READ STUDY GUIDE: Act III, scene ii; Act IV, scenes i-ii |
|
Act III, Scene ii:
The same.
The same.
| [Enter LUCIANA with ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.] |
| LUCIANA: |
| And may it be that you have quite forgot |
 A husband's office? Shall, Antipholus, |
| Even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot? |
| Shall love, in building, grow so ruinate? |
| If you did wed my sister for her wealth, |
| Then for her wealth's sake use her with more kindness; |
| Or, if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth; |
| Muffle your false love with some show of blindness; |
| Let not my sister read it in your eye; |
| Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator; |
| Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty; |
| Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger; |
| Bear a fair presence though your heart be tainted; |
| Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint; |
| Be secret-false: what need she be acquainted? |
| What simple thief brags of his own attaint? |
| 'Tis double wrong, to truant with your bed |
| And let her read it in thy looks at board:— |
| Shame hath a bastard fame, well managed; |
| Ill deeds is doubled with an evil word. |
| Alas, poor women! make us but believe, |
| Being compact of credit, that you love us: |
| Though others have the arm, show us the sleeve; |
| We in your motion turn, and you may move us. |
| Then, gentle brother, get you in again; |
| Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife: |
| 'Tis holy sport to be a little vain |
| When the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Sweet mistress,—what your name is else, I know not, |
| Nor by what wonder you do hit on mine,— |
| Less, in your knowledge and your grace, you show not |
| Than our earth's wonder: more than earth divine. |
| Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak; |
| Lay open to my earthy gross conceit, |
| Smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak, |
| The folded meaning of your words' deceit. |
| Against my soul's pure truth why labour you |
| To make it wander in an unknown field? |
| Are you a god? would you create me new? |
| Transform me, then, and to your power I'll yield. |
| But if that I am I, then well I know |
| Your weeping sister is no wife of mine, |
| Nor to her bed no homage do I owe: |
| Far more, far more, to you do I decline. |
| O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note, |
| To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears: |
| Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote; |
| Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs, |
| And as a bed I'll take thee, and there lie; |
| And, in that glorious supposition, think |
| He gains by death that hath such means to die:— |
| Let love, being light, be drowned if she sink! |
| LUCIANA: |
| What, are you mad, that you do reason so? |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Not mad, but mated; how, I do not know. |
| LUCIANA: |
| It is a fault that springeth from your eye. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by. |
| LUCIANA: |
| Gaze where you should, and that will clear your sight. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night. |
| LUCIANA: |
| Why call you me love? call my sister so. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Thy sister's sister. |
| LUCIANA: |
| That's my sister. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| No; |
| It is thyself, mine own self's better part; |
| Mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart; |
| My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope's aim, |
| My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim. |
| LUCIANA: |
| All this my sister is, or else should be. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Call thyself sister, sweet, for I aim thee; |
| Thee will I love, and with thee lead my life: |
| Thou hast no husband yet, nor I no wife; |
| Give me thy hand. |
| LUCIANA: |
| O, soft, sir, hold you still; |
| I'll fetch my sister to get her good-will. |
| [Exit LUCIANA.] |
| [Enter from the house of ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS, DROMIO OFSYRACUSE.] |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Why, how now, Dromio? where runn'st thou so fast? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| Do you know me, sir? am I Dromio? am I your man? am I myself? |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Thou art Dromio, thou art my man, thou art thyself. |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| I am an ass, I am a woman's man, and beside myself. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| What woman's man? and how besides thyself? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a woman; one that claims |
| me, one that haunts me, one that will have me. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| What claim lays she to thee? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| Marry, sir, such claim as you would lay to your horse: and she |
| would have me as a beast; not that, I being a beast, she would |
| have me; but that she, being a very beastly creature, lays claim |
| to me. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| What is she? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| A very reverent body; ay, such a one as a man may not speak of |
| without he say sir-reverence. I have but lean luck in the match, |
| and yet is she a wondrous fat marriage. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| How dost thou mean?—a fat marriage? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| Marry, sir, she's the kitchen-wench, and all grease; and I know |
| not what use to put her to, but to make a lamp of her and run |
| from her by her own light. I warrant, her rags, and the tallow in |
| them will burn a Poland winter: if she lives till doomsday, |
| she'll burn week longer than the whole world. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| What complexion is she of? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| Swart, like my shoe; but her face nothing like so clean kept: for |
| why? she sweats, a man may go over shoes in the grime of it. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| That's a fault that water will mend. |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| No, sir, 'tis in grain; Noah's flood could not do it. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| What's her name? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| Nell, sir; but her name and three-quarters, that is an ell and |
| three quarters, will not measure her from hip to hip. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Then she bears some breadth? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip: she is |
| spherical, like a globe: I could find out countries in her. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| In what part of her body stands Ireland? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| Marry, sir, in her buttocks; I found it out by the bogs. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Where Scotland? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| I found it by the barrenness, hard in the palm of the hand. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Where France? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| In her forehead; armed and reverted, making war against her hair. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Where England? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| I looked for the chalky cliffs, but I could find no whiteness in |
| them; but I guess it stood in her chin, by the salt rheum that |
| ran between France and it. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Where Spain? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| Faith, I saw it not; but I felt it hot in her breath. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Where America,—the Indies? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| O, sir, upon her nose, an o'er embellished with rubies, |
| carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect to the hot |
| breath of Spain; who sent whole armadoes of carracks to be |
| ballast at her nose. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Where stood Belgia,—the Netherlands? |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| O, sir, I did not look so low.—To conclude: this drudge or |
| diviner laid claim to me; called me Dromio; swore I was assured |
| to her; told me what privy marks I had about me, as the mark of |
| my shoulder, the mole in my neck, the great wart on my left arm, |
| that I, amazed, ran from her as a witch: and, I think, if my |
| breast had not been made of faith and my heart of steel, she had |
| transformed me to a curtail-dog, and made me turn i' the wheel. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Go, hie thee presently post to the road; |
| An if the wind blow any way from shore, |
| I will not harbour in this town to-night. |
| If any bark put forth, come to the mart, |
| Where I will walk till thou return to me. |
| If every one knows us, and we know none, |
| 'Tis time, I think, to trudge, pack and be gone. |
| DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: |
| As from a bear a man would run for life, |
| So fly I from her that would be my wife. |
| [Exit.] |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| There's none but witches do inhabit here; |
| And therefore 'tis high time that I were hence. |
| She that doth call me husband, even my soul |
| Doth for a wife abhor; but her fair sister, |
| Possess'd with such a gentle sovereign grace, |
| Of such enchanting presence and discourse, |
| Hath almost made me traitor to myself: |
| But, lest myself be guilty to self-wrong, |
| I'll stop mine ears against the mermaid's song. |
| [Enter ANGELO.] |
| ANGELO: |
| Master Antipholus? |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Ay, that's my name. |
| ANGELO: |
| I know it well, sir. Lo, here is the chain; |
| I thought to have ta'en you at the Porcupine: |
| The chain unfinish'd made me stay thus long. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| What is your will that I shall do with this? |
| ANGELO: |
| What please yourself, sir; I have made it for you. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| Made it for me, sir! I bespoke it not. |
| ANGELO: |
| Not once nor twice, but twenty times you have: |
| Go home with it, and please your wife withal; |
| And soon at supper-time I'll visit you, |
| And then receive my money for the chain. |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| I pray you, sir, receive the money now, |
| For fear you ne'er see chain nor money more. |
| ANGELO: |
| You are a merry man, sir; fare you well. |
| [Exit.] |
| ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: |
| What I should think of this I cannot tell: |
| But this I think, there's no man is so vain |
| That would refuse so fair an offer'd chain. |
| I see a man here needs not live by shifts, |
| When in the streets he meets such golden gifts. |
| I'll to the mart, and there for Dromio stay; |
| If any ship put out, then straight away. |
| [Exit.] |
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