Exit
LUCIANA Fie, how impatience loureth in your face!
ADRIANA His company must do his minions grace,
Whilst I at home starve for a merry look.
Hath homely age the alluring beauty took
From my poor cheek? then he hath wasted it:
Are my discourses dull? barren my wit?
If voluble and sharp discourse be marr’d,
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,
By him not ruin’d? 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.
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;
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; yet the gold bides still,
That others touch, and often touching will
Wear gold: and no 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.
LUCIANA How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!
Exeunt
Scene 2
A public place.
Enter ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse
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 received 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?
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.
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:
What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me.
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?
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 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
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?
OF SYRACUSE Dost thou not know?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.
OF SYRACUSE Shall I tell you why?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every why hath
a wherefore.
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.
OF SYRACUSE Thank me, sir, for what?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing.
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.
OF SYRACUSE In good time, sir; what’s that?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE Basting.
OF SYRACUSE Well, sir, then ’twill be dry.
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE If it be, sir, I pray you, eat none of it.
OF SYRACUSE Your reason?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE Lest it make you choleric and purchase me another
dry basting.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
OF SYRACUSE For what reason?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE For two; and sound ones too.
OF SYRACUSE Nay, not sound, I pray you.
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE Sure ones, then.
OF SYRACUSE Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing.
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE Certain ones then.
OF SYRACUSE Name them.
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.
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.
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.
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;
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,
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,
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,
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
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 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.
OF SYRACUSE Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not:
In Ephesus I am but two hours old,