took From my poor cheek? then he hath wasted it: Are my discourses dull? barren my wit? If voluble and sharp discourse be marr'd, Unkindness blunts it more than marble hard: Do their gay vestments his affections bait? That's not my fault: he's master of my state: What ruins are in me that can be found, By him not ruin'd? then is he the ground Of my defeatures. My decayed fair A sunny look of his would soon repair But, too unruly deer, he breaks the pale And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale.”
“Self-harming jealousy! fie, beat it hence!”
“Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense. I know his eye doth homage otherwhere, Or else what lets it but he would be here? Sister, you know he promised me a chain; Would that alone, alone he would detain, So he would keep fair quarter with his bed! I see the jewel best enameled Will lose his beauty; yet the gold bides still, That others touch, and often touching will Wear gold: and no man that hath a name, By falsehood and corruption doth it shame. Since that my beauty cannot please his eye, I'll weep what's left away, and weeping die.”
Luciana gets in one last scolding, “How many fond fools serve mad jealousy,” and Adriana stomps away.
SCENE FOUR
The travelling Antipholus (of Syracuse) enters the public square in Ephesus, talking to himself, “The gold I gave to Dromio is laid up Safe at the Centaur; and the heedful slave Is wander'd 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.”
Just then, his own servant Dromio enters, and Antipholus addresses him angrily, “How now sir! is your merry humour alter'd? As you love strokes, so jest with me again. You know no Centaur? you received 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 is confused. “What answer, sir? when spake I such a word?”
“Even now, even here, not half an hour since.”
“I did not see you since you sent me hence, Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me.”
“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 displeased.”
“I am glad to see you in this merry vein: What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me.”
“Yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth? Think'st thou I jest?” With that, Antipholus begins beating his servant. “Hold, take thou that, and that.”
“Hold, sir, for now your jest is earnest: Upon what bargain do you give it me?”
“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 demeanor to my looks, Or I will beat this method in your sconce.”
“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?”
“Dost thou not know?”
“Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.”
“Shall I tell you why?”
“Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every why hath a wherefore.”
“Why, first,--for flouting me; and then, wherefore--For urging it the second time to me.”
“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.”
“Thank me, sir, for what?”
“Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing.”
“I'll make you amends next, to give you nothing for something. But say, sir, is it dinner-time?”
“No, sir; I think the meat wants that I have.”
“In good time, sir; what's that?”
“Basting.”
“Well, sir, then 'twill be dry.”
“If it be, sir, I pray you, eat none of it.”
“Your reason?”
“Lest it make you choleric and purchase me another dry basting.”
“Well, sir, learn to jest in good time: there's a time for all things.”
“I durst have denied that, before you were so choleric.”
“By what rule, sir?”
“Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of father Time himself.”
“Let's hear it.”
“There's no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by nature.”
“May he not do it by fine and recovery?”
“Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig and recover the lost hair of another man.”
“Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement?”
“Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts; and what he hath scanted men in hair he hath given them in wit.”
“Why, but there's many a man hath more hair than wit.”
“Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair.”
“Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain dealers without wit.”
“The plainer dealer, the sooner lost: yet he loseth it in a kind of jollity.”
“For what reason?”
“For two; and sound ones too.”
“Nay, not sound, I pray you.”
“Sure ones, then.”
“Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing.”
“Certain ones then.”
“Name them.”
“The one, to save the money that he spends in trimming; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his porridge.”
“You would all this time have proved there is no time for all things.”
“Marry, and did, sir; namely, no time to recover hair lost by nature.”
“But your reason was not substantial, why there is no time to recover.”
“Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald and therefore to the world's end will have bald followers.”
“I knew 'twould be a bald conclusion: But, soft! who wafts us yonder?”
Just at that moment Adriana and Luciana have entered the square and Adriana addresses the man she believes to be her husband, “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 unurged 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-savor'd in thy taste, Unless I spake, or look'd, or touch'd, or carved to thee. How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it, that thou art thus 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 mayest thou fall A drop of water in the breaking gulf, And take unmingled that same drop again, Without addition or diminishing, As take from me thyself and not me too. How dearly would it touch me to the quick, Shouldst 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 too be one and thou play false, I do digest the poison of thy flesh, Being strumpeted by thy contagion. Keep then far league and truce with thy true bed; I live unstain'd, thou undishonoured.”
The shocked and confused Antipholus (of Syracuse) responds to her, “Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not: In Ephesus 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, Want wit in all one word to understand.”
His “sister-in-law” chides him also, “Fie, brother! how the world is
changed with you! When were you wont to use my sister thus? She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.”
Antipholus cannot understand their strange words. “By Dromio?”
Dromio has been looking on with as much confusion as his master, “By me?”
Adriana chides them both, “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 looks questioningly at Dromio. “Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman? What is the course and drift of your compact?”
“I, sir? I never saw her till this time.”
“Villain, thou liest; for even her very words Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.”
“I never spake with her in all my life.”
“How can she thus then call us by our names, Unless it be by inspiration.”
Adriana fusses at “her husband” yet again, “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 Syracuse) cannot make sense of the strange words being spoken by this stranger woman. “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