Would Not the Beggar Then Forget Himself?: Christopher Sly and Autolycus | The Taming of a Tinker
The Taming of a Tinker
Christopher Sly identifies himself to the lord by reciting a comical curriculum vitae that firmly locates him geographically and socially: "Am not I Christopher Sly, old Sly's son of Burton-heath, by birth a peddler, by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bearherd, and now by present profession a tinker?" (Ind. 2.17-20). And he further cites as a reference "Marian Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot," to whom he owes the substantial sum of fourteen pence for the ale he has drunk. Stage directions and speech headings of the Folio text of The Taming of the Shrew, however, identify him more simply as "Begger" and "drunkard," generic rubrics which include all of Sly's announced "profession[s]." Sly's career path follows a rather low arc, its endpoints of peddler and tinker legally and socially identical. As a "bearherd," however, Sly has begun the first small step toward the world of professional entertainer, a rural version of the...
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