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 demeanour to my looks,
Or I will beat this method in your sconce.

30

Dro. S. 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 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?

40

Dro. S. Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every why hath a wherefore.

Ant. S. Why, first,-for flouting me; and then, wherefore,

For urging it the second time to me.

Dro. S. Was there ever any man thus beaten out of sea

son,

When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor

reason?

Well, sir, I thank you.

Ant. 8. Thank me, sir? for what?

50

Dra. S. Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me

for nothing.

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, 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?

60

Dro. S. Lest it make you choleric and purchase me another dry basting.

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.

SHAK. I.-9

71

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?

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?

79

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.

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 looseth it in a kind of jollity.

Ant. S. For what reason?

90

Dro. S. The one, to save the money that he spends in trimming; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his porridge.

100

Ant. S. You would all this time have proved there is no time for all things.

Dro. S. Marry, and did, sir; namely, no time to recover hair lost by nature.

Ant. S. But your reason was not substantial, why there is no time to recover.

Dro. S. Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald and therefore to the world's end will have bald followers.

Ant. S. I knew 'twould be a bald conclusion:

But, soft! who wafts us yonder?

Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA.

Adr. Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and from: 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,

111

That never meat sweet-savour'd in thy taste,

Unless I spake, or look'd, or touch'd, or carved to thee. 120 How comes it now, thy 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 may'st 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,
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 am possess'd with an adulterate blot ;

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140

I know thou canst; and therefore see thou do it.

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 unstain'd, thou undishonoured.

Ant. S 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.

150

Luc. Fie, brother! how the world is changed with you! When were you wont to use my sister thus?

She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.

Ant. S. By Dromio?

!

Dro. S. By me?

Adr. By thee; and this thou didst return from him, That he did buffet thee and in his blows

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Denied my house for his, me for his wife.

Ant. S. Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman?

What is the course and drift of your compact?

Dro S I, sir? I never saw her till this time.

Ant. S. Villain, thou liest; for even her very words

Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.

Dro. S. I never spake with her in all my life.

Ant. S. How can she thus then call us by our names, Unless it be by inspiration.

Adr. 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.

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180

Ant. S. 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.

Luc. Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner.
Dro. S. 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.
Luc. Why pratest thou to thyself and answer'st not?
Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot!
Dro. S. I am transformed, master, am I not?
Ant. S. I think thou art in mind, and so am I.
Dro. S. Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape.
Ant. S. Thou hast thine own form.

No, I am an ape.

Dro. S.
Luc. If thou art changed to aught, 'tis to an ass.
Dro. S. "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.

Adr. Come, come, no longer will I be a fool,
To put the finger in the eye and weep,

Whilst man and master laugh 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,

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200

210

Say he dines forth and let no creature enter.
Come, sister. Dromio, play the porter well.
Ant. S. Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
Sleeping or waking? mad or well-advised?
Known unto these, and to myself disguised!
I'll say as they say and persever so

And in this mist at all adventures go.

Dro. S. Master, shall I be porter at the gate?

Adr. Ay; and let none enter, lest I break your pate. 220 Luc. Come, come, Antipholus, we dine too late. [Exeunt.

ACT III.

SCENE I. Before the house of ANTIPHOLUS of Ephesus. Enter ANTIPHOLUS of Ephesus, DROMIO of Ephesus, ANGELO, and BALTHAZAR.

Ant. E. Good Signior Angelo, you must excuse us all ; My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours:

Say that I linger'd with you at your shop

To see the making of her carcanet

And that to-morrow you will bring it home.
But here's a villain that would face me down
He met me on the mart and that I beat him
And charged him with a thousand marks in gold
And that I did deny my wife and house.

Thou drunkard, thou, what didst thou mean by this?

10

Dro. E. Say what you will, sir, but I know what I know; That you beat me at the mart, I have your hand to show : If the skin were parchment and the blows you gave were

ink,

Your own handwriting would tell you what I think.
Ant. E. I think thou art an ass.
Dro. E.

Marry, so it doth appear

By the wrongs I suffer and the blows I bear.

Ishould kick, being kick'd; and, being at that pass,
You would keep from my heels and beware of an ass.

Ant. E. You're sid, Signior Balthazar: pray God our cheer

May answer my good will and your good welcome here. 20 Bal. I hold your dainties cheap, sir, and your welcome

dear.

Ant. E. O, Signior Balthazar, either at flesh or fish,

A table full of welcome makes scarce one dainty dish.
Bal. Good meat, sir, is common; that every churl affords.