SCENE II. The same. The Comedy of Errors  Shakespeare homepage  |  Comedy of Errors  | Act 3, Scene 2 

 Previous scene  |  Next scene  SCENE II. The same. 

 Enter LUCIANA and ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse  LUCIANA  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, be 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 d eeds are 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  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, 

 Smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak, 

 The folded meaning of your words' deceit. 

 Against my soul's pure truth why labour you 

 To make it wander in an unknown field? 

 Are you a god? would you create me new? 

 Transform me then, and to your power 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  What, are you mad, that you do reason so? 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  Not mad, but mated; how, I do not know. 

 LUCIANA  It is a fault that springeth from your eye. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by. 

 LUCIANA  Gaze where you should, and that will clear your sight. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night. 

 LUCIANA  Why call you me love? call my sister so. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  Thy sister's sister. 

 LUCIANA  That's my sister. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  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  All this my sister is, or else should be. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  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  O, soft, air! hold you still: 

 I'll fetch my sister, to get her good will. 



 Exit 

 Enter DROMIO of Syracuse  ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  Why, how now, Dromio! where runn'st thou so fast? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  Do you know me, sir? am I Dromio? am I your man? 

 am I myself? 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  Thou art Dromio, thou art my man, thou art thyself. 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  I am an ass, I am a woman's man and besides myself. 

 ANTIPHOLUS  What woman's man? and how besides thyself? besides thyself? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  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  What claim lays she to thee? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  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  What is she? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  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. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  How dost thou mean a fat marriage? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  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  What complexion is she of? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  Swart, like my shoe, but her face nothing half so 

 clean kept: for why, she sweats; a man may go over 

 shoes in the grime of it. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  That's a fault that water will mend. 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  No, sir, 'tis in grain; Noah's flood could not do it. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  What's her name? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  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  Then she bears some breadth? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  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  In what part of her body stands Ireland? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  Marry, in her buttocks: I found it out by the bogs. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  Where Scotland? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  I found it by the barrenness; hard in the palm of the hand. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  Where France? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  In her forehead; armed and reverted, making war 

 against her heir. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  Where England? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  I looked 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  Where Spain? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  Faith, I saw it not; but I felt it hot in her breath. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  Where America, the Indies? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  Oh, sir, upon her nose all o'er embellished with 

 rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich 

 aspect to the hot breath of Spain; who sent whole 

 armadoes of caracks to be ballast at her nose. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands? 

 DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  Oh, sir, I did not look so low. To conclude, this 

 drudge, or diviner, laid claim to me, call'd me 

 Dromio; swore I was assured 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 amazed 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' the wheel. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  Go hie thee presently, post to the road: 

 An if the wind blow any way from shore, 

 I will not harbour in this town to-night: 

 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  As from a bear a man would run for life, 

 So fly I from her that would be my wife. 



 Exit  ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  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  Master Antipholus,-- 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  Ay, that's my name. 

 ANGELO  I know it well, sir, lo, here is the chain. 

 I thought to have ta'en you at the Porpentine: 

 The chain unfinish'd made me stay thus long. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  What is your will that I shall do with this? 

 ANGELO  What please yourself, sir: I have made it for you. 

 ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  Made it for me, sir! I bespoke it not. 

 ANGELO  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  I pray you, sir, receive the money now, 

 For fear you ne'er see chain nor money more. 

 ANGELO  You are a merry man, sir: fare you well. 



 Exit  ANTIPHOLUS 

 OF SYRACUSE  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. 



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