Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Adaptations; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Stories, plots, etc. -- Juvenile literature
Adriana believed the story the lady told her of her husband’s
madness must be true when he reproached her for shutting him out
of his own house; and remembering how he had protested all
dinner-time that he was not her husband and had never been in
Ephesus till that day, she had no doubt that he was mad; she
therefore paid the jailer the money, and, having discharged him,
she ordered her servants to bind her husband with ropes, and had
him conveyed into a dark room, and sent for a doctor to come and
cure him of his madness, Antipholus all the while hotly
exclaiming against this false accusation, which the exact
likeness he bore to his brother had brought upon him. But his
rage only the more confirmed them in the belief that he was mad;
and Dromio persisting in the same story, they bound him also and
took him away along with his master.
Soon after Adriana had put her husband into confinement a servant
came to tell her that Antipholus and Dromio must have broken
loose from their keepers, for that they were both walking at
liberty in the next street. On hearing this Adriana ran out to
fetch him home, taking some people with her to secure her husband
again; and her sister went along with her. When they came to the
gates of a convent in their neighborhood, there they saw
Antipholus and Dromio, as they thought, being again deceived by
the likeness of the twin brothers.
Antipholus of Syracuse was still beset with the perplexities this
likeness had brought upon him. The chain which the goldsmith had
given him was about his neck, and the goldsmith was reproaching
him for denying that he had it and refusing to pay for it, and
Antipholus was protesting that the goldsmith freely gave him the
chain in the morning, and that from that hour he had never seen
the goldsmith again.
And now Adriana came up to him and claimed him as her lunatic
husband who had escaped from his keepers, and the men she brought
with her were going to lay violent hands on Antipholus and
Dromio; but they ran into the convent, and Antipholus begged the
abbess to give him shelter in her house.
And now came out the lady abbess herself to inquire into the
cause of this disturbance. She was a grave and venerable lady,
and wise to judge of what she saw, and she would not too hastily
give up the man who had sought protection in her house; so she
strictly questioned the wife about the story she told of her
husband’s madness, and she said:
“What is the cause of this sudden distemper of your husband’s?
Has he lost his wealth at sea? Or is it the death of some dear
friend that has disturbed his mind?”
Adriana replied that no such things as these had been the cause.
“Perhaps,” said the abbess, “he has fixed his affections on some
other lady than you, his wife, and that has driven him to this
state.”
Adriana said she had long thought the love of some other lady was
the cause of his frequent absences from home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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