The Comedy of Errors
Act II.
Scene i. The house of Antipholus of Ephesus.
- Enter Adriana and Luciana
- Adriana: Neither my husband, nor the slave return'd,
- That in such haste I sent to seek his master!
- Sure, Luciana, it is two o'clock.
- Luciana: Perhaps some merchant hath invited him,
- And from the mart he's somewhere gone to dinner.
- Good sister, let us dine and never fret:
- A man is master of his liberty:
- Time is their master, and, when they see time,
- They'll go or come: if so, be patient, sister.
- Adriana: Why should their liberty than ours be more?
- Luciana: Because their business still lies out o' door.
- Adriana: Look, when I serve him so, he takes it ill.
- Luciana: O! know he is the bridle of your will.
- Adriana: There's none but asses will be bridled so.
- Luciana: Why, headstrong liberty is lash'd with woe.
- There's nothing situate under heaven's eye
- But hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky:
- The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls,
- Are their males' subjects and at their controls.
- Men, more divine, the masters of all these,
- Lords of the wide world, and wild wat'ry seas,
- Indu'd with intellectual sense and souls,
- Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls,
- Are masters to their females and their lords:
- Then, let your will attend on their accords.
- Adriana: This servitude makes you to keep unwed.
- Luciana: Not this, but troubles of the marriage-bed.
- Adriana: But, were you wedded, you would bear some sway.
- Luciana: Ere I learn love, I'll practise to obey.
- Adriana: How if your husband start some other where?
- Luciana: Till he come home again, I would forbear.
- Adriana: Patience unmov'd! no marvel though she pause;
- They can be meek that have no other cause.
- A wretched soul, bruis'd with adversity,
- We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;
- But were we burden'd with like weight of pain,
- As much, or more we should ourselves complain:
- So thou, that hast no unkind mate to grieve thee,
- With urging helpless patience wouldst relieve me:
- But if thou live to see like right bereft.
- This fool-begg'd patience in thee will be left.
- Luciana: Well, I will marry one day, but to try.
- Here comes your man: now is your husband nigh.
- Enter Dromio of Ephesus
- Adriana: Say, is your tardy master now at hand?
- Dromio E.: Nay, he's at two hands with me, and that my two ears can witness.
- Adriana: Say, didst thou speak with him? Know'st thou his mind?
- Dromio E.: Ay, ay, he told his mind upon mine ear.
- Beshrew his hand, I scarce could understand it.
- Luciana: Spake he so doubtfully, thou couldst not feel his meaning?
- Dromio E.: Nay, he struck so plainly, I could too well feel his blows; and withal so doubtfully, that I could scarce understand them.
- Adriana: But say, I prithee, is he coming home? It seems he hath great care to please his wife.
- Dromio E.: Why, mistress, sure my master is horn-mad.
- Adriana: Horn-mad, thou villain!
- Dromio E.: I mean not cuckold-mad; but, sure, he is stark mad.
- When I desir'd him to come home to dinner,
- He ask'd me for a thousand marks in gold:
- ‘'Tis dinner time,' quoth I; ‘my gold!' quoth he:
- ‘Your meat doth burn,' quoth I; ‘my gold!' quoth he:
- ‘Will you come home?' quoth I: ‘my gold!' quoth he:
- ‘Where is the thousand marks I gave thee, villain?'
- ‘The pig,' quoth I, ‘is burn'd;' ‘my gold!' quoth he:
- ‘My mistress, sir,' quoth I: ‘hang up thy mistress!
- I know not thy mistress: out on thy mistress!'
- Luciana: Quoth who?
- Dromio E.: Quoth my master:
- ‘I know,' quoth he, ‘no house, no wife, no mistress.'
- So that my errand, due unto my tongue,
- I thank him, I bear home upon my shoulders;
- For, in conclusion, he did beat me there.
- Adriana: Go back again, thou slave, and fetch him home.
- Dromio E.: Go back again, and be new beaten home?
- For God's sake, send some other messenger.
- Adriana: Back, slave, or I will break thy pate across.
- Dromio E.: And he will bless that cross with other beating:
- Between you, I shall have a holy head.
- Adriana: Hence, prating peasant! fetch thy master home.
- Dromio E.: Am I so round with you as you with me,
- That like a football you do spurn me thus?
- You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither:
- If I last in this service, you must case me in leather.
- Exit
- Luciana: Fie, how impatience loureth in your face!
- Adriana: His company must do his minions grace,
- Whilst I at home starve for a merry look.
- Hath homely age the alluring beauty took
- From my poor cheek? then, he hath wasted it:
- Are my discourses dull? barren my wit?
- If voluble and sharp discourse be marr'd,
- Unkindness blunts it more than marble hard:
- Do their gay vestments his affections bait?
- That's not my fault; he's master of my state:
- What ruins are in me that can be found
- By him not ruin'd? then is he the ground
- Of my defeatures. My decayed fair
- A sunny look of his would soon repair;
- But, too unruly deer, he breaks the pale
- And feeds from home: poor I am but his stale.
- Luciana: Self-harming jealousy! fie! beat it hence.
- Adriana: Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense.
- I know his eye doth homage otherwhere,
- Or else what lets it but he would be here?
- Sister, you know he promis'd 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
- Will lose his beauty; and though gold bides still
- That others touch, yet 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,
- I'll weep what's left away, and weeping die.
- Luciana: How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!
- Exeunt
Scene ii. A public place.
- Enter Antipholus of Syracuse
- Antipholus 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,
- 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?
- 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?
- Dromio S.: What answer, sir? when spake I such a word?
- Antipholus S.: Even now, even here, not half-an-hour since.
- Dromio S.: I did not see you since you sent me hence,
- Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me.
- Antipholus 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 displeas'd.
- Dromio S.: I am glad to see you in this merry vein:
- What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me.
- Antipholus S.: Yea, dost thou jeer, and flout me in the teeth?
- Think'st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that.
- Beating him
- Dromio S.: Hold, sir, for God's sake! now your jest is earnest:
- Upon what bargain do you give it me?
- Antipholus 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.
- 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.
- Dromio 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?
- Antipholus S.: Dost thou not know?
- Dromio S.: Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.
- Antipholus S.: Shall I tell you why?
- Dromio S.: Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every why hath a wherefore.
- Antipholus S.: Why, first,—for flouting me; and then, wherefore,—
- For urging it the second time to me.
- Dromio 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.
- Antipholus S.: Thank me, sir! for what?
- Dromio S.: Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing.
- Antipholus S.: I'll make you amends next, to give you nothing for something. But say, sir, is it dinner-time?
- Dromio S.: No, sir: I think the meat wants that I have.
- Antipholus S.: In good time, sir; what's that?
- Dromio S.: Basting.
- Antipholus S.: Well, sir, then 'twill be dry.
- Dromio S.: If it be, sir, I pray you eat none of it.
- Antipholus S.: Your reason?
- Dromio S.: Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me another dry basting.
- Antipholus S.: Well, sir, learn to jest in good time: there's a time for all things.
- Dromio S.: I durst have denied that, before you were so choleric.
- Antipholus S.: By what rule, sir?
- Dromio S.: Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of Father Time himself.
- Antipholus S.: Let's hear it.
- Dromio S.: There's no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by nature.
- Antipholus S.: May he not do it by fine and recovery?
- Dromio S.: Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig and recover the lost hair of another man.
- Antipholus S.: Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement?
- Dromio 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.
- Antipholus S.: Why, but there's many a man hath more hair than wit.
- Dromio S.: Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair.
- Antipholus S.: Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain dealers without wit.
- Dromio S.: The plainer dealer, the sooner lost: yet he loseth it in a kind of jollity.
- Antipholus S.: For what reason?
- Dromio S.: For two; and sound ones too.
- Antipholus S.: Nay, not sound, I pray you.
- Dromio S.: Sure ones then.
- Antipholus S.: Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing.
- Dromio S.: Certain ones, then.
- Antipholus S.: Name them.
- Dromio S.: The one, to save the money that he spends in tiring; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his porridge.
- Antipholus S.: You would all this time have proved there is no time for all things.
- Dromio S.: Marry, and did, sir; namely, no time to recover hair lost by nature.
- Antipholus S.: But your reason was not substantial, why there is no time to recover.
- Dromio S.: Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and therefore to the world's end will have bald followers.
- Antipholus S.: I knew 'twould be a bald conclusion. But soft! who wafts us yonder?
- Enter Adriana and Luciana
- Adriana: Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange, and frown:
- Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects,
- I am not Adriana, nor thy wife.
- 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,
- 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?
- 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
- 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,
- 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,
- 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;
- 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;
- I live unstain'd, thou undishonoured.
- Antipholus 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,
- Want wit in all one word to understand.
- Luciana: Fie, brother: how the world is chang'd with you!
- When were you wont to use my sister thus?
- She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.
- Antipholus S.: By Dromio?
- Dromio S.: By me?
- Adriana: 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.
- Antipholus S.: Did you converse, sir, with this gentle-woman?
- What is the course and drift of your compact?
- Dromio S.: I, sir? I never saw her till this time.
- Antipholus S.: Villain, thou liest; for even her very words
- Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.
- Dromio S.: I never spake with her in all my life.
- Antipholus S.: How can she thus then, call us by our names,
- Unless it be by inspiration?
- Adriana: How ill agrees it with your gravity
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- Antipholus 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,
- I'll entertain the offer'd fallacy.
- Luciana: Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner
- Dromio 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 elvish sprites:
- If we obey them not, this will ensue,
- They'll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.
- Luciana: Why prat'st thou to thyself and answer'st not?
- Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot!
- Dromio S.: I am transformed, master, am not I?
- Antipholus S.: I think thou art, in mind, and so am I.
- Dromio S.: Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape.
- Antipholus S.: Thou hast thine own form.
- Dromio S.: No, I am an ape.
- Luciana: If thou art chang'd to aught, 'tis to an ass.
- Dromio 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.
- Adriana: Come, come; no longer will I be a fool,
- 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,
- 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.
- Antipholus 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,
- And in this mist at all adventures go.
- Dromio S.: Master, shall I be porter at the gate?
- Adriana: Ay; and let none enter, lest I break your pate.
- Luciana: Come, come, Antipholus; we dine too late.
- Exeunt
- --oOo-- -