The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 3: Books for ChildrenLamb, Charles
General
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 3: Books for Children
Lamb, Charles
Children's poetry; Children's stories
When the married Antipholis was denied entrance into his own house
(those within supposing him to be already there), he had gone away
very angry, believing it to be one of his wife's jealous freaks, to
which she was very subject, and remembering that she had often falsely
accused him of visiting other ladies, he to be revenged on her for
shutting him out of his own house, determined to go and dine with this
lady, and she receiving him with great civility, and his wife having
so highly offended him, Antipholis promised to give her a gold chain,
which he had intended as a present for his wife; it was the same chain
which the goldsmith by mistake had given to his brother. The lady
liked so well the thoughts of having a fine gold chain, that she gave
the married Antipholis a ring; which when, as she supposed (taking his
brother for him), he denied, and said he did not know her, and left
her in such a wild passion, she began to think he was certainly out
of his senses; and presently she resolved to go and tell Adriana that
her husband was mad. And while she was telling it to Adriana, he came,
attended by the jailor (who allowed him to come home to get the money
to pay the debt), for the purse of money, which Adriana had sent by
Dromio, and he had delivered to the other Antipholis.
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 jailor 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: Antipholis 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 Antipholis 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 neighbourhood, there they saw Antipholis and Dromio, as they
thought, being again deceived by the likeness of the twin-brothers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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