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Dro. S. Not a man of those, but he hath the wit to lose his hairs.

Ant. S. Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain dealers without wit.

Dro. S. The plainer dealer, the sooner lost: Yet he loseth it in a kind of jollity.

Ant. S. For what reason?

Dro. S. For two; and sound ones too.
Ant. S. Nay, not sound, I pray you.

Dro. S. Sure ones then.

Ant. S. Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing.

Dro. S. Certain ones then.

Ant. S. Name them.

Dro. S. The one, to save the money that he spends in tiring; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his porridge.

Ant. S. You would all this time have proved, there is no time for all things.

Dro. S. Marry, and did, sir; namely, e'en10 no time to recover hair lost by nature.

Ant. S. But your reason was not substantial, why there is no time to recover.

Dro. S. Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and therefore, to the world's end, will have bald followers.

Ant. S. I knew, 'twould be a bald conclusion: But soft! who wafts11 us yonder?

"This great voluminous pamphlet may be said
To be like one that hath more hair than head;
More excrement than body :-trees which sprout
With broadest leaves have still the smallest fruit.'
Parnassus Biceps. 1656.

Shakspeare too frequently alludes to this loss of hair by a certain disease. It seems to have been a joke that pleased him, and probably tickled his auditors.

9 To false, as a verb, has been long obsolete; but it was current in Shakspeare's time. Thus in King Edward IV. 1626:

'She falsed her faith, and brake her wedlock bands.'

10 The old copy, by mistake, has in.

11 i. e. beckons us. So in Hamlet :

It wafts me still:-go on, I'll follow thee.'

Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA.

Adr. Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown;
Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects,
I am not Adriana, nor thy wife.

The time was once, when thou unurg'd would'st vow
That never words were music to thine ear12,
That never object pleasing in thine eye,
That never touch well welcome to thy hand,
That never meat sweet-savour'd in thy taste,
Unless I spake, look'd, touch'd, or carv'd to thee.
How comes it now, my husband, oh, how comes it,
That thou art then estranged from thyself?
Thyself I call it, being strange to me,
That undividable, incorporate,

Am better than thy dear self's better part.
Ah, do not tear away thyself from me;
For know, my love, as easy may'st thou fall13
A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
And take unmingled thence that drop again,
Without addition, or diminishing,

As take from me thyself, and not me too.
How dearly would it touch thee to the quick,
Should'st thou but hear I were licentious?
And that this body, consecrate to thee,
By ruffian lust should be contaminate?
Would'st thou not spit at me, and spurn at me,
And hurl the name of husband in my face,
And tear the stain'd skin off my harlot brow,
And from my false hand cut the wedding ring,
And break it with a deep divorcing vow?

I know thou canst; and therefore, see, thou do it.
I am possess'd with an adulterate blot;
My blood is mingled with the crime of lust:
For, if we two be one, and thou play false,
I do digest the poison of thy flesh,

12 Imitated by Pope in his Epistle from Sappho to Phaon :'My music then you could for ever hear,

And all my words were music to your ear.'

13 Fall is here a verb active. So in Othello :-
'Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.'

Being strumpeted14 by thy contagion.

Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed; I live disstain'd15, thou undishonoured.

Ant. S. Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not:

In Ephesus I am but two hours old,

As strange unto your town, as to your talk;
Who, every word by all my wit being scann'd,
Want wit in all one word to understand.

Luc. Fie, brother! how the world is chang'd with

you:

When were you wont to use my sister thus?
She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.
Ant. S. By Dromio?

Dro. S. By me?

Adr. By thee: and this thou didst return from him,

That he did buffet thee, and, in his blows

Denied my house for his, me for his wife.

Ant. S. Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman?

What is the course and drift of your compact? Dro. S. I sir? I never saw her till this time. Ant. S. Villain, thou liest; for even her very words Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.

Dro. S. I never spake with her in all my life. Ant. S. How can she thus then call us by our names, Unless it be by inspiration?

Adr. How ill agrees it with your gravity,
To counterfeit thus grossly with your slave,
Abetting him to thwart me in my mood?
Be it my wrong, you are from me exempt16,

14 Shakspeare is not singular in the use of this verb. So in Heywood's Iron Age, 1632:

'By this adultress basely strumpeted.'

15 i. e. unstain'd.

16 i. e. separated, parted Shakspeare uses the word in the first part of King Henry VI. Act ii. Sc. 4, in a similar sense :And by his treason stand'st thou not attainted, Corrupted, and exempt from ancient gentry?'

But wrong not that wrong with a more contempt.
Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine:
Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine17:
Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state,
Makes me with thy strength to communicate:
If aught possess thee from me, it is dross,
Usurping ivy, briar, or idle18 moss:

Who, all for want of pruning, with intrusion
Infect thy sap, and live on thy confusion.

Ant. S. To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme:

What, was I married to her in my dream?
Or sleep I now, and think I hear all this?
What error drives our eyes and ears amiss?
Until I know this sure uncertainty,

I'll entertain the offer'd19 fallacy.

Luc. Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner. Dro. S. O, for my beads! I cross me for a sinner. This is the fairy land;-0, spite of spites! We talk with goblins, owls, and elvish sprites20;

Malone has given an instance of a similar use of the word from a letter of the Earl of Nottingham's in favour of Edward Alleyn: 'Situate in a very remote and exempte place near Coulding Lane, &c. So in The Triumph of Honour, by Beaumont and Fletcher: lest for contempt

They fix you there a rock whence they're exempt.'

17 So Milton's Paradise Lost. b. v.:

6- -They led the vine

To wed her elm. She spous'd about him twines
Her marriagible arms.'

Thus also in A Midsummer Night's Dream :

the female ivy 80

Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.'

Mr Douce observes that there is something extremely beautiful in making the vine the lawful spouse of the elm, and the parasite plants here named its concubines. See also Ovid's tale of Vertumnus and Pomona.

18 i. e. unfruitful. So in Othello:

autres vast, and deserts idle.'

19 The old copy reads freed; which is evidently wrong, perhaps a corruption of proffered or offer'd.

20 Theobald changed owls to uphes in this passage most unwarrantably. It was those 'unlucking birds', the striges or screechowls, which are meant. It has been asked, 'how should Shakspeare know that screech-owls were considered by the Romans as witches ?" Do these cavillers think that Shakspeare never

Vol. IV.

7

If we obey them not, this will ensue,

They'll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue. Luc. Why prat'st thou to thyself, and answer'st not? Dromio, thou drone21, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot! Dro. S. I am transformed, master, am not I? Ant. S. I think, thou art, in mind, and so am I. Dro. S. Nay, master, both in mind, and in my shape. Ant. S. Thou hast thine own form.

Dro. S.
No, I am an ape.
Luc. If thou art chang'd to aught, 'tis to an ass.
Dro. S. "Tis true; she rides me, and I long for grass.
"Tis so, I am an ass; else it could never be,
But I should know her as well as she knows me.
Adr. Come, come, no longer will I be a fool,
To put the finger in the eye and weep,
Whilst man, and master, laugh my woes to scorn.—
Come, sir, to dinner; Dromio, keep the gate:-
Husband, I'll dine above with you to-day,
And shrive22 you of a thousand idle pranks:
Sirrah, if any ask you for your master,
Say, he dines forth, and let no creature enter.-
Come, sister:-Dromio, play the porter well.
Ant. S. Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
Sleeping or waking? mad, or well advis'd?
Known unto these, and to myself disguis'd!
I'll say as they say, and perséver so,
And in this mist at all adventures go.

Dro. S. Master, shall I be porter at the gate?
Adr. Ay; and let none enter, lest I break your pate.
Luc. Come, come, Antipholus, we dine too late.
[Exeunt.

looked into a book? Take an extract from the Cambridge Latin Dictionary, 1594, 8vo. probably the very book he used. 'Strix, a scritche owle; an unluckie kind of bird (as they of old time said) which sucked out the blood of infants lying in their cradles; a witch, that changeth the favour of children; an hagge or fairie. Too in The London Prodigal, a comedy, 1605:-"Soul, I think I am sure crossed or witch'd with an owl' The epithet elvish is not in the first folio; but the second has elves, which was probably meant for elvish.

21 The old copy reads 'Dromio, thou Dromio.' The emendation is Theobald's.

22 i. e. call you to confession.

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