On the Sunday all the wedding guests were assembled, but they waited long before Petruchio came, and Katherine wept for vexation to think that Petruchio had only been making a jest of her. At last however he appeared, but he brought none of the bridal finery he had promised Katherine, nor was he dressed himself like a bridegroom, but in strange disordered attire, as if he meant to make a sport of the serious business he came about; and his servant and the very horses on which they rode were in like manner in mean and fantastic fashion habited.
Petruchio could not be persuaded to change his dress; he said Katherine was to be married to him, and not to his clothes; and finding it was in vain to argue with him, to the church they went, he still behaving in the same mad way, for when the priest asked Petruchio if Katherine should be his wife, he swore so loud that she should, that all amazed the priest let fall his book, and as he stooped to take it up, this mad-brained bridegroom gave him such a cuff, that down fell the priest and his book again. And all the while they were being married he stampt and swore so, that the high-spirited Katherine trembled and shook with fear. After the ceremony was over, while they were yet in the church he called for wine, and drank a loud health to the company, and threw a sop which was at the bottom of the glass full in the sexton's face, giving no other reason for this strange act, than that the sexton's beard grew thin and hungerly, and seemed to ask the sop as he was drinking. Never sure was there such a mad marriage; but Petruchio did but put this wildness on, the better to succeed in the plot he had formed to tame his shrewish wife.
Baptista had provided a sumptuous marriage-feast, but when they returned from church, Petruchio, taking hold of Katherine, declared his intention of carrying his wife home instantly; and no remonstrance of his father-in-law, or angry words of the enraged Katherine, could make him change his purpose; he claimed a husband's right to dispose of his wife as he pleased, and away he hurried Katherine off: he seeming so daring and resolute that no one dared attempt to stop him.
Petruchio mounted his wife upon a miserable horse, lean and lank, which he had picked out for the purpose, and himself and his servant no better mounted, they journeyed on through rough and miry ways, and ever when this horse of Katherine's stumbled, he would storm and swear at the poor jaded beast, who could scarce crawl under his burthen, as if he had been the most passionate man alive.