Ant. S. You would all this time have proved, there is no time for all things. Dro. S. Marry, and did, sir; namely, e'en 10 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 wafts 11 us yonder! Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA. Adr. Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown; The time was once, when thou unurg'd would'st vow 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 13 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.' 12 Imitated by Pope in his Epistle from Sappho to Phaon:- 13 Fall is here a verb active. So in Othello:- A drop of water in the breaking gulf, As take from me thyself, and not me too. at me, I know thou canst; and therefore, see, thou do it. My blood is mingled with the crime of lust: Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed; 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; Luc. Fie, brother! how the world is chang'd with When were you wont to use my sister thus? Dro. S. By me? 14 Shakspeare is not singular in the use of this verb. So in Heywood's Iron Age, 1632: 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 never spake with her in all my 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 exempt 16, 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: 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, 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: 'Scituate in a very remote and exempte place near Goulding 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.: They led the vine To wed her elm. She spous'd about him twines Thus also in A Midsummer Night's Dream : the female ivy so 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. Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state, Who, all for want of pruning, with intrusion Ant. S. To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme: What, was I married to her in my dream? I'll entertain the offer'd 19 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;-O, spite of spites!We talk with goblins, owls, and elvish sprites 20; 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 drone 21, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot! 18 i. e. unfruitful. So in Othello: antres 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 ouphes 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 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.' So 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. 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. Ant. S. Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell? Dro. S. Master, shall I be porter at the gate! 22 i. e. call you to confession. |