COMEDY OF ERRORS.

ACT II.

MAN'S PRE-EMINENCE.

THERE'S nothing, situate under heaven's eye,
But hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky:,
The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls,
Are their males' subject, and at their controls:
Men, more divine, the masters of all these,
Lords of the wide world, and wild watry seas,
Indued with intellectual sense and souls,
Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls,
Are masters to their females, and their lords:
Then let your will attend on their accords.

PATIENCE EASIER TAUGHT THAN PRACTISED.

Patience, unmov'd, no marvel though she pause;
They can be meek, that have no other cause.
A wretched soul, bruis'd with adversity,
We bid be quiet, when we hear it cry;

But were we burden'd with like weight of pain,
As much, of more, we should ourselves complain.

DEFAMATION.

see, the jewel, best enamelled,

Will lose bis beauty; and though gold 'bides still,
That others touch, yet often touching will
Wear gold: and so no man, that hath a name,
But falsehood and corruption doth it shame.

JEALOUSY.

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 ear,
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.

SLANDER.

For slander lives upon succession;

For ever hous'd, where it once gets possession.

ACT V.

A WOMAN'S JEALOUSY MORE DEADLY THAN POISON.

The venom clamours of a jealous woman Poison more deadly than a mad dog's tooth. It seems his sleeps were hinder'd by thy railing: And thereof comes it that his head is light. Thou say'st, his meat was sauc'd with thy upbraidings; Unquiet meals make ill digestions,

Thereof the raging fire of fever bred;

And what's a fever but a fit of madness?
Thou say'st, his sports were hinder'd by thy brawls;
Sweet, recreation barr'd, what doth ensue,
But moody and dull melancholy,

(Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair;)
And, at her heels, a huge infectious troop
Of pale distemperatures, and foes to life?

DESCRIPTION OF A BEGGARLY FORTUNE-TELLER.

A hungry lean-fac'd villain,

A mere anatomy, a mountebank,

A thread-bare juggler, and a fortune-teller;
A needy, hollow-ey'd, sharp-looking wretch,
A living dead man: this pernicious slave,
Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer;
And, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,
And with no face, as 'twere outfacing me,
Cries out, I was possess'd.

OLD AGE.

Though now this grained* face of mine be hid In sap-consuming winter's drizzled snow, And all the conduits of my blood froze up; Yet hath my night of life some inemory, * Furrowed, lined.

My wasting lamp some fading glimmer left,
My dull deaf ears a little use to hear:
All these old witnesses (I cannot err,)
Tell me, thou art my son Antipholus.

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.

ACT I.

SELF-DENIAL.

BRAVE conquerors!—for so you are
That war against your own affections,
And the huge army of the world's desires.

VANITY OF PLEASURE,

Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain, Which, with pain purchas'd, doth inherit pain.

ON STUDY.

Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,

That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks; Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others' books. These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights, That give a name to every fixed star, Have no more profit of their shining nights,

Than those that walk, and wot not what they are. Too much to know, is, to know nought but fame; And every godfather can give a name.

FROST.
*

An envious sneaping frost,

That bites the first-born infants of the spring.

A CONCEITED COURTIER.

A man in all the world's new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain:

One, whom the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish, like enchanting harmony;
A man of compliments, whom right and wrong
Have chose as umpire of their mutiny:
This child of fancy, that Armado hight*,
For interim to our studies, shall relate,
In high-born words, the worth of many a knight
From tawny Spain, lost in the world's debate.

ACT II.

BEAUTY.

My beauty, though but mean,

Needs not the painted flourish of your praise;
Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye,
Not utter'd by base sale of chapmen's tongues.

A MERRY MAN.

A merrier man,
Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour's talk withal:
His eye begets occasion for his wit;
For every object that the one doth catch,
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest ;
Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor,)
Delivers in such apt and gracious words,
That aged ears play truant at his tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished;
So sweet and voluble is his discourse.

ACT III.

HUMOROUS DESCRIPTION OF LOVE.

O! And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love's whip;

A

very

beadle to a humorous sigh;
A critic; nay, a night-watch constable;
A domineering pedant o'er the boy,
Than whom no mortal so magnificent!

* Called.

This wimpled *, whining, purblind, wayward boy;
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
Dread prince of plackets +, king of codpieces,
Sole imperator, and great general

Of trotting paritors -O my little heart!—
And I to be a corporal of his field,

And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!
What? I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!
A woman, that is like a German clock,
Still a repairing; ever out of frame;
And never going aright, being a watch,
But being watch'd that it may still go right?

ACT IV.

SONNET.

Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye ('Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument,) Persuade my heart to this false perjury?

Vows, for thee broke, deserve not, punishment. A woman I forswore; but, I will prove,

Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee: My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love; Thy grace being gain'd, cures all disgrace in me. Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is: Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine, Exhal'st this vapour vow; in thee it is:

If broken then, it is no fault of mine; -If by me broke, What fool is not so wise, To lose an oath to win a paradise?

SONG.

On a day, (alack the day!)
Love, whose month is ever May,

*Hooded, veiled.

+ Petticoats.

The officers of the spiritual courts who serve citations.