The Comedy Of Errors

1 Enter Antipholus of Syracuse.
2 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
3 The gold I gave to Dromio is laid up
4 Safe at the Centaur, and the heedful slave
5 Is wander’d forth in care to seek me out.
6 By computation and mine host’s report.
7 I could not speak with Dromio since at first
8 I sent him from the mart. See, here he comes.
9 Enter Dromio of Syracuse.
10 How now, sir! is your merry humour alter’d?
11 As you love strokes, so jest with me again.
12 You know no Centaur? you receiv’d no gold?
13 Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner?
14 My house was at the Phoenix? Wast thou mad,
15 That thus so madly thou didst answer me?
16 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
17 What answer, sir? when spake I such a word?
18 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
19 Even now, even here, not half an hour since.
20 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
21 I did not see you since you sent me hence,
22 Home to the Centaur with the gold you gave me.
23 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
24 Villain, thou didst deny the gold’s receipt,
25 And told’st me of a mistress and a dinner,
26 For which I hope thou felt’st I was displeas’d.
27 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
28 I am glad to see you in this merry vein.
29 What means this jest, I pray you, master, tell me?
30 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
31 Yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth?
32 Think’st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that.
33 [_Beats Dromio._]
34 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
35 Hold, sir, for God’s sake, now your jest is earnest.
36 Upon what bargain do you give it me?
37 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
38 Because that I familiarly sometimes
39 Do use you for my fool, and chat with you,
40 Your sauciness will jest upon my love,
41 And make a common of my serious hours.
42 When the sun shines let foolish gnats make sport,
43 But creep in crannies when he hides his beams.
44 If you will jest with me, know my aspect,
45 And fashion your demeanour to my looks,
46 Or I will beat this method in your sconce.
47 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
48 Sconce, call you it? so you would leave battering, I had rather have it
49 a head. And you use these blows long, I must get a sconce for my head,
50 and ensconce it too, or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders. But I
51 pray, sir, why am I beaten?
52 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
53 Dost thou not know?
54 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
55 Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.
56 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
57 Shall I tell you why?
58 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
59 Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say, every why hath a wherefore.
60 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
61 Why, first, for flouting me; and then wherefore,
62 For urging it the second time to me.
63 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
64 Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,
65 When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason?
66 Well, sir, I thank you.
67 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
68 Thank me, sir, for what?
69 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
70 Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing.
71 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
72 I’ll make you amends next, to give you nothing for something.
73 But say, sir, is it dinner-time?
74 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
75 No, sir; I think the meat wants that I have.
76 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
77 In good time, sir, what’s that?
78 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
79 Basting.
80 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
81 Well, sir, then ’twill be dry.
82 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
83 If it be, sir, I pray you eat none of it.
84 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
85 Your reason?
86 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
87 Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me another dry basting.
88 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
89 Well, sir, learn to jest in good time.
90 There’s a time for all things.
91 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
92 I durst have denied that before you were so choleric.
93 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
94 By what rule, sir?
95 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
96 Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of Father Time
97 himself.
98 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
99 Let’s hear it.
100 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
101 There’s no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by
102 nature.
103 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
104 May he not do it by fine and recovery?
105 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
106 Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair of another
107 man.
108 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
109 Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an
110 excrement?
111 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
112 Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts, and what he hath
113 scanted men in hair he hath given them in wit.
114 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
115 Why, but there’s many a man hath more hair than wit.
116 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
117 Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair.
118 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
119 Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain dealers without wit.
120 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
121 The plainer dealer, the sooner lost. Yet he loseth it in a kind of
122 jollity.
123 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
124 For what reason?
125 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
126 For two, and sound ones too.
127 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
128 Nay, not sound, I pray you.
129 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
130 Sure ones, then.
131 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
132 Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing.
133 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
134 Certain ones, then.
135 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
136 Name them.
137 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
138 The one, to save the money that he spends in tiring; the other, that at
139 dinner they should not drop in his porridge.
140 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
141 You would all this time have proved there is no time for all things.
142 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
143 Marry, and did, sir; namely, e’en no time to recover hair lost by
144 nature.
145 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
146 But your reason was not substantial why there is no time to recover.
147 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
148 Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and therefore, to the world’s end
149 will have bald followers.
150 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
151 I knew ’twould be a bald conclusion.
152 But soft! who wafts us yonder?
153 Enter Adriana and Luciana.
154 ADRIANA.
155 Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown,
156 Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects.
157 I am not Adriana, nor thy wife.
158 The time was once when thou unurg’d wouldst vow
159 That never words were music to thine ear,
160 That never object pleasing in thine eye,
161 That never touch well welcome to thy hand,
162 That never meat sweet-savour’d in thy taste,
163 Unless I spake, or look’d, or touch’d, or carv’d to thee.
164 How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,
165 That thou art then estranged from thyself?
166 Thyself I call it, being strange to me,
167 That, undividable, incorporate,
168 Am better than thy dear self’s better part.
169 Ah, do not tear away thyself from me;
170 For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall
171 A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
172 And take unmingled thence that drop again
173 Without addition or diminishing,
174 As take from me thyself, and not me too.
175 How dearly would it touch thee to the quick,
176 Should’st thou but hear I were licentious?
177 And that this body, consecrate to thee,
178 By ruffian lust should be contaminate?
179 Wouldst thou not spit at me, and spurn at me,
180 And hurl the name of husband in my face,
181 And tear the stain’d skin off my harlot brow,
182 And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring,
183 And break it with a deep-divorcing vow?
184 I know thou canst; and therefore, see thou do it.
185 I am possess’d with an adulterate blot;
186 My blood is mingled with the crime of lust;
187 For if we two be one, and thou play false,
188 I do digest the poison of thy flesh,
189 Being strumpeted by thy contagion.
190 Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed,
191 I live distain’d, thou undishonoured.
192 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
193 Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not.
194 In Ephesus I am but two hours old,
195 As strange unto your town as to your talk,
196 Who, every word by all my wit being scann’d,
197 Wants wit in all one word to understand.
198 LUCIANA.
199 Fie, brother, how the world is chang’d with you.
200 When were you wont to use my sister thus?
201 She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.
202 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
203 By Dromio?
204 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
205 By me?
206 ADRIANA.
207 By thee; and this thou didst return from him,
208 That he did buffet thee, and in his blows
209 Denied my house for his, me for his wife.
210 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
211 Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman?
212 What is the course and drift of your compact?
213 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
214 I, sir? I never saw her till this time.
215 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
216 Villain, thou liest, for even her very words
217 Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.
218 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
219 I never spake with her in all my life.
220 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
221 How can she thus, then, call us by our names?
222 Unless it be by inspiration.
223 ADRIANA.
224 How ill agrees it with your gravity
225 To counterfeit thus grossly with your slave,
226 Abetting him to thwart me in my mood;
227 Be it my wrong, you are from me exempt,
228 But wrong not that wrong with a more contempt.
229 Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine.
230 Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,
231 Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state,
232 Makes me with thy strength to communicate:
233 If aught possess thee from me, it is dross,
234 Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss,
235 Who all, for want of pruning, with intrusion
236 Infect thy sap, and live on thy confusion.
237 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
238 To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme.
239 What, was I married to her in my dream?
240 Or sleep I now, and think I hear all this?
241 What error drives our eyes and ears amiss?
242 Until I know this sure uncertainty
243 I’ll entertain the offer’d fallacy.
244 LUCIANA.
245 Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner.
246 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
247 O, for my beads! I cross me for a sinner.
248 This is the fairy land; O spite of spites!
249 We talk with goblins, owls, and sprites;
250 If we obey them not, this will ensue:
251 They’ll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.
252 LUCIANA.
253 Why prat’st thou to thyself, and answer’st not?
254 Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot.
255 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
256 I am transformed, master, am I not?
257 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
258 I think thou art in mind, and so am I.
259 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
260 Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape.
261 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
262 Thou hast thine own form.
263 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
264 No, I am an ape.
265 LUCIANA.
266 If thou art chang’d to aught, ’tis to an ass.
267 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
268 ’Tis true; she rides me, and I long for grass.
269 ’Tis so, I am an ass; else it could never be
270 But I should know her as well as she knows me.
271 ADRIANA.
272 Come, come, no longer will I be a fool,
273 To put the finger in the eye and weep
274 Whilst man and master laughs my woes to scorn.
275 Come, sir, to dinner; Dromio, keep the gate.
276 Husband, I’ll dine above with you today,
277 And shrive you of a thousand idle pranks.
278 Sirrah, if any ask you for your master,
279 Say he dines forth, and let no creature enter.
280 Come, sister; Dromio, play the porter well.
281 ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
282 Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
283 Sleeping or waking, mad, or well-advis’d?
284 Known unto these, and to myself disguis’d!
285 I’ll say as they say, and persever so,
286 And in this mist at all adventures go.
287 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
288 Master, shall I be porter at the gate?
289 ADRIANA.
290 Ay; and let none enter, lest I break your pate.
291 LUCIANA.
292 Come, come, Antipholus, we dine too late.
293 [_Exeunt._]