The Comedy of Errors
Act II, Scene 2
A public place.
Byam Shaw, 1901
- Enter Antipholus Erotes of Syracuse.
Antipholus of Syracuse
1 - 12- The gold I gave to Dromio is laid up
- Safe at the Centaur, and the heedful slave
- Is wand’red 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! See, here he comes.
- Enter Dromio of Syracuse.
- How now, sir, is your merry humor alter’d?
- As you love strokes, so jest with me again.
- You know no Centaur? You receiv’d 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 of Syracuse
13- What answer, sir? When spake I such a word?
Antipholus of Syracuse
14- Even now, even here, not half an hour since.
Dromio of Syracuse
15 - 16- I did not see you since you sent me hence
- Home to the Centaur with the gold you gave me.
Antipholus of Syracuse
17 - 19- Villain, thou didst deny the gold’s receipt,
- And toldst me of a mistress, and a dinner,
- For which I hope thou feltst I was displeas’d.
Dromio of Syracuse
20 - 21- I am glad to see you in this merry vein.
- What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me.
Antipholus of Syracuse
22 - 23- Yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth?
- Think’st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that.
- Beats Dromio.
Dromio of Syracuse
24 - 25- Hold, sir, for God’s sake! Now your jest is earnest,
- Upon what bargain do you give it me?
Antipholus of Syracuse
26 - 34- 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.
Dromio of Syracuse
35 - 39- Sconce call you it? So you would leave battering, I had
- rather have it a head. And 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
40- Dost thou not know?
Dromio of Syracuse
41- Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.
Antipholus of Syracuse
42- Shall I tell you why?
Dromio of Syracuse
43 - 44- Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say, every why hath a
- wherefore.
Antipholus of Syracuse
45 - 46- Why first—for flouting me, and then wherefore—
- For urging it the second time to me.
Dromio of Syracuse
47 - 50- 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
51- Thank me, sir, for what?
Dromio of Syracuse
52- Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing.
Antipholus of Syracuse
53 - 54- I’ll make you amends next, to give you nothing for
- something. But say, sir, is it dinner-time?
Plead you to me, fair dame?
Charles Lamb, author; Mary Lamb, author; Louis Rhead; circa 1918
Dromio of Syracuse
55- No, sir, I think the meat wants that I have.
Antipholus of Syracuse
56- In good time, sir: what’s that?
Dromio of Syracuse
57- Basting.
Antipholus of Syracuse
58- Well, sir, then ’twill be dry.
Dromio of Syracuse
59- If it be, sir, I pray you eat none of it.
Antipholus of Syracuse
60- Your reason?
Dromio of Syracuse
61 - 62- Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me another dry
- basting.
Antipholus of Syracuse
63 - 64- Well, sir, learn to jest in good time—there’s a time for all
- things.
Dromio of Syracuse
65- I durst have denied that before you were so choleric.
Antipholus of Syracuse
66- By what rule, sir?
Dromio of Syracuse
67 - 68- Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of
- Father Time himself.
Antipholus of Syracuse
69- Let’s hear it.
Dromio of Syracuse
70 - 71- There’s no time for a man to recover his hair that grows
- bald by nature.
Antipholus of Syracuse
72- May he not do it by fine and recovery?
Dromio of Syracuse
73 - 74- Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair
- of another man.
Antipholus of Syracuse
75 - 76- Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being (as it is) so
- plentiful an excrement?
Dromio of Syracuse
77 - 78- 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
79- Why, but there’s many a man hath more hair than wit.
Dromio of Syracuse
80- Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair.
Antipholus of Syracuse
81 - 82- Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain dealers without
- wit.
Dromio of Syracuse
83 - 84- The plainer dealer, the sooner lost; yet he loseth it in a
- kind of jollity.
Antipholus of Syracuse
85- For what reason?
Dromio of Syracuse
86- For two—and sound ones too.
Antipholus of Syracuse
87- Nay, not sound, I pray you.
Dromio of Syracuse
88- Sure ones then.
Antipholus of Syracuse
89- Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing.
Dromio of Syracuse
90- Certain ones then.
Antipholus of Syracuse
91- Name them.
Dromio of Syracuse
92 - 93- 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
94 - 95- You would all this time have prov’d there is no time for all
- things.
Dromio of Syracuse
96 - 97- Marry, and did, sir: namely, e’en no time to recover hair
- lost by nature.
Antipholus of Syracuse
98 - 99- But your reason was not substantial, why there is no time to
- recover.
Dromio of Syracuse
100 - 101- Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and therefore, to the
- world’s end, will have bald followers.
Antipholus of Syracuse
102 - 103- I knew ’twould be a bald conclusion. But soft, who wafts us
- yonder?
- Enter Adriana and Luciana.
Adriana
104 - 140- 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-savor’d in thy taste,
- Unless I spake, or look’d, or touch’d, or carv’d to thee.
- How comes it now, my husband, O, 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 would it touch thee 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 two be one, and thou play false,
- I do digest the poison of thy flesh,
- Being strumpeted by thy contagion.
- Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed,
- I live dis-stain’d, thou undishonored.
Stuart Robson as Dromio of Ephesus
Alfred S. Campbell, 1885
Antipholus of Syracuse
141 - 145- 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,
- Wants wit in all one word to understand.
Luciana
146 - 148- Fie, brother, how the world is chang’d with you:
- When were you wont to use my sister thus?
- She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.
Antipholus of Syracuse
149- By Dromio?
Dromio of Syracuse
150- By me?
Adriana
151 - 153- 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 of Syracuse
154 - 155- Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman?
- What is the course and drift of your compact?
Dromio of Syracuse
156- I, sir? I never saw her till this time.
Antipholus of Syracuse
157 - 158- Villain, thou liest, for even her very words
- Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.
Dromio of Syracuse
159- I never spake with her in all my life.
Antipholus of Syracuse
160 - 161- How can she thus then call us by our names,
- Unless it be by inspiration?
Adriana
162 - 174- 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.
In Ephesus I am but two hours old, as strange unto your town as to your talk
John Masey Wright, Robert Smirke, Thomas Stothard, circa 1800
Antipholus of Syracuse
175 - 180- 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 entertain the offer’d fallacy.
Luciana
181- Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner.
Dromio of Syracuse
182 - 186- O for my beads! I cross me for a sinner.
- This is the fairy land. O spite of spites!
- We talk with goblins, owls, and sprites;
- If we obey them not, this will ensue:
- they’ll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.
Luciana
187 - 188- Why prat’st thou to thyself, and answer’st not?
- Dromio, thou drumble, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot!
Dromio of Syracuse
189- I am transformed, master, am not I?
Antipholus of Syracuse
190- I think thou art in mind, and so am I.
Dromio of Syracuse
191- Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape.
Antipholus of Syracuse
192- Thou hast thine own form.
Dromio of Syracuse
193- No, I am an ape.
Luciana
194- If thou art chang’d to aught, ’tis to an ass.
Dromio of Syracuse
195 - 197- ’Tis true she rides me and I long for grass.
- ’Tis so, I am an ass, else it could never be
- But I should know her as well as she knows me.
Adriana
198 - 206- Come, come, no longer will I be a fool,
- To put the finger in the eye and weep,
- Whilst man and master laughs my woes to scorn.
- Come, sir, to dinner. Dromio, keep the gate.
- Husband, I’ll dine above with you today,
- And shrive you of a thousand idle pranks.
- Sirrah, if any ask you for your master,
- Say he dines forth, and let no creature enter.
- Come, sister. Dromio, play the porter well.
Antipholus of Syracuse
207 - 211- Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
- Sleeping or waking, mad or well-advis’d?
- Known unto these, and to myself disguis’d?
- I’ll say as they say, and persever so,
- And in this mist at all adventures go.
Dromio of Syracuse
212- Master, shall I be porter at the gate?
Adriana
213- Ay, and let none enter, lest I break your pate.
Luciana
214- Come, come, Antipholus, we dine too late.
- Exeunt.
Look strange and frown
Edwin Austin Abbey, 1889