The Comedy of Errors
Page 17
ADRIANA
Go back again, thou slave, and fetch him home.
DROMIO OF EPHESUS
‘Go back again’, and be new-beaten home?
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For God’s sake, send some other messenger!
ADRIANA
Back, slave, or I will break thy pate across.
DROMIO OF EPHESUS
And he will bless that cross with other beating;
Between you I shall have a holy head.
ADRIANA
Hence, prating peasant! [Beats him.]
Fetch thy master home.
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DROMIO OF EPHESUS
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!
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ADRIANA
His company must do his minions grace,
Whilst I at home starve for a merry look.
Hath homely age th’alluring beauty took
From my poor cheek? Then he hath wasted it.
Are my discourses dull? Barren my wit?
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If voluble and sharp discourse be marred,
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
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By him not ruined? 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.
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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 promised me a chain:
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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
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Wear gold – and any 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.
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LUCIANA
How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!
[Exeunt.]
[2.2]
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 wandered forth in care to seek me out.
By computation and mine host’s report,
I could not speak with Dromio since at first
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I sent him from the mart.
Enter DROMIO [OF SYRACUSE].
See, here he comes.
– How now, sir, is your merry humour altered?
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’?
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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,
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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;
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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 [beating Dromio], and that!
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Hold sir, for God’s sake! Now your jest is earnest:
Upon what bargain do you give it me?
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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,
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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 OF SYRACUSE ‘Sconce’, call you it? So you
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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 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?
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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’:
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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.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE Thank me, sir, for what?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE Marry, sir, for this something
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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
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that I have.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE In good time, sir, what’s
that?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE Basting.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE Well, sir, then ’twill be dry.
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DROMIO OF SYRACUSE If it be, sir, I pray you, eat none
of it.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE Your reason?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE Lest it make you choleric, and
purchase me another dry basting.
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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.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE By what rule, sir?
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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 grows bald by nature.
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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
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of hair, being, as it is, 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
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man hath more hair than wit.
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE Not a man of those but he hath
the wit to lose his hair.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE Why, thou didst conclude
hairy men plain dealers without wit.
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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.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE Nay, not sound, I pray you.
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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.
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DROMIO OF SYRACUSE The one, to save the money
that he spends in tiring; 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.
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DROMIO OF SYRACUSE Marry, and did, sir: namely, e’en
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
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bald, and, therefore, to the world’s end will have bald
followers.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE I knew ’twould be a bald
conclusion.
Enter ADRIANA[, beckoning to them,] and LUCIANA.
But soft! Who wafts us yonder?
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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 unurged wouldst vow
That never words were music to thine ear,
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That never object pleasing in thine eye,
That never touch well welcome to thy hand,
That never meat sweet-savoured in thy taste,
Unless I spake, or looked, or touched, or carved to thee.
How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,
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That thou art then estranged from thyself?
‘Thyself’ I call it, being strange to me
That, undividable, incorporate,
Am better than thy dear self’s better part. [Reaches for him.]
Ah, do not tear away thyself from me!
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For know, my love: as easy mayst thou fall
A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
And take unmingled thence that drop again