ANT. S. Shall I tell you why?

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

ANT. S. Why, first,-for flouting me; and then, 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.

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 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.

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 cholerick, and purchase me another dry basting.

next,] Our author probably wrote-next time.

MALONE.

* Lest it make you cholerick, &c.] So, in The Taming of the Shrew:

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 cholerick.

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 recovery? DRO. S. Yes, to pay a fine for a peruke, 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?"

"I tell thee Kate, 'twas burnt and dried away,
"And I expressly am forbid to touch it,
"For it engenders choler, planteth anger," &c.

STEEVENS.

by fine and recovery?] This attempt at pleasantry must have originated from our author's clerkship to an attorney. He has other jokes of the same school. STEEVENS,

7 Ant. S. Why is Time &c.] In former editions:

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 them in hair, he hath given them in wit.

Surely, this is mock-reasoning, and a contradiction in sense. Can hair be supposed a blessing, which Time bestows on beasts peculiarly; and yet that he hath scanted them of it too? Men and Them, I observe, are very frequently mistaken, vice versa, for each other, in the old impressions of our author.

THEOBALD. The same error is found in the Induction to King Henry IV. P. II. edit. 1623:

"Stuffing the ears of them with false reports."

MALONE.

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.

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

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

Not a man of those, but he hath the wit to lose his hair.] That is, Those who have more hair than wit, are easily entrapped by loose women, and suffer the consequences of lewdness, one of which, in the first appearance of the disease in Europe, was the loss of hair. JOHNSON.

So, in The Roaring Girl, 1611:

66

company,

Your women are so hot, I must lose my hair in their 99 I see." "His hair sheds off, and yet he speaks not so much in the nose as he did before." STEEVENS.

9

falsing.] This word is now obsolete. Spenser and Chaucer often use the verb to false. Mr. Heath would read falling. STEEVENS.

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, no times 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 wafts us+ yonder?

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

2

that he spends in tiring:] The old copy reads-in trying. The correction was made by Mr. Pope. MALONE. there is no time-] The old copy reads-here, &c. The editor of the second folio made the correction. MALONE. · no time &c.] The first folio has-in no time &c. In was rejected by the editor of the second folio. Perhaps the word should rather have been corrected. The author might have written-e'en no time, &c. See many instances of this corruption in a note on All's well that ends well, Act I. sc. i.

3

MALONE.

wafts us-] i. e. beckons us. So, in Hamlet: "It wafts me still:-go on, I'll follow thee."

STEEVENS.

6

That never words were musick to thine ear,5
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 fall"
A drop of water in the breaking gulph,
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?

That never words were musick to thine ear,] Pope, in his Epistle from Sappho to Phaon:

66

My musick then you could for ever hear,
"And all my words were musick to your ear."

Imitated by

MALONE.

6 —look'd, touch'd,] The old copy redundantly reads or look'd, or touch'd. STEEVENS.

7-may'st thou fall-] To fall is here a verb active. So, in Othello:

"Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile."

STEEVENS.