Luc. Ne'er may I look on day, nor sleep on night, But she tells to your highness simple truth! sworn. In this the madman justly chargeth them. ANT. E. My liege, I am advised what I say; I did obey, and sent my peasant home To go in person with me to my house. My wife, her sister, and a rabble more Of vile confederates; along with them, They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-fac'd villain, A mere anatomy, a mountebank, A thread-bare juggler, and a fortune-teller; For these deep shames and great indignities. with him, That he dined not at home, but was lock'd out. DUKE. But had he such a chain of thee or no? ANG. He had, my lord; and when he ran in here These people saw the chain about his neck. MER. Besides, I will be sworn these ears of mine a And careful hours,-] Painful, anxious hours. Heard you confess you had the chain of him, DUKE. Why, what an intricate impeach is this! DRO. E. Sir, he dined with her there, at the Porcupine. COUR. He did; and from my finger snatch'd that ring. ANT. E. 'Tis true, my liege, this ring I had of her. DUKE. Saw'st thou him enter at the abbey here? COUR. As sure, my liege, as I do see your grace. DUKE. Why, this is strange. Go, call the abbess hither. I think you are all mated or stark mad. [Exit an Attendant. EGE. Most mighty duke, vouchsafe me speak a word: Haply I see a friend will save my life, DUKE. Speak freely, Syracusian, what thou wilt. EGE. Is not your name, sir, call'd Antipholus? And is not that your bondman, Dromio? DRO. E. Within this hour I was his bondman, sir, But he, I thank him, gnaw'd in two my cords. EGE. I am sure you both of you remember me. ANT. E. I never saw you in my life, till now. ÆGE. Oh! grief hath chang'd me since you b Strange defeatures in my face.] See Note (a), p. 121. DRO. E. Ay, sir, but I am sure I do not; and whatsoever a man denies, you are now bound a to believe him. ÆGE. Not know my voice? Oh, Time's extremity! Hast thou so crack'd and splitted my poor tongue, ANT. E. I never saw my father in my life. ÆGE. But seven years since, in Syracusa, boy, Thou know'st we parted; but, perhaps, my son, Thou sham'st to acknowledge me in misery. ANT. E. The duke, and all that know me in the city, Can witness with me that it is not so; I ne'er saw Syracusa in my life. DUKE. I tell thee, Syracusian, twenty years a You are now bound, &c.] Of course, a quibble on poor geon's bonds. Have I been patron to Antipholus, Enter the Abbess, with ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse, and DROMIO of Syracuse. ABB. Most mighty duke, behold a man much wrong'd. [All gather to see them. ADR. I see two husbands, or mine eyes de ceive me. DUKE. One of these men is Genius to the other; And so of these, which is the natural man, And which the spirit? Who deciphers them? DRO. S. I, sir, am Dromio; command him away. DRO. E. I. sir, am Dromio, pray let me stay. ANT. S. Ægeon, art thou not? or else his ghost! DRO. S. Oh, my old master! who hath bound him here? ABB. Whoever bound him, I will loose his bonds, And gain a husband by his liberty! Speak, old geon, if thou be'st the man That hadst a wife once call'd Emilia, That bore thee at a burden two fair sons! Oh, if thou be'st the same geon, speak! And speak unto the same Emilia ! EGE. If I dream not, thou art Æmilia! ABB. By men of Epidamnum he and I, DUKE. Why, here begins his morning story These two Antipholus',-these two so like, ANT. S. No, sir, not I; I came from Syracuse. DUKE. Stay, stand apart; I know not which is which. ANT. E. I came from Corinth, my most gracious lord. DRO. E. And I with him. ANT. E. Brought to this town by that most famous warrior, Duke Menaphon, your most renowned uncle. ANT. S. I, gentle mistress. And are not you my husband? ANT. E. No; I say nay to that. ANT. S. And so do I; yet did she call me so: And this fair gentlewoman, her sister here, Did call me brother. What I told you then, I hope I shall have leisure to make good; If this be not a dream I see and hear. ANG. That is the chain, sir, which you had of me. ANT. S. I think it be, sir; I deny it not. me. ANG. I think I did, sir; I deny it not. ADR. I sent you money, sir, to be your bail, By Dromio; but I think he brought it not. DRO. E. No; none by me. ANT. S. This purse of ducats I receiv'd from you, And Dromio, my man, did bring them me: DUKE. It shall not need,-thy father hath his COUR. Sir, I must have that diamond from you. ANT. E. There, take it, and much thanks for my good cheer. ABB. Renowned duke, vouchsafe to take the pains Το go with us into the abbey here, And hear at large discoursed all our fortunes; f 0 DUKE. With all my heart, I'll gossip at this a If I dream not,- In the folio, 1623, this speech of Ægeon, and the subsequent one of the Abbess, are misplaced, and come after the Duke's speech, commencing," Why, here begins," &c. Malone made the necessary transposition. b To these children,-] Children must be pronounced as a trisyllable. e What I told you then, &c.] This, and the two lines following, are addressed to Luciana, and should perhaps be spoken aside to her. d These Errors rare arose.] The ancient copy has errors are, and this incontestable misprint is faithfully followed by modern editors. Mr. Collier's old corrector endeavours, not very successfully, to rectify it by reading all for are. I venture to substitute rare, which, besides being closer to the original, appears to give a better meaning. Twenty-five years have I but gone in travail "After so long grief, such nativity," which can hardly be right, "such nativity," that is, equal, or proportionate nativity, being without sense here. Johnson proposed festivity, which is most likely what the poet wrote. The compositor seems to have caught nativity from the line just above. I believe, however, this word is not the only corruption in the passage. ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. ACT I. (1) SCENE II.-They say this town is full of cozenage, &c.] This was the character attributed to Ephesus in remote ages. Steevens suggests that Shakespeare might have got the hint for this description from Warner's translation of the "Menæchmi," 1595. "For this assure yourselfe, this Towne Epidamnum is a place of outragious expences, exceeding in all ryot and lasciviousnesse: and (I heare) as full of Ribaulds, Parasites, Drunkards, Catchpoles, Cony-catchers, and Sycophants, as it can hold," &c. But it is observable that Shakespeare, with great propriety, makes Antipholus attach to the Ephesians higher and more poetical qualities of cozenage than those enumerated by the old translator. It is not merely as "catchpoles,' cony-catchers," and the like, but as "darkworking sorcerers," and "soul-killing witches," that he speaks of them. And hence we are prepared to find him 66 attribute the cross-purposes of the scene to supernatural agency, and see no inconsistency in his wooing Luciana as an enchantress : "Teach me, dear creature! how to think and speak; To make it wander in an unknown field?" Or in his imagining that, to win the sibyl, he must lose himself: "Sing, syren, for thyself, and I will dote: Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs, He gains by death, that hath such means to die!" ACT III. (1) SCENE I.-Once this.] The following note in Gifford's "Ben Jonson" (vol. iii. p. 218) helps to confirm our opinion that once in this place, and in many other instances, is only another form of nonce, and means for the occasion, for the time being, &c. "For the nonce, is simply for the once, for the one thing in question, whatever it may be. This is invariably its meaning. The aptitude of many of our monosyllables beginning with a vowel to assume the n is well known; but the progress of this expression is distinctly marked in our early writers, 'a ones,' 'an anes,' 'for the anes,' 'for the nanes,' for the nones,' 'for the nonce."" (2) SCENE II. He gains by death, that hath such means to die.] The allusion is obviously to the long current opinion that the syren, or mermaid, decoyed mortals to destruction by the witchery of her songs. This superstition has been charmingly illustrated by Leyden, in his poem, "The Mermaid," (vide Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," vol. iv. p. 294.) "Thus, all to soothe the Chieftain's woe, That sea-maid's form, of pearly light, Was whiter than the downy spray, And round her bosom, heaving bright, Her glossy, yellow ringlets play. Borne on a foamy-crested wave, She reach'd amain the bounding prow, The reader desirous of particular information concerning the supposed existence and habits of these seductive beings, may consult Maillet's "Telliamed," Pontopiddan's "Natural History of Norway," and Waldron's "Account of the Isle of Man." (3) SCENE II.— ANT. S. Where France? DRO. S. In her forehead; arm'd and reverted, making war against her heir.] As Theobald first observed, an equivoque was, no doubt, intended between the words hair and heir; and by the latter, was meant Henry IV. the heir of France, concerning whose succession to the throne there was a civil war in the country from 1589 for several years. Henry, after struggling long against the League, extricated himself from all his difficulties by embracing the Roman Catholic religion at St. Denis, on Sunday, the 25th of July, 1593, and was crowned King of France in February, 1594. In 1591, Lord Essex was dispatched with 4,000 troops to the French king's assistance, and his brother Walter was killed before Rouen, in Normandy. From that time till Henry was peaceably settled on the throne, many bodies of troops were sent by Queen Elizabeth to his aid so that his situation must at that period have been a matter of notoriety, and a subject of conversation in England. From the reference to this circumstance, Malone imagines the "Comedy of Errors" to have been written before 1594. |