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Scene II.
The mart

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. The gold I gave to Dromio is laid up
Safe at the Centaur, and the heedful slave
Is wand’red 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.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. 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?

DROMIO OF SYR. What answer, sir? When spake I such a word?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Even now, even here, not half an hour since.

DROMIO OF SYR. I did not see you since you sent me hence,
Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. 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.

DROMIO OF SYR. I am glad to see you in this merry vein.
What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. 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 SYR. Hold, sir, for God’s sake! Now your jest is earnest.
Upon what bargain do you give it me?

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

DROMIO OF SYR. 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?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Dost thou not know?

DROMIO OF SYR. Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Shall I tell you why?

DROMIO OF SYR. Aye, sir, and wherefore; for they say
every why hath a wherefore.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Why, first for flouting me; and then wherefore,
For urging it the second time to me.

DROMIO OF SYR. 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.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Thank me, sir! for what?

DROMIO OF SYR. Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. I’ll make you amends next, to give you nothing for something. But say, sir, is it dinnertime?

DROMIO OF SYR. No, sir; I think the meat wants that I have.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. In good time, sir, what’s that?

DROMIO OF SYR. Basting.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Well, sir, then ‘twill be dry.

DROMIO OF SYR. If it be, sir, I pray you eat none of it.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Your reason?

DROMIO OF SYR. Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me another dry basting.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Well, sir, learn to jest in good time; there’s a time for all things.

DROMIO OF SYR. I durst have denied that, before you were so choleric.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. By what rule, sir?

DROMIO OF SYR. Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of Father Time himself.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Let’s hear it.

DROMIO OF SYR. There’s no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by nature.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. May he not do it by fine and recovery?

DROMIO OF SYR. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair of another man.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement?

DROMIO OF SYR. 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 SYR. Why, but there’s many a man hath more hair than wit.

DROMIO OF SYR. Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain dealers without wit.

DROMIO OF SYR. The plainer dealer, the sooner lost; yet he loseth it in a kind of jollity.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. For what reason?

DROMIO OF SYR. For two; and sound ones too.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Nay, not sound I pray you.

DROMIO OF SYR. Sure ones, then.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing.

DROMIO OF SYR. Certain ones, then.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Name them.

DROMIO OF SYR. 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 SYR. You would all this time have prov’d there is no time for all things.

DROMIO OF SYR. Marry, and did, sir; namely, no time to recover hair lost by nature.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. But your reason was not substantial, why there is no time to recover.

DROMIO OF SYR. Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and therefore to the world’s end will have bald followers.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. I knew ‘twould be a bald conclusion. But, soft, who wafts us yonder?

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, O, 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 SYR. Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not:
In EPH 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,
Wants 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 SYR. By Dromio?

DROMIO OF SYR. 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 SYR. Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman?
What is the course and drift of your compact?

DROMIO OF SYR. I, Sir? I never saw her till this time.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Villain, thou liest; for even her very words
Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.

DROMIO OF SYR. I never spake with her in all my life.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. 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 SYR. 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 SYR. O, for my beads! I cross me for 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 SYR. I am transformed, master, am not I?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. I think thou art in mind, and so am I.

DROMIO OF SYR. Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYR. Thou hast thine own form.

DROMIO OF SYR. No, I am an ape.

LUCIANA. If thou art chang’d to aught, ‘tis to an ass.

DROMIO OF SYR. ‘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 SYR. Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
Sleeping or waking, mad or well-advis’d?
Known unto these, and to myself disguis’d!
I’ll say as they say, and persever so,
And in this mist at all adventures go.

DROMIO OF SYR. Master, shall I be porter at the gate?

ADRIANA. Aye; and let none enter, lest I break your pate.

LUCIANA. Come, come, Antipholus, we dine too late.

[Exeunt.]

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