The Comedy of Errors
ACT II SCENE II | A public place. | |
[Enter ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse] | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | 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 | 5 | |
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 received no gold? | ||
Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner? | 10 | |
My house was at the Phoenix? Wast thou mad, | ||
That thus so madly thou didst answer me? | ||
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | What answer, sir? when spake I such a word? | |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Even now, even here, not half an hour since. | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | I did not see you since you sent me hence, | 15 |
Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me. | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | 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. | ||
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | I am glad to see you in this merry vein: | 20 |
What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me. | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth? | |
Think’st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that. | ||
[Beating him] | ||
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Hold, sir, for God’s sake! now your jest is earnest: | |
Upon what bargain do you give it me? | 25 | |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | 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, | 30 | |
But creep in crannies when he hides his beams. | ||
If you will jest with me, know my aspect, | ||
And fashion your demeanor to my looks, | ||
Or I will beat this method in your sconce. | ||
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Sconce call you it? so you would leave battering, I | 35 |
had rather have it a head: an you use these blows | ||
long, I must get a sconce for my head and ensconce | ||
it too; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders. | ||
But, I pray, sir why am I beaten? | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Dost thou not know? | 40 |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten. | |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Shall I tell you why? | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every why hath | |
a wherefore. | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Why, first,–for flouting me; and then, wherefore– | 45 |
For urging it the second time to me. | ||
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | 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 | |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Thank me, sir, for what? | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing. | |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | I’ll make you amends next, to give you nothing for | |
something. But say, sir, is it dinner-time? | ||
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | No, sir; I think the meat wants that I have. | 55 |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | In good time, sir; what’s that? | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Basting. | |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Well, sir, then ’twill be dry. | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | If it be, sir, I pray you, eat none of it. | |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Your reason? | 60 |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Lest it make you choleric and purchase me another | |
dry basting. | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Well, sir, learn to jest in good time: there’s a | |
time for all things. | ||
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | I durst have denied that, before you were so choleric. | 65 |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | By what rule, sir? | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald | |
pate of father Time himself. | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Let’s hear it. | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | There’s no time for a man to recover his hair that | 70 |
grows bald by nature. | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | May he not do it by fine and recovery? | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig and recover the | |
lost hair of another man. | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, | 75 |
so plentiful an excrement? | ||
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | 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 OF SYRACUSE | Why, but there’s many a man hath more hair than wit. | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair. | 80 |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain dealers without wit. | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | The plainer dealer, the sooner lost: yet he loseth | |
it in a kind of jollity. | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | For what reason? | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | For two; and sound ones too. | 85 |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Nay, not sound, I pray you. | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Sure ones, then. | |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing. | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Certain ones then. | |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Name them. | 90 |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | The one, to save the money that he spends in | |
trimming; the other, that at dinner they should not | ||
drop in his porridge. | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | You would all this time have proved there is no | |
time for all things. | 95 | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Marry, and did, sir; namely, no time to recover hair | |
lost by nature. | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | But your reason was not substantial, why there is no | |
time to recover. | ||
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald and therefore | 100 |
to the world’s end will have bald followers. | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | 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; | 105 | |
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, | ||
That never touch well welcome to thy hand, | 110 | |
That never meat sweet-savor’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 thus estranged from thyself? | ||
Thyself I call it, being strange to me, | 115 | |
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 mayest thou fall | ||
A drop of water in the breaking gulf, | 120 | |
And take unmingled that same drop again, | ||
Without addition or diminishing, | ||
As take from me thyself and not me too. | ||
How dearly would it touch me to the quick, | ||
Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious | 125 | |
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 | 130 | |
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: | 135 | |
For if we too be one and thou play false, | ||
I do digest the poison of thy flesh, | ||
Being strumpeted by thy contagion. | ||
Keep then far league and truce with thy true bed; | ||
I live unstain’d, thou undishonoured. | 140 | |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | 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. | 145 | |
LUCIANA | 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. | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | By Dromio? | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | By me? | 150 |
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 OF SYRACUSE | Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman? | |
What is the course and drift of your compact? | 155 | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | I, sir? I never saw her till this time. | |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Villain, thou liest; for even her very words | |
Didst thou deliver to me on the mart. | ||
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | I never spake with her in all my life. | |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | How can she thus then call us by our names, | 160 |
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, | 165 | |
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: | 170 | |
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 OF SYRACUSE | To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme: | 175 |
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. | 180 | |
LUCIANA | Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner. | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | 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: | ||
If we obey them not, this will ensue, | 185 | |
They’ll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue. | ||
LUCIANA | Why pratest thou to thyself and answer’st not? | |
Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot! | ||
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | I am transformed, master, am I not? | |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | I think thou art in mind, and so am I. | 190 |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape. | |
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Thou hast thine own form. | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | No, I am an ape. | |
LUCIANA | If thou art changed to aught, ’tis to an ass. | |
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | ‘Tis true; she rides me and I long for grass. | 195 |
‘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. | 200 | |
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. | 205 | |
Come, sister. Dromio, play the porter well. | ||
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE | Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell? | |
Sleeping or waking? mad or well-advised? | ||
Known unto these, and to myself disguised! | ||
I’ll say as they say and persever so, | 210 | |
And in this mist at all adventures go. | ||
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE | 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] |
Next: The Comedy of Errors, Act 3, Scene 1