DROMIO OF EPHESUS.
Go back again, and be new beaten home?
For God’s sake, send some other messenger.
ADRIANA.
Back slave, or I will break thy pate across.
DROMIO OF EPHESUS.
And he will bless that cross with other beating.
Between you I shall have a holy head.
ADRIANA.
Hence, prating peasant. Fetch thy master home.
DROMIO OF EPHESUS.
Am I so round with you, as you with me,
That like a football you do spurn me thus?
You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither.
If I last in this service, you must case me in leather.
[_Exit._]
LUCIANA.
Fie, how impatience loureth in your face.
ADRIANA.
His company must do his minions grace,
Whilst I at home starve for a merry look.
Hath homely age th’ alluring beauty took
From my poor cheek? then he hath wasted it.
Are my discourses dull? barren my wit?
If voluble and sharp discourse be marr’d,
Unkindness blunts it more than marble hard.
Do their gay vestments his affections bait?
That’s not my fault; he’s master of my state.
What ruins are in me that can be found
By him not ruin’d? Then is he the ground
Of my defeatures. My decayed fair
A sunny look of his would soon repair;
But, too unruly deer, he breaks the pale
And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale.
LUCIANA.
Self-harming jealousy! fie, beat it hence.
ADRIANA.
Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense.
I know his eye doth homage otherwhere,
Or else what lets it but he would be here?
Sister, you know he promis’d me a chain;
Would that alone, a love he would detain,
So he would keep fair quarter with his bed.
I see the jewel best enamelled
Will lose his beauty; yet the gold bides still
That others touch, yet often touching will
Wear gold; and no man that hath a name
By falsehood and corruption doth it shame.
Since that my beauty cannot please his eye,
I’ll weep what’s left away, and weeping die.
LUCIANA.
How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!
[_Exeunt._]
SCENE II. The same
Enter Antipholus of Syracuse.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
The gold I gave to Dromio is laid up
Safe at the Centaur, and the heedful slave
Is wander’d forth in care to seek me out.
By computation and mine host’s report.
I could not speak with Dromio since at first
I sent him from the mart. See, here he comes.
Enter Dromio of Syracuse.
How now, sir! is your merry humour alter’d?
As you love strokes, so jest with me again.
You know no Centaur? you receiv’d no gold?
Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner?
My house was at the Phoenix? Wast thou mad,
That thus so madly thou didst answer me?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
What answer, sir? when spake I such a word?
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
Even now, even here, not half an hour since.
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
I did not see you since you sent me hence,
Home to the Centaur with the gold you gave me.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
Villain, thou didst deny the gold’s receipt,
And told’st me of a mistress and a dinner,
For which I hope thou felt’st I was displeas’d.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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