From my poor cheek? then he hath wasted it: If voluble and sharp discourse be marr'd, And feeds from home: poor I am but his stale". Will lose his beauty; and though gold 'bides still, [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 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 Enter DROMIO of Syracuse. How now, sir? is your merry humour alter'd? Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me. What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me. ANT. S. Yea, dost thou jeer, and flout me in the teeth? ANT. S. Because that I familiarly sometimes And make a common of my serious hoursa. If you will jest with me, know my aspect, 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. VOL. I. G and insconce it a 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? 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. ANT. S. Why, but there's many a man hath more hair than wit. 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. b 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 falsing a. 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. 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; I am not Adriana, nor thy wife. The time was once, when thou unurg'd wouldst vow That never object pleasing in thine eye, That never meat sweet-savour'd in thy taste, Unless I spake, or look'd, or touch'd, or carv'd to thee 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, 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. I know thou canst; and therefore, see, thou do it. My blood is mingled with the crime of lust: 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? DRO. S. I, sir? I never saw her till this time. DRO. S. I never spake with her in all my life. ANT. S. How can she thus then call us by our names, 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. |