vein:

Dro. S. I am glad to see you in this merry 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. [Beating him. 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 hours1. 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 aspéct2, And fashion your demeanour to my looks, Or I will beat this method in your sconce.

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, and insconce3 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.

1 i. e. intrude on them when you please.

2 Study my countenance.

3 A sconce was a fortification; to insconce was to hide, to protect as with a fort.

OF ERRORS.

147

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 gave me for nothing.

you

Ant. S. I'll make you amends next, to give you nothing for something. But say, sir, is it dinnertime?

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 'twill 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 cholerick*,

chase me another dry basting.

and pur

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 cholerick.

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 that grows bald by nature.

hair,

Ant. S. May he not do it by fine and recovery 5?

So in The Taming of the Shrew :

'I tell thee, Kate, 'twas burnt and dried away,

And I expressly am forbid to touch it,

5 This is another instance of Shakspeare's acquaintance with

For it engenders choler, planteth anger.'

technical law terms.

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.

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 8.

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?

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 falsing 9.

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.

6 The old copy reads them: the emendation is Theobald's. 7 The following lines Upon [Suckling's] Aglaura, printed in folio,' may serve to illustrate this proverbial sentence:

This great voluminous pamphlet may be said To be like one that hath more hair than head; More excrement than body:-trees which sprout With broadest leaves have still the smallest fruit.' Parnassus Biceps. 1656. 8 Shakspeare too frequently alludes to this loss of hair by a certain disease. It seems to have been a joke that pleased him, and probably tickled his auditors.

9 To false, as a verb, has been long obsolete; but it was current in Shakspeare's time. Thus in King Edward IV. 1626 :— She falsed her faith, and brake her wedlock bands.'

ir, be

ew

Ant. S. You would all this time have proved, there is no time for all things.

Dro. S. Marry, and did, sir; namely, e'en 10 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, 'twould be a bald conclusion:
But soft! who wafts 11 us yonder!

11

Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA.

Adr. Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown;
Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspécts,
I am not Adriana, nor thy wife.

The time was once, when thou unurg'd would'st vow
That never words were musick to thine ear 12,
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, look'd, 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 may'st thou fall 13

10 The old copy, by mistake, has in.

Ji. e. beckons us. So in Hamlet:-
:-

'It wafts me still :-go on, I'll follow thee.'

12 Imitated by Pope in his Epistle from Sappho to Phaon:-
My musick then you could for ever hear,
And all my words were musick to your ear.'

13 Fall is here a verb active. So in Othello :-
Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.'

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,
Should'st thou but hear I were licentious?
And that this body, consecrate to thee,
By ruffian lust should be contaminate ?
Would'st 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 14 by thy contagion.

Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed;
I live disstain'd 15, 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?

14 Shakspeare is not singular in the use of this verb. So in Heywood's Iron Age, 1632:—

By this adultress basely strumpeted.'

15 i. e. unstain'd.