earlier than the Conde Lucanor, Cap. 45. The doctrine of unlimited submission on the part of the wife seems, indeed, to have been a favorite one with Don John Manuel; for, in another story, (Cap. 5,) he says, in the very spirit of Petruchio’s jest about the sun and moon, “If a husband says the stream runs up hill, his wife ought to believe him, and say that it is so.”