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Ant. E. I owe you none, till I receive the chain. Ang. You know, I gave it you half an hour since. Ant. E. You gave me none; you wrong me much to say so.

Ang. You wrong me more, sir, in denying it: Consider, how it stands upon my credit.

Mer. Well officer, arrest him at my suit. Off. I do; and charge you in the duke's name to obey me.

Ang. This touches me in reputation: Either consent to pay this sum for me, Or I attach you by this officer.

Ant. E. Consent to pay thee that I never had! Arrest me, foolish fellow, if thou dar'st.

Ang. Here is thy fee; arrest him, officer; I would not spare my brother in this case, If he should scorn me so apparently.

Off. I do arrest you, sir; you hear the suit. Ant. E. I do obey thee, till I give thee bail:But, sirrah, you shall buy this sport as dear As all the metal in your shop will answer. Ang. Sir, sir, I shall have law in Ephesus, your notorious shame, I doubt it not.

To

Enter DROMIO of Syracuse.

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Dro. S. Master, there is a bark of Epidamnum, That stays but till her owner comes aboard, And then, sir, she bears away: our fraughtage 5, sir, I have convey'd aboard; and I have bought The oil, the balsamum, and aqua-vitæ. The ship is in her trim; the merry wind

Blows fair from land: they stay for nought at all, But for their owner, master, and yourself.

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Ant. E. How now! a madman! Why thou peevish sheep,

What ship of Epidamnum stays for me?

Dro. S. A ship you sent me to, to hire waftage7. Ant. E. Thou drunken slave, I sent thee for a rope; And told thee to what purpose and what end.

Dro. S. You sent me, for a rope's end as soon: You sent me to the bay, sir, for a bark.

Ant. E. I will debate this matter at more leisure,
And teach your ears to list me with more heed.
To Adriana, villain, hie thee straight:

Give her this key, and tell her, in the desk,
That's cover'd o'er with Turkish tapestry,
There is a purse of ducats: let her send it;
Tell her, I am arrested in the street,

And that shall bail me: hie thee, slave; be gone.
On, officer, to prison till it come.

[Exeunt Mer. ANG. Officer, and ANT. E. Dro. S. To Adriana! that is where we din'd, Where Dowsabel did claim me for her husband: She is too big, I hope, for me to compass. Thither I must, although against my will,

For servants must their masters' minds fulfil. [Exit.

6 Peevish was used for mad, or foolish. Shakspeare has it again in this sense in King Henry V.-'What a wretched peevish fellow is this King of England to mope with his fat brain'd followers so far out of his knowledge. Again in Cymbeline :'Desire my man's abode where I did leave him he is strange and peevish.' There are numerous other examples. I believe it is always used in this sense by Shakspeare, and by most of his cotemporaries. Minsheu explains peevish by foolish. And long before, in Horman's Vulgaria, 1519, we have: A pyvyshe wytted felowe, Deliri capitis homo,' p. 64. See the old Latin dictionaries in v. Insania.

7 i. e. carriage; hire is here a dissyllable, and is spelt hier in the old copy.

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Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA.

Adr. Ah, Luciana, did he tempt thee so? Might'st thou perceive austerely in his eye That he did plead in earnest, yea or no?

Look'd he or red, or pale; or sad, or merrily? What observation mad'st thou in this case, Of his heart's meteors tilting in his face 1?

Luc. First, he denied you had in him no right2. Adr. He meant, he did me none; the more my spite.

Luc. Then swore he, that he was a stranger here. Adr. And true he swore, though yet forsworn he

were.

Luc. Then pleaded I for you.

Adr.

And what said he? Luc. That love I begg'd for you, he begg'd of me. Adr. With what persuasion did he tempt thy love? Luc. With words, that in an honest suit might

move.

First, he did praise my beauty; then my speech. Adr. Did'st speak him fair?

1 The allusion is to those meteors which have sometimes been thought to resemble armies meeting in the shock of battle. The following comparison in the second book of Paradise Lost best explains it:

'As when to warn proud cities, war appears

Wag'd in the troubled sky, and armies rush

To battle in the clouds, before each van

Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears,

Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms

From either end of heaven the welkin burns.'

2 This double negative had the force of a stronger asseveration in the phraseology of that age. So in King Richard III:'You may deny that God were not the cause Of my lord Hastings' late imprisonment.'

Luc.

Have patience, I beseech.

Adr. I cannot, nor I will not, hold me still;

My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will.
He is deformed, crooked, old, and sere3.
Ill-fac'd, worse-bodied, shapeless every where;
Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind;
Stigmatical in making, worse in mind.

Luc. Who would be jealous then of such a one? No evil lost is wail'd when it is gone.

Adr. Ah! but I think him better than I say, And yet would herein others' eyes were worse: Far from her nest the lapwing cries away 5; My heart prays for him, though my tongue do curse.

Enter DROMIO of Syracuse.

Dro. S. Here, go; the desk, the purse; sweet now, make haste.

Luc. How hast thou lost thy breath?

Dro. S. By running fast. Adr. Where is thy master, Dromio? is he well? Dro. S. No, he's in tartar limbo, worse than hell: A devil in an everlasting garment hath him, One, whose hard heart is button'd up with steel; A fiend, a fairy 7, pitiless and rough;

3 Dry, withered.

A Marked or stigmatized by nature with deformity.

5 This expression, which appears to have been proverbial, is again alluded to in Measure for Measure, Act i. S. 5, p. 18. See note there.

6 The buff or leather jerkin of the sergeant is called an everlasting garment, because it was so durable. So in King Henry IV. Part I. And is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance. Thus also in Davies's Epigrams:

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Kate being pleas'd, wish'd that her pleasure could
Endure as long as a buff jerkin would.'

It appears probable that there was also a kind of stuff called durance. See note on King Henry IV. Part I. Act i. Sc. 2.

7 Theobald would read a fury; but a fairy, in Shakspeare's time, sometimes meant a malevolent sprite, and coupled as it is with pitiless and rough, the meaning is clear.

A wolf, nay worse, a fellow all in buff;

A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that counter

mands

The passages of alleys, creeks, and narrow lands 8; A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry-foot

well 9;

One that, before the judgment, carries poor souls to hell 10.

Adr. Why, man, what is the matter?

Dro. S. I do not know the matter? he is 'rested on the case.

Adr. What, is he arrested? tell me, at whose suit. Dro. S. I know not at whose suit he is arrested,

well;

But is 11 in a suit of buff, which 'rested him, that can

I tell :

Will you send him, mistress, redemption, the money in his desk?

Adr. Go, fetch it, sister.—This I wonder at,

[Exit LUCIANA. That he, unknown to me, should be in debt: Tell me, was he arrested on a band 12?

Dro. S. Not on a band, but on a stronger thing; A chain, a chain; do you not hear it ring?

Adr. What, the chain?

8 The first folio reads, lans. Shakspeare would have put lanes but for the sake of the rhyme.

9 To hunt or run counter signifies that the hounds or beagles hunt it by the heel,' i. e. run backward, mistaking the course of the game. To draw dry foot was to follow the scent or track of the game. There is a quibble upon counter, which points at the prison so called.

10 Hell was the cant term for prison. There was a place of this name under the Exchequer, where the king's debtors were confined.

11 Thus the old authentic copy. The omission of the personal pronoun was formerly very common: we should now write he's. 12 i. e. e. a bond. Shakspeare takes advantage of the old spelling to produce a quibble.

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