Shakespeare DiscPassage/Shakespeare DiscPassage - CMC ReSearch Inc..ISO/dp/0015/00156.txt

Text File | 1989-11-03 | 13.4 KB | 313 lines

$Unique_ID{SSP00156}
$Title{The Comedy of Errors:  Act III, Scene II}
$Author{Shakespeare, William}
$Subject{}
$Log{Dramatis Personae*00150.txt}

                Portions copyright (c) CMC ReSearch, Inc., 1989

                   The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

                              THE COMEDY OF ERRORS


           ACT III
................................................................................


          SCENE II:  The same.
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

                     {Enter LUCIANA and ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse.}

           LUCIANA:  And may it be that you have quite forgot
                     A husband's office?  shall, Antipholus.
                     Even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot?
                     Shall love, in building, grow so ruinous?
                     If you did wed my sister for her wealth,
                     Then for her wealth's sake use her with more
                             kindness:
                     Or if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth;
                     Muffle your false love with some show of blindness:
                     Let not my sister read it in your eye;
                     Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator;               10
                     Look sweet, be fair, become disloyalty;
                     Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger;
                     Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted;
                     Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint;
                     Be secret-false:  what need she be acquainted?
                     What simple thief brags of his own attaint?
                     'Tis double wrong, to truant with your bed
                     And let her read it in thy looks at board:
                     Shame hath a bastard fame, well managed;
                     Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word.                20
                     Alas, poor women!  make us but believe,
                     Being compact of credit, that you love us;
                     Though others have the arm, show us the sleeve;
                     We in your motion turn and you may move us.
                     Then, gentle brother, get you in again;
                     Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife:
                     'Tis holy sport to be a little vain,
                     When the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  Sweet mistress--what your name is else, I know not,
                     Nor by what wonder you do hit of mine,--                30
                     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,
                     Smother'd 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 power I'll yield.        40
                     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                  50
                     He gains by death that hath such means to die:
                     Let Love, being light, be drowned if she sink!

           LUCIANA:  What, are you mad, that you do reason so?

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  Not mad, but mated; how, I do not know.

           LUCIANA:  It is a fault that springeth from your eye.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by.

           LUCIANA:  Gaze where you should, and that will clear your sight.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night.


           LUCIANA:  Why call you me love?  call my sister so.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  Thy sister's sister.


           LUCIANA:                      That's my sister.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:                                      No;                 60
                     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.

           LUCIANA:  All this my sister is, or else should be.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  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.

           LUCIANA:                  O, soft, air!  hold you still:
                     I'll fetch my sister, to get her good will.             70

                     [Exit.]

                     {Enter DROMIO of Syracuse.}

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  Why, how now, Dromio!  where runn'st thou so fast?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  Do you know me, sir?  am I Dromio?  am I your man?
                     am I myself?

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  Thou art Dromio, thou art my man, thou art thyself.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  I am an ass, I am a woman's man and besides myself.

        ANTIPHOLUS:  What woman's man?  and how besides thyself?  besides
                     thyself?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a woman; one
                     that claims me, one that haunts me, one that will
                     have me.                                                80

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  What claim lays she to thee?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  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.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  What is she?                                            90

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  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.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  How dost thou mean a fat marriage?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  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,            100
                     she'll burn a week longer than the whole world.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  What complexion is she of?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  Swart, like my shoe, but her face nothing half so
                     clean kept:  for why, she sweats; a man may go over
                     shoes in the grime of it.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  That's a fault that water will mend.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  No, sir, 'tis in grain; Noah's flood could not do it.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  What's her name?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  Nell, sir; but her name and three quarters, that's
                     an ell and three quarters, will not measure her from   110
                     hip to hip.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  Then she bears some breadth?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip:
                     she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out
                     countries in her.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  In what part of her body stands Ireland?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  Marry, in her buttocks:  I found it out by the bogs.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  Where Scotland?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  I found it by the barrenness; hard in the palm of
                          the hand.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  Where France?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  In her forehead; armed and reverted, making war        120
                     against her heir.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  Where England?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  I looked 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.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  Where Spain?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  Faith, I saw it not; but I felt it hot in her breath.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  Where America, the Indies?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  Oh, sir, upon her nose all o'er embellished with
                     rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich    130
                     aspect to the hot breath of Spain; who sent whole
                     armadoes of caracks to be ballast at her nose.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  Oh, sir, I did not look so low.  To conclude, this
                     drudge, or diviner, laid claim to me, call'd me
                     Dromio; swore I was assured to her; told me what
                     privy marks I had about me, as, the mark of my
                     shoulder, the mole in my neck, the great wart on my
                     left arm, that I amazed ran from her as a witch:
                     And, I think, if my breast had not been made of        140
                          faith and my heart of steel,
                     She had transform'd me to a curtal dog and made
                          me turn i' the wheel.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  Go hie thee presently, post to the road:
                     An if the wind blow any way from shore,
                     I will not harbor in this town to-night:
                     If any bark put forth, come to the mart,
                     Where I will walk till thou return to me.
                     If every one knows us and we know none,
                     'Tis time, I think, to trudge, pack and be gone.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:  As from a bear a man would run for life,
                     So fly I from her that would be my wife.               160

                     [Exit.]

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  There's none but witches do inhabit here;
                     And therefore 'tis high time that I were hence.
                     She that doth call me husband, even my soul
                     Doth for a wife abhor.  But her fair sister,
                     Possess'd with such a gentle sovereign grace,
                     Of such enchanting presence and discourse,
                     Hath almost made me traitor to myself:
                     But, lest myself be guilty to self-wrong,
                     I'll stop mine ears against the mermaid's song.

                     {Enter ANGELO with the chain.}

            ANGELO:  Master Antipholus,--

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:                      Ay, that's  my name.               170

            ANGELO:  I know it well, sir, lo, here is the chain.
                     I thought to have ta'en you at the Porpentine:
                     The chain unfinish'd made me stay thus long.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  What is your will that I shall do with this?

            ANGELO:  What please yourself, sir: I have made it for you.

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  Made it for me, sir!  I bespoke it not.

            ANGELO:  Not once, nor twice, but twenty times you have.
                     Go home with it and please your wife withal;
                     And soon at supper-time I'll visit you
                     And then receive my money for the chain.               180

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  I pray you, sir, receive the money now,
                     For fear you ne'er see chain nor money more.

            ANGELO:  You are a merry man, sir: fare you well.

                     [Exit.]

        ANTIPHOLUS
       OF SYRACUSE:  What I should think of this, I cannot tell:
                     But this I think, there's no man is so vain
                     That would refuse so fair an offer'd chain.
                     I see a man here needs not live by shifts,
                     When in the streets he meets such golden gifts.
                     I'll to the mart, and there for Dromio stay
                     If any ship put out, then straight away.

                     [Exit.]