Chapter Petella to Petulant of P by Brewer's Readers Handbook

received the sanction of this dictator-in-chief of the imperial pleasures. Tigellinus accused him of treason, and Petronius committed suicide by opening his veins (A.D. 66).

Behold the new Petronius of the day,
The arbiter of pleasure and of play.
   —Byron: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809).

Petruccio=Pe-truch-e-o, governor of Bologna.—Fletcher: The Chances (1620).

Petruchio, a gentleman of Verona, who undertakes to tame the haughty Katharina, called “the Shrew.” He marries her, and without the least personal chastisement reduces her to lamb-like submission. Being a fine compound of bodily and mental vigour, with plenty of wit, spirit, and good-nature, he rules his subordinates dictatorially, and shows he will have his own way, whatever the consequences.—Shakespeare: Taming of the Shrew (1594).

(C. Leslie says Henry Woodward (1717–1777) was the best “Petruchio,” “Copper Captain,” “captain Flash,” and “Bobadil.”)

John Fletcher wrote a comedy called The Tamer Tamed, in which Petruchio is supposed to marry a second wife, by whom he is hen-pecked (1647).

Petticoat Lane, Whitechapel. It was previously called “Hog Lane,” and is now called “Middlesex Street.”

Petty Cury, in Cambridge, is not Petit écurie, but “parva cokeria;” Petit curary, from curare, “to cook or cure meat.”

Petulant, an “odd sort of small wit,” “without manners or breeding.” In controversy he would bluntly contradict, and he never spoke the truth. When in his “club,” in order to be thought a man of intrigue, he would steal out quietly, and then in disguise return and call for himself, or leave a letter for himself. He not unfrequently mistook impudence and malice for wit; and he looked upon a modest blush in woman as a mark of “guilt or ill-breeding.”—Congreve: The Way of the World (1700).