The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Illustrated edition (37 plays, 160 sonnets and 5 Poetry Books With Active Table of Contents). William Shakespeare
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the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife.
S. Ant.
Sweet mistress—what your name is else, I know not,
Nor by what wonder you do hit of mine—
Less in your knowledge and your grace you show not
Than our earth’s wonder, more than earth divine.
Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak:
Lay open to my earthy gross conceit,
Smoth’red in errors, feeble, shallow, weak,
The folded meaning of your words’ deceit.
Against my soul’s pure truth why labor you,
To make it wander in an unknown field?
Are you a god? Would you create me new?
Transform me then, and to your pow’r I’ll yield.
But if that I am I, then well I know
Your weeping sister is no wife of mine,
Nor to her bed no homage do I owe:
Far more, far more, to you do I decline.
O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,
To drown me in thy [sister’s] flood of tears.
Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote;
Spread o’er the silver waves thy golden hairs,
And as a [bed] I’ll take [them], and there lie,
And in that glorious supposition think
He gains by death that hath such means to die:
Let Love, being light, be drowned if she sink!
Luc.
What, are you mad, that you do reason so?
S. Ant.
Not mad, but mated—how, I do not know.
Luc.
It is a fault that springeth from your eye.
S. Ant.
For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by.
Luc.
Gaze when you should, and that will clear your sight.
S. Ant.
As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night.
Luc.
Why call you me love? Call my sister so.
S. Ant.
Thy sister’s sister.
Luc.
That’s my sister.
S. Ant.
No;
It is thyself, mine own self’s better part:
Mine eye’s clear eye, my dear heart’s dearer heart,
My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope’s aim,
My sole earth’s heaven, and my heaven’s claim.
Luc.
All this my sister is, or else should be.
S. Ant.
Call thyself sister, sweet, for I am thee:
Thee will I love and with thee lead my life;
Thou hast no husband yet, nor I no wife.
Give me thy hand.
Luc.
O soft, sir, hold you still;
I’ll fetch my sister to get her good will.
Exit.
Enter Dromio [of] Syracusa.
S. Ant. Why, how now, Dromio, where run’st thou so fast?
S. Dro. Do you know me, sir? Am I Dromio? Am I your man? Am I myself?
S. Ant. Thou art Dromio, thou art my man, thou art thyself.
S. Dro. I am an ass, I am a woman’s man, and besides myself.
S. Ant. What woman’s man, and how besides thyself?
S. Dro. Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a woman: one that claims me, one that haunts me, one that will have me.
S. Ant. What claim lays she to thee?
S. Dro. Marry, sir, such claim as you would lay to your horse, and she would have me as a beast; not that, I being a beast, she would have me, but that she, being a very beastly creature, lays claim to me.
S. Ant. What is she?
S. Dro. A very reverent body: ay, such a one as a man may not speak of without he say “Sir-reverence.” I have but lean luck in the match, and yet is she a wondrous fat marriage.
S. Ant. How dost thou mean a fat marriage?
S. Dro. Marry, sir, she’s the kitchen wench and all grease, and I know not what use to put her to but to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light. I warrant, her rags and the tallow in them will burn a Poland winter: if she lives till doomsday, she’ll burn a week longer than the whole world.
S. Ant. What complexion is she of?
S. Dro. Swart, like my shoe, but her face nothing like so clean kept: for why? she sweats, a man may go over shoes in the grime of it.
S. Ant. That’s a fault that water will mend.
S. Dro. No, sir, ’tis in grain, Noah’s flood could not do it.
S. Ant. What’s her name?
S. Dro. Nell, sir; but her name [and] three quarters, that’s an ell and three quarters, will not measure her from hip to hip.
S. Ant. Then she bears some breadth?
S. Dro. No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip: she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries in her.
S. Ant. In what part of her body stands Ireland?
S. Dro. Marry, sir, in her buttocks, I found it out by the bogs.
S. Ant. Where Scotland?
S. Dro. I found it by the barrenness, hard in the palm of the hand.
S. Ant. Where France?
S. Dro. In her forehead, arm’d and reverted, making war against her heir.
S. Ant. Where England?
S. Dro. I look’d for the chalky cliffs, but I could find no whiteness in them. But I guess, it stood in her chin, by the salt rheum that ran between France and it.
S. Ant. Where Spain?
S. Dro. Faith, I saw it not; but I felt it hot in her breath.
S. Ant. Where America, the Indies?
S. Dro. O, sir, upon her nose, all o’er embellish’d with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect to the hot breath of Spain, who sent whole armadoes of carrects to be ballast at her nose.
S. Ant.