William Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew

ACT III. 2. SCENE II. The same. Before BAPTISTA'S house. (continued)

BAPTISTA.
When will he be here?

BIONDELLO.
When he stands where I am and sees you there.

TRANIO.
But, say, what to thine old news?

BIONDELLO.
Why, Petruchio is coming, in a new hat and an old
jerkin; a pair of old breeches thrice turned; a pair of boots
that have been candle-cases, one buckled, another laced; an old
rusty sword ta'en out of the town armoury, with a broken hilt,
and chapeless; with two broken points: his horse hipped with an
old mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred; besides, possessed
with the glanders and like to mose in the chine; troubled with
the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped
with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of the fives,
stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, swayed in
the back and shoulder-shotten; near-legged before, and with a
half-checked bit, and a head-stall of sheep's leather, which,
being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often
burst, and now repaired with knots; one girth six times pieced,
and a woman's crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her
name fairly set down in studs, and here and there pieced with
pack-thread.

BAPTISTA.
Who comes with him?

BIONDELLO.
O, sir! his lackey, for all the world caparisoned like
the horse; with a linen stock on one leg and a kersey boot-hose
on the other, gartered with a red and blue list; an old hat, and
the 'humour of forty fancies' prick'd in't for a feather: a
monster, a very monster in apparel, and not like a Christian
footboy or a gentleman's lackey.

TRANIO.
'Tis some odd humour pricks him to this fashion;
Yet oftentimes lie goes but mean-apparell'd.

BAPTISTA.
I am glad he's come, howsoe'er he comes.

BIONDELLO.
Why, sir, he comes not.

BAPTISTA.
Didst thou not say he comes?

BIONDELLO.
Who? that Petruchio came?