Do use you for my fool, and chat with you, 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 insconce 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. 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 dinner-time? Dro. S. No, sir; I think, the meat wants that I have. Ant. S. In good time, sir, what's that? 6 And make a common of my serious hours.] i. e. intrude on them when you please. The allusion is to those tracts of ground destined to common use, which are thence called commons. 7 know my aspect,] i. e. study my countenance. 8 and insconce it too;] A sconce was a petty fortification. 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. 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? 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. 9 Ant. S. For what reason? Dro. S. For two; and sound ones too. Ant. S. Nay, not sound, I pray you. 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. Dro. S. Sure ones then. Ant. S. Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing1. 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, 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 mendit: 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 us2 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 never touch well-welcome to thy hand, 1 - falsing.] This word is now obsolete. Spenser and Chaucer often use the verb to false. Mr. Heath would read falling. STEEVENS. That undividable, incorporate, Am better than thy dear self's better part. 3 As take from me thyself, and not me too. I know thou canst; and therefore, see, thou do it. My blood is mingled with the crime of lust: Being strumpeted by thy contagion. 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; Who, every word by all my wit being scann'd, Want wit in all one word to understand. Luc. Fye, brother! how the world is chang'd with you: When were you wont to use my sister thus? Ant. S. By Dromio? Dro. S. By me? 3 may'st thou fall - ] To fall is here a verb active. Adr. By thee; and this thou didst return from him, That he did buffet thee, and, in his blows 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, 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 ? Or sleep I now, and think I hear all this? 4 you are from me exempt,] Johnson says that exempt means separated, parted; yet I think that Adriana does not use the word exempt in that sense, but means to say, that as he was her husband she had no power over him, and that he was privileged to do her wrong. M. MASON. 5 idle moss;] That is, moss that produces no fruit, but being unfertile is useless. |