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All Site ContentTaming of the ShrewAct 1Scene 2
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“Being perhaps ... two and thirty, a pip out”
Wordplay
Act 1,
Scene 2
Lines 27-34

An explanation of Grumio’s wordplay in his description of Hortensio in Act 1, Scene 2 of myShakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.

Hortensio

Rise, Grumio, rise. We will compound this quarrel.

Grumio

Nay, 'tis no matter, sir, what he 'leges in Latin.
If this be not a lawful cause for me to leave his service!
Look you, sir, he bid me knock him and rap him soundly,
sir. Well, was it fit for a servant to use his master so, being
perhaps, for aught I see, two and thirty, a pip out?
Whom would to God I had well knocked at first,     
Then had not Grumio come by the worst.

Grumio’s saying that it wouldn’t be fair to get into a physical scuffle with an old man like his master Petruchio who is all of “two and thirty” (thirty-two years old), give or take a year. The joke here is that “one and thirty” was slang for drunk.