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'Tis dinner-time, quoth I; My gold, quoth he: Your meat doth burn, quoth I; My gold, quoth he: Will you come homes? quoth I; My gold, quoth he: Where is the thousand marks I gave thee, villain? The pig, quoth I, is burn'd; My gold, quoth he: My mistress, sir, quoth I; Hang up thy mistress; I know not thy mistress; out on thy mistress"! Luc. Quoth who?

Dro. E. Quoth my master:

I know, quoth he, no house, no wife, no mistress;
So that my errand, due unto my tongue,

I thank him, I bear home upon my shoulders;
For, in conclusion, he did beat me there.

Adr. Go back again, thou slave, and fetch him home.

Dro. E. Go back again, and be new beaten home? For God's sake, send some other messenger.

Adr. Back, slave, or I will break thy pate across. Dro. E. And he will bless that cross with other beating: il jordandle and be beh. lako

ほう

Between you I shall have a holy head.

Adr. Hence, prating peasant; fetch thy master home.

Dro. E. Am I so round10 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. Luc. Fie, how impatience loureth in your face! Adr. His company must do his minions grace, Whilst I at home starve for a merry look,

8 Home is not in the old copy: it was supplied to complete the verse by Capell.

9 We have an equally unmetrical line in the first Act:"Therefore, merchant, I'll limit thee this day."

10 He plays upon the word round, which signifies spherical, as applied to himself; and unrestrained, or free in speech or action, as regards his mistress. The King in Hamlet desires the Queen to be round with her son.

So in Shakspeare's Sonnets, the forty-seventh and seventyfifth

that mine eye is famish'd for a look. "Sometimes all fall with feeding on his sight, And by and by clean® starved for a look.'

ar

Hath homely age the 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 defeatures12: My decayed fair13
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 stale1a,
Luc. Self-harming jealousy!-fie, beat it hence.
Adr. Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dis-

pense.

I know his eye doth homage otherwhere;
Or else, what lets15 it but he would be here?
Sister, you know, he promis'd me a chain;
'Would, that alone alone he would: detain,
So he would keep fair quarter with his bed!

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12 Defeat and defeature were used for disfigurement or alteration of features. Cotgrave has 'Un visage desfaict: Growne very leane, pale, wan, or decayed in feature and colour.

It occure again in the last act; and is also used by the poet

in his Venus and Adonisth deformity, Kizi 1 11.

"To mingle beauty

And pure perfection with impure defeature.

The word is so expressive, that it is surprising that it has fallen into disuse. It is, I believe, peculiar to Shakspeare in this sense; though defeature is used for discomfiture, defeat, overthrow, by others.

13 Fair, strictly speaking, is not used here for fairness, as Steevens supposed; but for beauty. Shakspeare has often employed it in this sense, without any relation to whiteness of skin or complexion. The use of the substantive instead of the adjective, in this instance, is not peculiar to him; but the common practice of his contemporaries. Marston, in one of his Satires, says :—

As the greene meads, whose native outward faire bailes.
Breathes sweet perfumes into the neighbour air.

14 Though Shakspeare sometimes uses stale for a decoy or bait, I do not think that he meant it here; or that Adriana can mean to call herself his stalking horse. Probably she means she is thrown aside, forgotten, cast off, become stale to him. The diotionaries, in voce Exoletus, countenance this explanation. 15 Hinders.

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I see, the jewel, best enamelled,
Will lose his beauty; and though gold 'bides still,
That others touch, yet often touching will "engli
Wear gold and no man, that hath a name,
But falsehood and corruption doth it shame.
Since that my beauty cannot please his eye,
I'll weep what's left away, and weeping die.
Luc. How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!
[Exeunt.
Then th

SCENE II. The same.

Enter ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse. Har Ant. S. 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,

could not speak with Dromio, since at first I sent him from the mart: See, here he comes. Enter DROMIO of Syracuse.

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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 g
gold2
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? -
Dro. S. What answer, sir? when spake I such
a word?
Ant. S. Even now, even here, not half an hour since.
Dro. S. I did not see you since you sent me hence,
Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me.
Ant. S. Villain, thou didst deny the gold's receipt;
And told'st me of a mistress, and a dinner;.0781
For which, I hope, thou I was displeas'd.
Dro. S. I am glad to see in this merry vein:
What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me.
Ant. S. Yea, dost thou jeer, and flout me in the

teeth?

Think'st thou, I jest? Hold, take thou that, and tliat. [Beating him.

Dro. S. Hold, sir, for God's sake: now your jest is earnest:

Upon what bargain do you give it me?

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Ant. S. Because that I familiarly sometimes Do use you for my fool, and chat with you, Your sauciness will jest upon my love, And make a common of my serious hours1. When the sun shines, let foolish gnats make sport, But creep in crannies, when he hides his beams. If you will jest with me, know my aspéct2, And fashion your demeanour to my looks, Or I will beat this method in your sconce. Dro. S. Sconce, call you it? so you would leave battering, I had rather have it a head: an you use these blows long, I must get a sconce for my head, and insconces it too; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders. But, I pray, sir, why am I beaten?

Ant. S. Dost thou not know?

Dro. S. Nothing, sir; but that I am beaten.
Ant. S. Shall I tell you why?

Dro. S. Ay, sir, and wherefore; for, they say, every why hath a wherefore.healt

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Ant. S. Why, first, for flouting me; and then, drant wherefore,—

For urging it the second time to me.

Dro. S. Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season?

When, in the why, and the wherefore, is neither rhyme nor reason?

Well, sir, I thank you.be

Ant. S. Thank me, sir? for what?

Dro. S. Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing.

Ant. S. I'll make you amends next, to give you

1 ie. intrude on them when you please.

Study my countenance.

3 A sconce was a fortification; to insconce was to hide, to protect as with a fort.

nothing for something. But say, sir, is it dinnertime?

Dro. S. No, sir; I think, the meat wants that I have.

Ant. S. In good time, sir, what's that?

Dro. S. Basting, the Vet

Ant. S. Well, sir, then 'twill be dry.

Dro. S. If it be, sir, I pray you eat none of it. Ant. S. Your reason?

Dro. S. Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me another dry basting.

Ant. S. Well, sir, learn to jest in good time; There's a time for all things.

Dro. S. I durst have denied that, before you were so choleric.

Ant. S. By what rule, sir?

Dro. S. Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of father Time himself.

Ant. S. Let's hear it.

Dro. S. There's no time for a man to recover his hair, that grows bald by nature.

Ant. S. May he not do it by fine and recovery5? Dro. S. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair of another man.

Ant. S. Why is time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement?

Dro. S. Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts: and what he hath scanted men in hair, he hath given them in wit.

Ant. S. Why, but there's many a man hath more hair than wit.

So in The Taming of the Shrew :—

"I tell thee, Kate, 'twas burnt and dried away,
And I expressly am forbid to touch it,

For it engenders choler, planteth anger.'

5 This is another instance of Shakspeare's acquaintance with technial law terms.

The old copy reads them: the emendation is Theobald's. The following lines Upon [Suckling's] Aglaura, printed in folio, may serve to illustrate this proverbial sentence:

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