The following is a list of quotes compiled from John Fletcher’s The Women’s Prize. Published in 1647, some years after Fletcher's death, the comedy is also sometimes called, The Tamer Tamed, since it was a sequel to William Shakespeare's famous play, The Taming of the Shrew. It is very easy to grasp a picture of the central story through the quotes provided, which picks up with Shakespeare’s character Petruchio, now remarried to Maria, but still very much haunted by the death of his previous wife, Katharina. Although Katharina is spoken about in the past tense, she does not have a speaking role in the play. Maria, however, has a central part and does well to hold her ground in the marriage. It concludes with Petruchio and Maria meeting each other’s marital needs with a sense of equality.

• “The pudding’s now it’s’ proof, alas poor wench. Through what a mine of patience must thou work, e’r thou know’st good hour more!” (Sophocles)

• “I would learn to eat coals with an angry Cat, and spit fire at him: I would (to prevent him), do all the ramping, roaring tricks, a whore being drunk, and tumbling ripe, would tremble at: there is no safety else, nor moral wisdom, to be a wife, and his.” (Traino)

• “None so far, for let it be admitted we have time, and all things now in other expectation, my father’s bent against us; what but ruin, can such a by-way bring us? if your fears would let you look with my eyes, I would show you, and certain, how our staying here would win us a course, though somewhat longer, yet far surer.” (Livia)

• “Here is a brave old man’s love.” (Maria)

• “May I be barren of delights, and know only what pleasures are in dreams, and guesses.” (Maria)

• “And I am worse, a woman that can fear neither Petruchio Furius, nor his fame, nor anything that tends to our allegiance; other’s a short method for you, now you know me.” (Maria).

• “They are mad beasts when they knock their heads together.” (Jaques)

• “The wind and the rain has turned you back again, and you cannot be lodged there.” (Jaques.)

• “Now if thou wouldst come down, and tender me: all the delights due to a marriage bed, study such kisses as would melt a man, and turn thyself into a thousand figures, to add new flames unto me, I would stand, thus heavy, thus regardless, thus despising thee, and thy best allurings: all thy beauty that’s laid upon your bodies, mark me well, for without doubt your minds are miserable, you have no masks for them: all this rare beauty, lay but the Painter, and the silkworm by, the Doctor with his diets, and the Tailor, and you appear like flayed Cats, not so handsome.” (Petruchio)

• “And we appear like her that sent us hither, that only excellent and beauteous nature; truly ourselves, for men to wonder at, but too divine to handle; we are Gold, in our own natures pure; but when we suffer the husband’s stamp upon us then allays, and base ones of you, men are mingled with us, and make us blush like Copper.” (Maria)

• “Am I Petruchio, feared, and spoken of, and on my wedding night am I thus jaded?” (Petruchio)

• “I’ll think on some of ye, and if I live, my nose alone shall not be played withal.” (Moroso)

• “No good Sister, go home, and tell the merry Greeks that sent you, Ilium shall burn, and I, as did Æneas , will on my back, spite of the Myrmidons, carry this warlike...