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 fairb

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".
Luc. Self-harming jealousy!-fie! beat it hence.
ADR. 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 promis'd me a chain;-
Would that alone alone he would detain a,
So he would keep fair quarter with his bed!
I see, the jewel best enamelled

Will lose his beauty; and though gold 'bides still,
That others touch, yet often touching will
Wear gold; and so no man that hath a name,
But falsehood and corruption doth it shame *.
Since that my beauty cannot please his eye,
I'll weep what's left away, and weeping die.
Luc. How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!

a

Defeatures-want of beauty-defect of features.
Fair is used substantively, for beauty.

• Stale is stalking horse: thus, in Ben Jonson's 'Catiline'

d In the first folio we have

"Dull, stupid Lentulus,

My stale, with whom I stalk."

"Would that alone a loue he would detain."

[Exeunt.

The obvious error, says Malone, was corrected in the second folio. But what sense have we obtained by the correction? The repetition of the word alone perplexes the sense, without rendering the passage emphatic.

• This passage has been altered by Pope, Warburton, and Steevens, from the original; and it is so impossible to gain a tolerable reading without changing the text, that we leave it as it is commonly received. In the first folio the reading is

"I see the jewel best enamelled

Will lose his beauty; yet the gold bides still
That others touch; and often touching will
Where gold; and no man, that hath a name,
By falsehood and corruption doth it shame."

SCENE II.-The same.

Enter ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse.

ANT. S. 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: See, here he comes.

Enter DROMIO of Syracuse.

How now, sir? is your merry humour 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?

DRO. S. What answer, sir? when spake I such a word?
ANT. S. Even now, even here, not half an hour since.
DRO. S. I did not see you since you sent me hence,

Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me.
ANT. S. 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 displeas'd.
DRO. S. I am glad to see you in this merry vein :

What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me.

ANT. S. Yea, dost thou jeer, and flout me in the teeth?
Think'st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that.
DRO. S. Hold, sir, for God's sake: now your jest is earnest ;
Upon what bargain do you give it me?

ANT. S. 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 a.
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 demeanour to my looks,

Or I will beat this method in your sconce.

[Beating him.

DRO. S. 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,

:

• The "serious hours" of Antipholus are his private hours: the "sauciness" of Dromio intrudes upon those hours, and deprives his master of his exclusive possession of them-makes them " a common" property.

VOI.. I.

G

a

and insconce it too; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders. But,

I pray, sir, why am I beaten ?

ANT. S. Dost thou not know?

DRO. S. Nothing, sir; but that I am beaten,

ANT. S. Shall I tell you why?

DRO. S. Ay, sir, and wherefore; for, they say, every why hath a wherefore.

ANT. S. Why, first,-for flouting me; and then, wherefore,

For urging it the second time to me.

DRO. S. 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.

ANT. S. Thank me, sir? for what?

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

ANT. S. I'll make you amends next, to give you nothing for something. But

say, sir, is it dinner-time?

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

ANT. S. In good time, sir, what's that?

DRO. S. Basting.

ANT. S. Well, sir, then 't will be dry.

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

ANT. S. Your reason?

DRO. S. Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me another dry basting.

ANT. S. Well, sir, learn to jest in good time. There's a time for all things. DRO. S. I durst have denied that, before you were so choleric.

ANT. S. By what rule, sir?

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

ANT. S. Let's hear it.

DRO. S. There's no time for a man to recover his hair, that grows bald by nature. ANT. S. May he not do it by fine and recovery?

DRO. S. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair of another

man.

ANT. S. Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement?

DRO. S. Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts: and what he hath scanted men in hair, he hath given them in wit.

с

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

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

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

DRO. S. The plainer dealer, the sooner lost: Yet he loseth it in a kind of jollity.

ANT. S. For what reason?

• Insconce it-defend it-fortify it.

Periwig. This, the word in the folio, is ordinarily printed peruke
Men. The original has them; no doubt a typographical error.

DRO. S. For two; and sound ones too.

ANT. S. Nay, not sound, I pray you.

DRO. S. Sure ones then.

ANT. S. Nay, not sure, in a thing falsinga.

DRO. S. Certain ones then.

ANT. S. Name them.

DRO. S. The one, to save the money that he spends in tiring; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his porridge.

ANT. S. You would all this time have proved there is no time for all things. DRO. S. Marry, and did, sir; namely, in no time to recover hair lost by nature. ANT. S. But your reason was not substantial, why there is no time to recover. DRO. S. Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and therefore, to the world's end, will have bald followers.

ANT. S. I knew 't would be a bald conclusion: But soft! who wafts us yonder?

Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA.

ADR. 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-savour'd in thy taste,

Unless I spake, or look'd, or touch'd, or carv'd to thee

How comes it now, my husband, oh, 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 d

A drop of water in the breaking gulf,

And take unmingled thence that drop again,

Without addition or diminishing,

Falsing the participle of the obsolete verb to false. Shakspere uses this verb once only, viz. in 'Cymbeline,' Act II., Scene 3:

""T is gold

Which buys admittance; oft it doth: yea, and makes
Diana's rangers false themselves."

Tiring attiring. In the folio we have trying, an obvious typographical error, corrected by Pope.

In. So the first folio. The ordinary reading is "e'en no time." But in agrees well enough with the long joke about "hair" and "periwig." Dromio proves that "there is no time for all things," because a man recovers his hair, by means of a periwig, "in no time."

Fall is here used as a verb active.

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 unstain'd", thou, undishonoured.

ANT. S. 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.

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.

ANT. S. By Dromio?

DRO. S. 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.
ANT. S. Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman?
What is the course and drift of your compact?

DRO. S. I, sir? I never saw her till this time.
ANT. S. Villain, thou liest; for even her very words
Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.

DRO. S. I never spake with her in all my life.

ANT. S. How can she thus then call us by our names,

Unless it be by inspiration?

Off. The folio has of, as in similar cases, for off. We may read of here, without injury to the sense, though off is more natural and more emphatic.

Unstain'd. The original has distain'd, which means stained, defiled. Theobald holds that we must either read unstained; or, by adding a hyphen, give the preposition dis a privative force. But we must recollect that an actor could not speak a hyphen. We agree with Mr. Dyce in the simpler reading of unstain'd.