The Comedy of Errors
Act III, Scene 2
Before the house of Antipholus of Ephesus.
Byam Shaw, 1901
- Enter Luciana with Antipholus of Syracuse.
Luciana
1 - 28- 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:
- Look sweet, speak 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 is doubled with an evil word.
- 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
29 - 52- 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!
Luciana
53- What, are you mad, that you do reason so?
Antipholus of Syracuse
54- Not mad, but mated—how, I do not know.
Luciana
55- It is a fault that springeth from your eye.
Antipholus of Syracuse
56- For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by.
Luciana
57- Gaze when you should, and that will clear your sight.
Antipholus of Syracuse
58- As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night.
Luciana
59- Why call you me love? Call my sister so.
Antipholus of Syracuse
60- Thy sister’s sister.
Luciana
61- That’s my sister.
Antipholus of Syracuse
62 - 66- 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.
Luciana
67- All this my sister is, or else should be.
Antipholus of Syracuse
68 - 71- 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
72 - 73- O soft, sir, hold you still;
- I’ll fetch my sister to get her good will.
- Exit.
- Enter Dromio of Syracuse.
Antipholus of Syracuse
74- Why, how now, Dromio, where run’st thou so fast?
Dromio of Syracuse
75 - 76- Do you know me, sir? Am I Dromio? Am I your man? Am I
- myself?
Antipholus of Syracuse
77- Thou art Dromio, thou art my man, thou art thyself.
Dromio of Syracuse
78- I am an ass, I am a woman’s man, and besides myself.
Antipholus of Syracuse
79- What woman’s man, and how besides thyself?
Dromio of Syracuse
80 - 81- Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a woman: one that
- claims me, one that haunts me, one that will have me.
Antipholus of Syracuse
82- What claim lays she to thee?
Dromio of Syracuse
83 - 86- 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
87- What is she?
Dromio of Syracuse
88 - 90- 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.
Give me thy hand.
From: Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare
Mary Cowden Clarke, Charles Cowden Clarke, 1870
Antipholus of Syracuse
91- How dost thou mean a fat marriage?
Dromio of Syracuse
92 - 97- 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.
Antipholus of Syracuse
98- What complexion is she of?
Dromio of Syracuse
99 - 101- 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.
Antipholus of Syracuse
102- That’s a fault that water will mend.
Dromio of Syracuse
103- No, sir, ’tis in grain, Noah’s flood could not do it.
Antipholus of Syracuse
104- What’s her name?
Dromio of Syracuse
105 - 106- Nell, sir; but her name and three quarters, that’s an ell
- and three quarters, will not measure her from hip to hip.
Antipholus of Syracuse
107- Then she bears some breadth?
Dromio of Syracuse
108 - 109- 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
110- In what part of her body stands Ireland?
Dromio of Syracuse
111- Marry, sir, in her buttocks, I found it out by the bogs.
Antipholus of Syracuse
112- Where Scotland?
Dromio of Syracuse
113- I found it by the barrenness, hard in the palm of the hand.
Antipholus of Syracuse
114- Where France?
Dromio of Syracuse
115 - 116- In her forehead, arm’d and reverted, making war against her
- heir.
Antipholus of Syracuse
117- Where England?
Dromio of Syracuse
118 - 120- 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.
Antipholus of Syracuse
121- Where Spain?
Dromio of Syracuse
122- Faith, I saw it not; but I felt it hot in her breath.
Antipholus of Syracuse
123- Where America, the Indies?
Dromio of Syracuse
124 - 127- 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
Feb 26, 2019 Miko A carrect (also spelled “carrack”) was a large galleon. Carrects were used as merchant ships and warships. - be ballast at her nose.
Antipholus of Syracuse
128- Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands?
Dromio of Syracuse
129 - 135- O, sir, I did not look so low. To conclude, this drudge or
- diviner laid claim to me, call’d me Dromio, swore I was
- assur’d 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, amaz’d, ran from her as a witch.
- And I think, if my breast had not been made of faith, and my heart of steel,
-
She had transform’d me to a curtal dog, and made me turn i’ th’ wheel.
Feb 26, 2019 Miko A dog with a docked tail.
Antipholus of Syracuse
136 - 142- Go hie thee presently, post to the road,
- And if the wind blow any way from shore,
- I will not harbor in this town tonight.
- 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
143 - 144- As from a bear a man would run for life,
- So fly I from her that would be my wife.
- Exit.
Antipholus of Syracuse
145 - 153- 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
154- Master Antipholus—
Antipholus of Syracuse
155- Ay, that’s my name.
Angelo
156 - 158- I know it well, sir. Lo here’s the chain.
- I thought to have ta’en you at the Porpentine;
- The chain unfinish’d made me stay thus long.
Antipholus of Syracuse
159- What is your will that I shall do with this?
Angelo
160- What please yourself, sir; I have made it for you.
Antipholus of Syracuse
161- Made it for me, sir! I bespoke it not.
Angelo
162 - 165- 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.
Antipholus of Syracuse
166 - 167- I pray you, sir, receive the money now,
- For fear you ne’er see chain nor money more.
Angelo
168- You are a merry man, sir, fare you well.
- Exit.
Antipholus of Syracuse
169 - 175- 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.
Teach me, dear creature
Edwin Austin Abbey, 1889