The Comedy of Errors, William Shakespeare [love letters to the dead TXT] 📗
- Author: William Shakespeare
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A sunny look of his would soon repair:
100 But, too unruly deer, he breaks the pale,
And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale.
Luc. Self-harming jealousy! fie, beat it hence!
Adr. Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense.
I know his eye doth homage otherwhere;
105 Or else what lets it but he would be here?
Sister, you know he promised me a chain;
Would that alone, alone he would detain,
So he would keep fair quarter with his bed!
I see the jewel best enamelled
110 Will lose his beauty; yet the gold bides still,
That others touch, and often touching will
Wear gold: and no man that hath a name,
By falsehood and corruption doth it shame.
Since that my beauty cannot please his eye,
115 I’ll weep what’s left away, and weeping die.
Luc. How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!
Exeunt.
II. 2 Scene II. 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
Is wander’d forth, in care to seek me out
By computation and mine host’s report.
5 I could not speak with Dromio since at first
I sent him from the mart. See, here he comes.
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?
10 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?
Ant. S. Even now, even here, not half an hour since.
15 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,
And told’st me of a mistress and a dinner;
For which, I hope, thou felt’st I was displeased.
20 Dro. S. I am glad to see you in this merry vein:
What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me.
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:
25 Upon what bargain do you give it me?
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.
30 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,
Or I will beat this method in your sconce.
35 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?
40 Ant. S. Dost thou not know?
Dro. S. Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.
Ant. S. Shall I tell you why?
Dro. S. Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every why hath a wherefore.
45 Ant. S. Why, first,—for flouting me; and then, wherefore,—
For urging it the second time to me.
Dro. S. Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,
When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason?
Well, sir, I thank you.
50 Ant. S. Thank me, sir! for what?
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?
55 Dro. S. No, sir: I think the meat wants that I have.
Ant. S. In good time, sir; what’s that?
Dro. S. Basting.
Ant. S. Well, sir, then ’twill be dry.
Dro. S. If it be, sir, I pray you, eat none of it.
60 Ant. S. Your reason?
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.
65 Dro. S. I durst have denied that, before you were so choleric.
Ant. S. By what rule, sir?
Dro. S. Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of father Time himself.
70 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?
Dro. S. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover 75 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 80 given them in wit.
Ant. S. Why, but there’s many a man hath more hair than wit.
Dro. S. Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair.
85 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?
90 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.
Dro. S. Certain ones, then.
95 Ant. S. Name them.
Dro. S. The one, to save the money that he spends in trimming; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his porridge.
Ant. S. You would all this time have proved there is 100 no time for all things.
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.
105 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?
Enter Adriana and Luciana.Adr. Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown:
110 Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects;
I am not Adriana nor thy wife.
The time was once when thou unurged wouldst vow
That never words were music to thine ear,
That never object pleasing in thine eye,
115 That never touch well welcome to thy hand,
That never meat sweet-savour’d in thy taste,
Unless I spake, or look’d, or touch’d, or carved to thee.
How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,
That thou art then estranged from thyself?
120 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!
For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall
125 A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
And take unmingled thence that drop again,
Without addition or diminishing,
As take from me thyself, and not me too.
How dearly would it touch thee to the quick,
130 Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious,
And that this body, consecrate to thee,
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,
135 And tear the stain’d skin off my harlot-brow,
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;
140 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.
Keep, then, fair league and truce with thy true bed;
145 I live distain’d, thou undishonoured.
Ant. S. Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not:
In Ephesus I am but two hours old,
As strange unto your town as to your talk;
Who, every word by all my wit being scann’d,
150 Wants wit in all one word to understand.
Luc. Fie, brother! how the world is changed with you!
When were you wont to use my sister thus?
She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.
Ant. S. By Dromio?
155 Dro. S. By me?
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 gentlewoman?
160 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.
Dro. S. I never spake with her in all my life.
165 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
To counterfeit thus grossly with your slave,
Abetting him to thwart me in my mood!
170 Be it my wrong you are from me exempt,
But wrong not that wrong with a more contempt.
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,
175 Makes me with thy strength to communicate:
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.
180 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?
Until I know this sure uncertainty,
185 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.
This is the fairy land;—O spite of spites!
We talk with goblins, owls, and sprites:
190 If we obey them not, this will ensue,
They’ll
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