William Shakespeare - The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

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?