Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Adaptations; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Stories, plots, etc. -- Juvenile literature
“These jests are out of season,” said Antipholus. “Where did you
leave the money?”
Dromio still answering that his mistress had sent him to fetch
Antipholus to dinner, “What mistress?” said Antipholus.
“Why, your worship’s wife, sir!” replied Dromio.
Antipholus having no wife, he was very angry with Dromio, and
said: “Because I familiarly sometimes chat with you, you presume
to jest with me in this free manner. I am not in a sportive humor
now. Where is the money? We being strangers here, how dare you
trust so great a charge from your own custody?”
Dromio, hearing his master, as he thought him, talk of their
being strangers, supposing Antipholus was jesting, replied,
merrily: “I pray you, sir, jest as you sit at dinner. I had no
charge but to fetch you home to dine with my mistress and her
sister.”
Now Antipholus lost all patience, and beat Dromio, who ran home
and told his mistress that his master had refused to come to
dinner and said that he had no wife.
Adriana, the wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, was very angry when
she heard that her husband said he had no wife; for she was of a
jealous temper, and she said her husband meant that he loved
another lady better than herself; and she began to fret, and say
unkind words of jealousy and reproach of her husband; and her
sister Luciana, who lived with her, tried in vain to persuade her
out of her groundless suspicions.
Antipholus of Syracuse went to the inn, and found Dromio with the
money in safety there, and, seeing his own Dromio, he was going
again to chide him for his free jests, when Adriana came up to
him, and, not doubting but it was her husband she saw, she began
to reproach him for looking strange upon her (as well he might,
never having seen this angry lady before); and then she told him
how well he loved her before they were married, and that now he
loved some other lady instead of her.
“How comes it now, my husband,” said she, “oh, how comes it that
I have lost your love?”
“Plead you to me, fair dame?” said the astonished Antipholus.
It was in vain he told her he was not her husband and that he had
been in Ephesus but two hours. She insisted on his going home
with her, and Antipholus at last, being unable to get away, went
with her to his brother’s house, and dined with Adriana and her
sister, the one calling him husband and the other brother, he,
all amazed, thinking he must have been married to her in his
sleep, or that he was sleeping now. And Dromio, who followed
them, was no less surprised, for the cook-maid, who was his
brother’s wife, also claimed him for her husband.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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