The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Knowledge house

I familiarly sometimes

      Do use you for my fool, and chat with you,

      Your sauciness will jest upon my love,

      And make a common of my serious hours.

      When the sun shines, let foolish gnats make sport,

      But creep in crannies, when he hides his beams:

      If you will jest with me, know my aspect,

      And fashion your demeanor to my looks,

      Or I will beat this method in your sconce.

      S. Dro. Sconce call you it? So you would leave battering, I had rather have it a head. And 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?

      S. Ant. Dost thou not know?

      S. Dro. Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.

      S. Ant. Shall I tell you why?

      S. Dro. Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say, every why hath a wherefore.

       S. Ant.

      Why first—for flouting me, and then wherefore—

      For urging it the second time to me.

       S. Dro.

      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.

      S. Ant. Thank me, sir, for what?

      S. Dro. Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing.

      S. Ant. I’ll make you amends next, to give you nothing for something. But say, sir, is it dinner-time?

      S. Dro. No, sir, I think the meat wants that I have.

      S. Ant. In good time, sir: what’s that?

      S. Dro. Basting.

      S. Ant. Well, sir, then ’twill be dry.

      S. Dro. If it be, sir, I pray you eat none of it.

      S. Ant. Your reason?

      S. Dro. Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me another dry basting.

      S. Ant. Well, sir, learn to jest in good time—there’s a time for all things.

      S. Dro. I durst have denied that before you were so choleric.

      S. Ant. By what rule, sir?

      S. Dro. Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of Father Time himself.

      S. Ant. Let’s hear it.

      S. Dro. There’s no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by nature.

      S. Ant. May he not do it by fine and recovery?

      S. Dro. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair of another man.

      S. Ant. Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being (as it is) so plentiful an excrement?

      S. Dro. Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts, and what he hath scanted [men] in hair he hath given them in wit.

      S. Ant. Why, but there’s many a man hath more hair than wit.

      S. Dro. Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair.

      S. Ant. Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain dealers without wit.

      S. Dro. The plainer dealer, the sooner lost; yet he loseth it in a kind of jollity.

      S. Ant. For what reason?

      S. Dro. For two—and sound ones too.

      S. Ant. Nay, not sound, I pray you.

      S. Dro. Sure ones then.

      S. Ant. Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing.

      S. Dro. Certain ones then.

      S. Ant. Name them.

      S. Dro. The one, to save the money that he spends in [tiring]; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his porridge.

      S. Ant. You would all this time have prov’d there is no time for all things.

      S. Dro. Marry, and did, sir: namely, [e’en] no time to recover hair lost by nature.

      S. Ant. But your reason was not substantial, why there is no time to recover.

      S. Dro. Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and therefore, to the world’s end, will have bald followers.

      S. Ant. I knew ’twould be a bald conclusion. But soft, who wafts us yonder?

       Enter Adriana and Luciana.

       Adr.

      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 wouldst 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-savor’d in thy taste,

      Unless I spake, or look’d, or touch’d, or carv’d to thee.

      How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,

      That thou art then estranged from thyself?

      Thyself I call it, being strange to me,

      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 mayst thou fall

      A drop of water in the breaking gulf,

      And take unmingled thence that drop again,

      Without addition or diminishing,

      As take from me thyself and not me too.

      How dearly would it touch thee to the quick,

      Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious,

      And that this body, consecrate to thee,

      By ruffian lust should be contaminate?

      Wouldst thou not spit at me, and spurn at me,

      And hurl the name of husband in my face,

      And tear the stain’d skin [off] my harlot brow,

      And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring,

      And break it with a deep-divorcing vow?

      I know thou canst, and therefore see thou do it.

      I am possess’d with an adulterate blot;

      My blood is mingled with the crime of lust:

      For if we two be one, and thou play false,

      I do digest the poison of thy flesh,

      Being strumpeted by thy contagion.

      Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed,

      I