Indued with intellectual sense and souls,
Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls,
Are masters to their females, and their lords:
Then let your will attend on their accords.
ADR. This servitude makes you to keep unwed.
Luc. Not this, but troubles of the marriage-bed.
ADR. But, were you wedded, you would bear some sway.
Luc. Ere I learn love, I'll practise to obey.
ADR. How if your husband start some other hare?
Luc. Till he come home again, I would forbear.
ADR. Patience unmov'd! no marvel though she pause!1
They can be meek, that have no other cause.
A wretched soul, bruis'd with adversity,
We bid be quiet, when we hear it cry;
But were we burden'd with like weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain :
So thou, that hast no unkind mate to grieve thee,
With urging helpless2 patience would'st relieve me :
But, if thou live to see like right bereft,
This fool-begg'd patience in thee will be left.
Luc. Well, I will marry one day but to try.
Here comes your man: now is your husband nigh.
Enter DROMIO of Ephesus.
ADR. Say, is your tardy master now at hand?
DRO. E. Nay, he is at two hands with me, and that my two ears can witness.
ADR. Say, didst thou speak with him? know'st thou his mind?
ADR. But say, I pr'ythee, is he coming home?
It seems he hath great care to please his wife.
DRO. E. Why, Mistress, sure my master is horn-mad.
ADR. Horn-mad, thou villain?
1 rest.
2 unhelping.
DRO. E. Ay, ay, he told his mind upon mine ear:
Beshrew his hand, I scarce could understand3 it.
Luc. Spake he so doubtfully thou could'st not feel his
meaning?
51
DRO. E. Nay, he struck so plainly I could too well feel his blows; and withal so doubtfully that I could scarce understand them.
ACT II DRO. E. I mean not cuckold-mad; but, sure, he's stark Sc. I
mad.
When I desir'd him to come home to dinner,
He ask❜d me for a thousand marks in gold.
'Tis dinner-time, quoth I; My gold, quoth he.
Your meat doth burn, quoth I; My gold, quoth he.
Will you come? quoth I; My gold, quoth he;
Where is the thousand marks I gave thee, villain?
The pig, quoth I, is burn'd; My gold, quoth he.
My mistress, Sir, quoth I; Hang up thy mistress!
I know not thy mistress! out on thy mistress!
Luc. Quoth who?
DRO. E. Quoth my master:
I know, quoth he, no house, no wife, no mistress:
So that my arrant, due unto my tongue,
I thank him, I bear home upon my shoulders;
For, in conclusion, he did beat me there.
ADR. Go back again, thou slave, and fetch him home.
DRO. E. Go back again, and be new beaten home?
For God's sake send some other messenger!
ADR. Back, slave, or I will break thy pate across.
DRO. E. And he will bless that cross with other beating:
Between you I shall have a holy head!
ADR. Hence, prating peasant! fetch thy master home.
DRO. E. Am I so round1 with you, as you with me,
Luc. Fie, how impatience lowreth in your face!
ADR. 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
1 peremptory.
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.
By him not ruin'd? then is he the ground
Of my defeatures.' My decayed fair2
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 !3
Luc. Self-harming jealousy !-fie, beat it hence!
ADR. 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 promis'd 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: and though gold 'bides still
The other touch, yet often touching will
Wear gold; and so there's no man hath a name
But falsehood and corruption doth it shame.
Since that my beauty cannot please his
eye,
I'll weep what's left away, and weeping die.
Luc. How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!
SCENE II. A Public Place.
Enter ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse.
ANT. S. 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?
DRO. S. What answer, Sir? when spake I such a word?
1 disfigurements.
a beauty.
& cast-away.
ANT. S. Even now, even here, not half an hour since.
DRO. S. I did not see you since you sent me hence,
Home to the Centaur with the gold you gave me.
ANT. S. 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.
DRO. S. I am glad to see you in this merry vein:
What means this jest? I pray you, Master, tell me.
ANT. S. Yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth?
Think'st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that.
[beating him.
DRO. S. Hold, Sir, for God's sake! now your jest is earnest:
Upon what bargain do you give it me?
ANT. S. Because that I familiarly sometimes
Do use you for my fool, and chat with you,
Your sauciness will jet1 upon my love,
And make a common2 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.3
DRO. S. Sconce, call you it? So you would leave batter-
ing, I had rather have it a head: an you use these
blows long, I must get a sconce for my head, and
insconce it too; or else I shall seek my wit in my
shoulders. But, I pray, Sir, why am I beaten ?
ANT. S. Dost thou not know?
DRO. S. Nothing, Sir-but that I am beaten.
ANT. S. Shall I tell you why?
DRO. S. Ay, Sir, and wherefore; for they say every why
hath a wherefore.
ANT. S. Why, first-for flouting me; and then, where
fore
For urging it the second time to me.
DRO. S. 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.
1 frisk (as a nag at grass). 2 play-ground. (1) head, (2) fortalice. ('Insconce'=fortify.)
ANT. S.
Thank me, Sir? for what?
DRO. S. Marry, Sir, for this something that you gave me for nought.
51
ANT. S. I'll make you amends next, to give you nothing
for something. But say, Sir, is it dinner-time?
DRO. S. No, Sir: I think the meat wants that I have.
ANT. S. In good time,1 Sir, what's that?
DRO. S. Basting.
ANT. S. Well, Sir, then 'twill be dry.
DRO. S. If it be, Sir, I pray you eat none of it.
ANT. S. Your reason?
DRO. S. Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me another dry basting.
61
ANT. S. Well, Sir, learn to jest in good time: there's a
time for all things.
DRO. S. I durst have denied that, before you were so choleric.
ANT. S. By what rule, Sir?
DRO. S. Marry, Sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of Father Time himself.
ANT. S. Let's hear it.
DRO. S. There's no time for a man to recover his hair, that grows bald by nature.
ANT. S. May he not do it by fine and recovery?2
DRO. S. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair of another man.
ANT. S. Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement ?3
DRO. S. Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts; and what he hath scanted men in hair he hath given them in wit.
ANT. S. Why, but there's many a man hath more hair than wit.
81
DRO. S. Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair.*
ANT. S. Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain dealers without wit.
DRO. S. The plainer dealer, the sooner lost. Yet he loseth it in a kind of jollity.
ANT. S. For what reason?
1 indeed!
2 to secure absolute ownership.
4 some unsound woman aiding.
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