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 quasi-theatrical urban spectacles on display at the Beargarden; perhaps this phase of his career accounts for his garbled allusions to The Spanish Tragedy (Ind. 1.9). But Sly's "education" as a "cardmaker"—that is, one who made cards for combing wool—is the most ironic of his occupations, since the enclosure of common lands to pasture sheep, as the More paradigm explained, led to depopulation and an increase in vagrants—hence, to wandering beggars like Sly himself.⁶ Sly denies that he is descended from "rogues. Look in the chronicles: we came in with Richard Conqueror" (Ind. 1.3-4), but when the lord tells him he has awakened from a dream, he is happy enough to renounce his "present profession," and in blank verse rather than prose: "Upon my life, I am a lord indeed, / And not a tinker nor Christopher Sly" (Ind. 2.72-73).⁷

I have written elsewhere (1985: 41-50) on the energies of metamorphosis in The Shrew, with particular emphasis on the various forms of transformation enacted in the Induction; Sly's attempted metamorphosis into a lord is mirrored in the transformation of the boy page who dresses like Sly's lady, in the multiple allusions to Ovid's Metamorphoses (including the transformations of Cytherea, Io, and Daphne), and in the transforming effects experienced by an audience watching a play (Ind. 1.93-97; 2.127-32). The relation between these modes of transformation in the frame plot and what happens to Kate and Petruchio in the inner plot is a complex issue, the subject of my earlier study and many other critics as well.⁸ But here I want to focus more narrowly on Sly's social and economic status and the class issues involved iti his metamorphosis into a lord.

The rogue pamphlets of Harman, Dekker, and Robert Greene echo official documents, such as Edward Hext's letter to Burghley in 1596, in describing the histrionic abilities of certain vagabonds, some of whom counterfeit mutilation and degradation, as we have seen, but also others who "play the role" of the proper citizenry, and even infiltrate the legal system. Their role playing is supposedly so perfect that no one can distinguish them by external signs. But Sly is clearly not such a beggar, for he seems to have no histrionic gifts at all, and his lower nature continually reveals itself in his new role. The lord anticipates that Sly,

. . . if he were conveyed to bed,
Wrapped in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers,
A most delicious banquet by his bed,
And brave attendants near him when he wakes,
Would not the beggar then forget himself?

(Ind. 1.36-40)

The expectation is that when Sly awakens, they will "persuade him that he hath been lunatic, / And when he says he is [i.e. now], say that he dreams, / For he is nothing but a mighty lord" (Ind. 1.62-64).

Sly's inability to "forget himself into a new social role—or at least convince the audience that he can play the part—may remind us of Bottom (another weaver) and his similar incapacity in A Midsummer Night's Dream, but it should also be noted that Sly's situation is not exactly identical with those of Dekker's and Fleetwood's rogues, whose counterfeiting reaches only into the ranks of the middling sort. Shakespeare makes Sly attempt something far more difficult, to become "a mighty lord." The social and economic gaps between the tinker and the lord are about as large as could be imagined. Though the tinker is legally condemned for his "profession," the lord has none at all, an "idleness" permissible only in the aristocracy. The lord's avocation is hunting, not for food but for sport. His concern for his overheated dogs, one of whom he would not lose "for twenty pound" (Ind. 1.20), an enormous sum, does not extend to the human being he discovers sleeping: "O monstrous beast, how like a swine he lies! / Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!" (1.33-34). The lord cares for his "dog" but now prepares to trick the "swine" by inverting his social position.

The world of the lord is one of spectacular conspicuous consumption, sensual indulgence, and practiced indolence, as close to the grotesque parody of Sir Epicure Mammon in Jonson's Alchemist as it is distant from Sly's "small ale" (Ind. 2.1) here. The lord commands the huntsmen—evidently now not his equals but his social inferiors—to see to the details of the jest:

Carry him gently to my fairest chamber,
And hang it round with all my wanton pictures.
Balm his foul head in warm distilled waters,
And burn sweet wood to make the lodging sweet.
Procure me music ready when he wakes,
To make a dulcet and a heavenly sound.
And if he chance to speak, be ready straight,
And with a low submissive reverence
Say, "What is it your honor will command?"
Let one attend him with a silver basin
Full of rosewater and bestrewed with flowers;
Another bear the ewer, the third a diaper,
And say, "Will't please your lordship cool your hands?"
Someone be ready with a costly suit,
And ask him what apparel he will wear;
Another tell him of his hounds and horse,
And that his lady mourns at his disease.

(Ind. 1.45-61)

All this because "he is nothing but a mighty lord." Yet it is not Sly's past life that can be thought of as a "dream" here, but rather the one the lord describes, which is a fantasy of hierarchical power and privilege.

The dream of class privilege, soothed by the murmurs of "low submissive reverence," is punctuated by the arrival of the players, who "offer service to your lordship" (Ind. 1.77). They had better receive the lord's patronage, too, otherwise these players will violate the same vagrancy laws—in the same paragraph, in fact—that defined tinkers and peddlers as vagabonds.⁹ The lord calls for a play, the players exit to prepare, and the lord instructs that "Barthol'mew my page" be "dressed in all suits like a lady," to pretend to be "Lord" Sly's wife. Again the language emphasizes the comic inversion of the hierarchical, and now specifically marital, power. The page's proper conduct, we are told, should be "such as he hath observed in noble ladies / Unto their lords":

Such duty to the drunkard let him do
With soft low tongue and lowly courtesy,
And say, "What is't your honor will command,
Wherein your lady and your humble wife
May show her duty and make known her love?"
And then with kind embracements, tempting kisses,
And with declining head into his bosom,
Bid him shed tears, as being overjoyed
To see her noble lord restored to health,
Who for this seven years hath esteemed him
No better than a poor and loathsome beggar.

(Ind. 1.104-22)

Now the "submissive" fantasy of class privilege merges with the patriarchal dream of the "humble wife," easy to "command," dedicated to "duty." These positions are normalized, in the lord's plan, while Sly's ordinary position is no better than, and legally, no different from, that of a "poor and loathsome beggar."

When Sly awakens into his fictive lordship, however, it becomes clear that no matter what "apparel" or "costly suit" he wears, he cannot be mimetically transformed into the elevated social position of the lord. Promises of fantastic sensual indulgences, including erotic Ovidian transformation scenes, are summoned up to encourage the befuddled tinker, but clothes, it is clear, do not make the gentleman, though Sly continues to try. It has often been noted how Sly's attempt to command his "Lady's" obedience anticipates Petruchio's with Kate, but the key passage again brings together both marital and class hierarchies:

Sly. Are you my wife, and will not call me husband?
My men should call me "lord"; I am your goodman.
Page. My husband and my lord, my lord and husband,
I am your wife in all obedience.

(Ind. 2.102-5)

Sly's wonderfully blunt command—"Servants, leave me and her alone. / Madam, undress you and come now to bed" (Ind. 2.113-14)—is no different from the lord's commands earlier, except that they are not obeyed. Instead, the players are announced, and Sly dispenses mock-aristocratic grace ("Marry, I will let them play it") but also reveals his confusion over the exact nature of this entertainment: "Is not a comonty a Christmas gambold or a tumbling trick? . . . household stuff?" (Ind. 2.133-36). The beggar is thus, as always, a kind of spectacle himself, an object lesson and source of amusement for the lord no less than the official entertainers, the players.

In the anonymous play The Taming of A Shrew, as is well known, Sly is seen and heard again at the end of the play, the frame plot closing securely; once more dressed in his "owne appareil," Sly promises to try out the shrew-taming lessons on his own wife. He speaks of his experience as Bottom does in Midsummer Night's Dream: "I have had / The bravest dreame to night, that ever thou / H[e]ardest in all thy life" (Bullough: 1.108).

But in The Shrew, by contrast, there is no awakening or demystification of Sly, who has vanished textually from the play. In a way, then, Shakespeare at last fulfills the beggar's own fantasy, "I would be loath to fall into my dreams again" (Ind. 2.123), and he remains in the apparel of a gentleman.