S. Ant.
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.
Luc.
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.
S. Ant.
By Dromio?
S. Dro.
By me?
Adr.
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.
S. Ant.
Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman?
What is the course and drift of your compact?
S. Dro.
I, sir? I never saw her till this time.
S. Ant.
Villain, thou liest, for even her very words
Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.
S. Dro.
I never spake with her in all my life.
S. Ant.
How can she thus then call us by our names,
Unless it be by inspiration?
Adr.
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.
S. Ant.
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.
Luc.
Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner.
S. Dro.
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.
Luc.
Why prat’st thou to thyself, and answer’st not?
Dromio, thou [drumble,] thou snail, thou slug, thou sot!
S. Dro.
I am transformed, master, am [not I]?
S. Ant.
I think thou art in mind, and so am I.
S. Dro.
Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape.
S. Ant.
Thou hast thine own form.
S. Dro.
No, I am an ape.
Luc.
If thou art chang’d to aught, ’tis to an ass.
S. Dro.
’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.
Adr.
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 to-day,
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.
S. Ant.
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.
S. Dro.
Master, shall I be porter at the gate?
Adr.
Ay, and let none enter, lest I break your pate.
Luc.
Come, come, Antipholus, we dine too late.
[Exeunt.]
¶
ACT III
Scene I
Enter Antipholus of Ephesus, his man Dromio [of Ephesus], Angelo the goldsmith, and Balthazar the merchant.
E. Ant.
Good Signior Angelo, you must excuse us all,
My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours:
Say that I linger’d with you at your shop
To see the making of her carcanet,
And that to-morrow you will bring it home.
But here’s a villain that would face me down
He