A public Place. | |
| |
Enter ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse. | |
| Ant. S. The gold I gave to Dromio is laid up | |
| Safe at the Centaur; and the heedful slave | 4 |
| Is wander’d forth, in care to seek me out. | |
| By computation, and mine host’s report, | |
| I could not speak with Dromio since at first | |
| I sent him from the mart. See, here he comes. | 8 |
| |
Enter DROMIO of Syracuse. | |
| How now, sir! is your merry humour alter’d? | |
| As you love strokes, so jest with me again. | |
| You know no Centaur? You receiv’d no gold? | 12 |
| Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner? | |
| My house was at the Phœnix? Wast thou mad, | |
| That thus so madly thou didst answer me? | |
| Dro. S. What answer, sir? when spake I such a word? | 16 |
| Ant. S. Even now, even here, not half-an-hour since. | |
| Dro. S. I did not see you since you sent me hence, | |
| Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me. | |
| Ant. S. Villain, thou didst deny the gold’s receipt, | 20 |
| And told’st me of a mistress and a dinner; | |
| For which, I hope, thou felt’st I was displeas’d. | |
| Dro. S. I am glad to see you in this merry vein: | |
| What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me. | 24 |
| Ant. S. Yea, dost thou jeer, and flout me in the teeth? | |
| Think’st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that. [Beating him. | |
| Dro. S. Hold, sir, for God’s sake! now your jest is earnest: | |
| Upon what bargain do you give it me? | 28 |
| Ant. S. Because that I familiarly sometimes | |
| Do use you for my fool, and chat with you, | |
| Your sauciness will jest upon my love, | |
| And make a common of my serious hours. | 32 |
| When the sun shines let foolish gnats make sport, | |
| But creep in crannies when he hides his beams. | |
| If you will jest with me, know my aspect, | |
| And fashion your demeanour to my looks, | 36 |
| Or I will beat this method in your sconce. | |
| Dro. S. Sconce, call you it? so you would leave battering, I had rather have it a head: an you use these blows long, I must get a sconce for my head and insconce it too; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders. But, I pray, sir, why am I beaten? | |
| Ant. S. Dost thou not know? | |
| Dro. S. Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten. | 40 |
| Ant. S. Shall I tell you why? | |
| Dro. S. Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every why hath a wherefore. | |
| Ant. S. Why, first,—for flouting me; and then, wherefore,— | |
| For urging it the second time to me. | 44 |
| Dro. S. Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season, | |
| When, in the why and the wherefore is neither rime nor reason? | |
| Well, sir, I thank you. | |
| Ant. S. Thank me, sir! for what? | 48 |
| Dro. S. Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing. | |
| Ant. S. I’ll make you amends next, to give you nothing for something. But say, sir, is it dinner-time? | |
| Dro. S. No, sir: I think the meat wants that I have. | |
| Ant. S. In good time, sir; what’s that? | 52 |
| Dro. S. Basting. | |
| Ant. S. Well, sir, then ’twill be dry. | |
| Dro. S. If it be, sir, I pray you eat none of it. | |
| Ant. S. Your reason? | 56 |
| Dro. S. Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me another dry basting. | |
| Ant. S. Well, sir, learn to jest in good time: there’s a time for all things. | |
| Dro. S. I durst have denied that, before you were so choleric. | |
| Ant. S. By what rule, sir? | 60 |
| Dro. S. Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of Father Time himself. | |
| Ant. S. Let’s hear it. | |
| Dro. S. There’s no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by nature. | |
| Ant. S. May he not do it by fine and recovery? | 64 |
| Dro. S. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig and recover the lost hair of another man. | |
| Ant. S. Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement? | |
| Dro. S. Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts: and what he hath scanted men in hair, he hath given them in wit. | |
| Ant. S. Why, but there’s many a man hath more hair than wit. | 68 |
| Dro. S. Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair. | |
| Ant. S. Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain dealers without wit. | |
| Dro. S. The plainer dealer, the sooner lost: yet he loseth it in a kind of jollity. | |
| Ant. S. For what reason? | 72 |
| Dro. S. For two; and sound ones too. | |
| Ant. S. Nay, not sound, I pray you. | |
| Dro. S. Sure ones then. | |
| Ant. S. Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing. | 76 |
| Dro. S. Certain ones, then. | |
| Ant. S. Name them. | |
| Dro. S. The one, to save the money that he spends in tiring; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his porridge. | |
| Ant. S. You would all this time have proved there is no time for all things. | 80 |
| Dro. S. Marry, and did, sir; namely, no time to recover hair lost by nature. | |
| Ant. S. But your reason was not substantial, why there is no time to recover. | |
| Dro. S. Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and therefore to the world’s end will have bald followers. | |
| Ant. S. I knew ’twould be a bald conclusion. But soft! who wafts us yonder? | 84 |
| |
Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA. | |
| Adr. Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange, and frown: | |
| Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects, | |
| I am not Adriana, nor thy wife. | 88 |
| The time was once when thou unurg’d wouldst vow | |
| That never words were music to thine ear, | |
| That never object pleasing in thine eye, | |
| That never touch well welcome to thy hand, | 92 |
| That never meat sweet-savour’d in thy taste, | |
| Unless I spake, or look’d, or touch’d, or carv’d to thee. | |
| How comes it now, my husband, O! how comes it, | |
| That thou art thus estranged from thyself? | 96 |
| Thyself I call it, being strange to me, | |
| That, undividable, incorporate, | |
| Am better than thy dear self’s better part. | |
| Ah! do not tear away thyself from me, | 100 |
| For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall | |
| A drop of water in the breaking gulf, | |
| And take unmingled thence that drop again, | |
| Without addition or diminishing, | 104 |
| As take from me thyself and not me too. | |
| How dearly would it touch thee to the quick, | |
| Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious, | |
| And that this body, consecrate to thee, | 108 |
| By ruffian lust should be contaminate! | |
| Wouldst thou not spit at me and spurn at me, | |
| And hurl the name of husband in my face, | |
| And tear the stain’d skin off my harlot-brow, | 112 |
| And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring | |
| And break it with a deep-divorcing vow? | |
| I know thou canst; and therefore, see thou do it. | |
| I am possess’d with an adulterate blot; | 116 |
| My blood is mingled with the crime of lust: | |
| For if we two be one and thou play false, | |
| I do digest the poison of thy flesh, | |
| Being strumpeted by thy contagion. | 120 |
| Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed; | |
| I live unstain’d, thou undishonoured. | |
| Ant. S. Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not: | |
| In Ephesus I am but two hours old, | 124 |
| As strange unto your town as to your talk; | |
| Who, every word by all my wit being scann’d, | |
| Want wit in all one word to understand. | |
| Luc. Fie, brother: how the world is chang’d with you! | 128 |
| When were you wont to use my sister thus? | |
| She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner. | |
| Ant. S. By Dromio? | |
| Dro. S. By me? | 132 |
| Adr. By thee; and this thou didst return from him, | |
| That he did buffet thee, and in his blows, | |
| Denied my house for his, me for his wife. | |
| Ant. S. Did you converse, sir, with this gentle-woman? | 136 |
| What is the course and drift of your compact? | |
| Dro. S. I, sir? I never saw her till this time. | |
| Ant. S. Villain, thou liest; for even her very words | |
| Didst thou deliver to me on the mart. | 140 |
| Dro. S. I never spake with her in all my life. | |
| Ant. S. How can she thus then, call us by our names, | |
| Unless it be by inspiration? | |
| Adr. How ill agrees it with your gravity | 144 |
| To counterfeit thus grossly with your slave, | |
| Abetting him to thwart me in my mood! | |
| Be it my wrong you are from me exempt, | |
| But wrong not that wrong with a more contempt. | 148 |
| Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine; | |
| Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine, | |
| Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state, | |
| Makes me with thy strength to communicate: | 152 |
| If aught possess thee from me, it is dross, | |
| Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss; | |
| Who, all for want of pruning, with intrusion | |
| Infect thy sap and live on thy confusion. | 156 |
| Ant. S. To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme! | |
| What! was I married to her in my dream? | |
| Or sleep I now and think I hear all this? | |
| What error drives our eyes and ears amiss? | 160 |
| Until I know this sure uncertainty, | |
| I’ll entertain the offer’d fallacy. | |
| Luc. Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner | |
| Dro. S. O, for my beads! I cross me for a sinner. | 164 |
| This is the fairy land: O! spite of spites. | |
| We talk with goblins, owls, and elvish sprites: | |
| If we obey them not, this will ensue, | |
| They’ll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue. | 168 |
| Luc. Why prat’st thou to thyself and answer’st not? | |
| Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot! | |
| Dro. S. I am transformed, master, am not I? | |
| Ant. S. I think thou art, in mind, and so am I. | 172 |
| Dro. S. Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape. | |
| Ant. S. Thou hast thine own form. | |
| Dro. S. No, I am an ape. | |
| Luc. If thou art chang’d to aught, ’tis to an ass. | 176 |
| Dro. S. ’Tis true; she rides me and I long for grass. | |
| ’Tis so, I am an ass; else it could never be | |
| But I should know her as well as she knows me. | |
| Adr. Come, come; no longer will I be a fool, | 180 |
| To put the finger in the eye and weep, | |
| Whilst man and master laugh my woes to scorn. | |
| Come, sir, to dinner. Dromio, keep the gate. | |
| Husband, I’ll dine above with you to-day, | 184 |
| And shrive you of a thousand idle pranks. | |
| Sirrah, if any ask you for your master, | |
| Say he dines forth, and let no creature enter. | |
| Come, sister. Dromio, play the porter well. | 188 |
| Ant. S. [Aside.] Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell? | |
| Sleeping or waking? mad or well-advis’d? | |
| Known unto these, and to myself disguis’d! | |
| I’ll say as they say, and persever so, | 192 |
| And in this mist at all adventures go. | |
| Dro. S. Master, shall I be porter at the gate? | |
| Adr. Ay; and let none enter, lest I break your pate. | |
| Luc. Come, come, Antipholus; we dine too late. [Exeunt. | 196 |
