Florentius'
“Love—Be she as foul as was,”
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, i. 2.
67.
Be she as ugly as was, etc.,
“The allusion is to a story told by Gower in the First Book
De Confessione Amantis. Florent is the name of a knight
who had bound himself to marry a deformed hag, provided she taught him the solution of a
riddle on which his life depended”
(STEEVENS)
. The story is of great antiquity.