1    The gold I gave to Dromio is laid up
2    Safe at the Centaur; and the heedful slave
3    Is wander'd forth, in care to seek me out
4    By computation and mine host's report.
5    I could not speak with Dromio since at first
6    I sent him from the mart. See, here he comes.
Enter DROMIO of Syracuse
7    How now sir! is your merry humour alter'd?
8    As you love strokes, so jest with me again.
9    You know no Centaur? you received no gold?
10   Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner?
11   My house was at the Phoenix? Wast thou mad,
12   That thus so madly thou didst answer me?

13   What answer, sir? when spake I such a word?

14   Even now, even here, not half an hour since.

15   I did not see you since you sent me hence,
16   Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me.

17   Villain, thou didst deny the gold's receipt,
18   And told'st me of a mistress and a dinner;
19   For which, I hope, thou felt'st I was displeased.

20   I am glad to see you in this merry vein:
21   What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me.

22   Yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth?
23   Think'st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that.

24   Hold, sir, for God's sake! now your jest is earnest:
25   Upon what bargain do you give it me?

26   Because that I familiarly sometimes
27   Do use you for my fool and chat with you,
28   Your sauciness will jest upon my love
29   And make a common of my serious hours.
30   When the sun shines let foolish gnats make sport,
31   But creep in crannies when he hides his beams.
32   If you will jest with me, know my aspect,
33   And fashion your demeanor to my looks,
34   Or I will beat this method in your sconce.

35   Sconce call you it? so you would leave battering, I
36   had rather have it a head: an you use these blows
37   long, I must get a sconce for my head and ensconce
38   it too; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders.
39   But, I pray, sir why am I beaten?

40   Dost thou not know?

41   Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.

42   Shall I tell you why?

43   Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every why hath
44   a wherefore.

45   Why, first,--for flouting me; and then, wherefore--
46   For urging it the second time to me.

47   Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,
48   When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme
49   nor reason?
50   Well, sir, I thank you.

51   Thank me, sir, for what?

52   Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing.

53   I'll make you amends next, to give you nothing for
54   something. But say, sir, is it dinner-time?

55   No, sir; I think the meat wants that I have.

56   In good time, sir; what's that?

57   Basting.

58   Well, sir, then 'twill be dry.

59   If it be, sir, I pray you, eat none of it.

60   Your reason?

61   Lest it make you choleric and purchase me another
62   dry basting.

63   Well, sir, learn to jest in good time: there's a
64   time for all things.

65   I durst have denied that, before you were so choleric.

66   By what rule, sir?

67   Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald
68   pate of father Time himself.

69   Let's hear it.

70   There's no time for a man to recover his hair that
71   grows bald by nature.

72   May he not do it by fine and recovery?

73   Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig and recover the
74   lost hair of another man.

75   Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is,
76   so plentiful an excrement?

77   Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts;
78   and what he hath scanted men in hair he hath given them in wit.

79   Why, but there's many a man hath more hair than wit.

80   Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair.

81   Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain dealers without wit.

82   The plainer dealer, the sooner lost: yet he loseth
83   it in a kind of jollity.

84   For what reason?

85   For two; and sound ones too.

86   Nay, not sound, I pray you.

87   Sure ones, then.

88   Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing.

89   Certain ones then.

90   Name them.

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

94   You would all this time have proved there is no
95   time for all things.

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

98   But your reason was not substantial, why there is no
99   time to recover.

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

102  I knew 'twould be a bald conclusion:
103  But, soft! who wafts us yonder?

104  Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown:
105  Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects;
106  I am not Adriana nor thy wife.
107  The time was once when thou unurged wouldst vow
108  That never words were music to thine ear,
109  That never object pleasing in thine eye,
110  That never touch well welcome to thy hand,
111  That never meat sweet-savor'd in thy taste,
112  Unless I spake, or look'd, or touch'd, or carved to thee.
113  How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,
114  That thou art thus estranged from thyself?
115  Thyself I call it, being strange to me,
116  That, undividable, incorporate,
117  Am better than thy dear self's better part.
118  Ah, do not tear away thyself from me!
119  For know, my love, as easy mayest thou fall
120  A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
121  And take unmingled that same drop again,
122  Without addition or diminishing,
123  As take from me thyself and not me too.
124  How dearly would it touch me to the quick,
125  Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious
126  And that this body, consecrate to thee,
127  By ruffian lust should be contaminate!
128  Wouldst thou not spit at me and spurn at me
129  And hurl the name of husband in my face
130  And tear the stain'd skin off my harlot-brow
131  And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring
132  And break it with a deep-divorcing vow?
133  I know thou canst; and therefore see thou do it.
134  I am possess'd with an adulterate blot;
135  My blood is mingled with the crime of lust:
136  For if we too be one and thou play false,
137  I do digest the poison of thy flesh,
138  Being strumpeted by thy contagion.
139  Keep then far league and truce with thy true bed;
140  I live unstain'd, thou undishonoured.

141  Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not:
142  In Ephesus I am but two hours old,
143  As strange unto your town as to your talk;
144  Who, every word by all my wit being scann'd,
145  Want wit in all one word to understand.

146  Fie, brother! how the world is changed with you!
147  When were you wont to use my sister thus?
148  She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.

149  By Dromio?

150  By me?

151  By thee; and this thou didst return from him,
152  That he did buffet thee, and, in his blows,
153  Denied my house for his, me for his wife.

154  Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman?
155  What is the course and drift of your compact?

156  I, sir? I never saw her till this time.

157  Villain, thou liest; for even her very words
158  Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.

159  I never spake with her in all my life.

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

162  How ill agrees it with your gravity
163  To counterfeit thus grossly with your slave,
164  Abetting him to thwart me in my mood!
165  Be it my wrong you are from me exempt,
166  But wrong not that wrong with a more contempt.
167  Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine:
168  Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,
169  Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state,
170  Makes me with thy strength to communicate:
171  If aught possess thee from me, it is dross,
172  Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss;
173  Who, all for want of pruning, with intrusion
174  Infect thy sap and live on thy confusion.

175  To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme:
176  What, was I married to her in my dream?
177  Or sleep I now and think I hear all this?
178  What error drives our eyes and ears amiss?
179  Until I know this sure uncertainty,
180  I'll entertain the offer'd fallacy.

181  Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner.

182  O, for my beads! I cross me for a sinner.
183  This is the fairy land: O spite of spites!
184  We talk with goblins, owls and sprites:
185  If we obey them not, this will ensue,
186  They'll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.

187  Why pratest thou to thyself and answer'st not?
188  Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot!

189  I am transformed, master, am I not?

190  I think thou art in mind, and so am I.

191  Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape.

192  Thou hast thine own form.

193  No, I am an ape.

194  If thou art changed to aught, 'tis to an ass.

195  'Tis true; she rides me and I long for grass.
196  'Tis so, I am an ass; else it could never be
197  But I should know her as well as she knows me.

198  Come, come, no longer will I be a fool,
199  To put the finger in the eye and weep,
200  Whilst man and master laugh my woes to scorn.
201  Come, sir, to dinner. Dromio, keep the gate.
202  Husband, I'll dine above with you to-day
203  And shrive you of a thousand idle pranks.
204  Sirrah, if any ask you for your master,
205  Say he dines forth, and let no creature enter.
206  Come, sister. Dromio, play the porter well.

207  Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
208  Sleeping or waking? mad or well-advised?
209  Known unto these, and to myself disguised!
210  I'll say as they say and persever so,
211  And in this mist at all adventures go.

212  Master, shall I be porter at the gate?

213  Ay; and let none enter, lest I break your pate.

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