READ STUDY GUIDE: Act II, scene ii; Act III, scene i |
|
Act II, Scene ii:
The same.
The same.
| [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 |
| 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 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, |
| 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 displeas'd. |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| I am glad to see you in this merry vein: |
| 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? |
| 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, |
| 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 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? |
| 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, |
| 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 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. |
| 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? |
| 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. |
| 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 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 peruke, and recover the lost hair of |
| another man. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Why is Time such a niggard 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 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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, to the |
| world's end will have bald followers. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| I knew 't'would 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, oh, how comes it, |
| 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. |
| 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, |
| Should'st 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 dis-stain'd, thou undishonoured. |
| 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. |
| 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 OF SYRACUSE: |
| By Dromio? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| 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 OF SYRACUSE: |
| Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman? |
| What is the course and drift of your compact? |
| 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, |
| 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 OF SYRACUSE: |
| 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 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, |
| 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 OF SYRACUSE: |
| I am transformed, master, am not I? |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| I think thou art in mind, and so am I. |
| 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 chang'd to aught, 'tis to an ass. |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| '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 laughs 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 OF SYRACUSE: |
| 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 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.] |
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