THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. William Shakespeare
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do you give it me?
ANTIPHOLUS 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 demeanour 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?
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
Dost thou not know?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
Shall I tell you why?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Ay, sir, and wherefore; for, they say, every why hath a wherefore.—
ANTIPHOLUS 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.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
Thank me, sir! for what?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing.
ANTIPHOLUS 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.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
In good time, sir, what’s that?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
Basting.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
Well, sir, then ‘twill be dry.
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
If it be, sir, I pray you eat none of it.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
Your reason?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me another dry basting.
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