William Shakespeare - Ultimate Collection: Complete Plays & Poetry in One Volume. William Shakespeare

happy number,

       That have endur’d shrewd days and nights with us,

       Shall share the good of our returnèd fortune,

       According to the measure of their states.

       Meantime, forget this new-fall’n dignity,

       And fall into our rustic revelry:—

       Play, music!—and you brides and bridegrooms all,

       With measure heap’d in joy, to the measures fall.

       JAQUES

       Sir, by your patience. If I heard you rightly,

       The duke hath put on a religious life,

       And thrown into neglect the pompous court?

       JAQUES DE BOIS

       He hath.

       JAQUES

       To him will I: out of these convertites

       There is much matter to be heard and learn’d.—

       [To DUKE SENIOR] You to your former honour I bequeath;

       Your patience and your virtue well deserves it:—

       [To ORLANDO] You to a love that your true faith doth merit:—

       [To OLIVER] You to your land, and love, and great allies:—

       [To SILVIUS] You to a long and well-deservèd bed:—

       [To TOUCHSTONE] And you to wrangling; for thy loving voyage

       Is but for two months victuall’d.—So to your pleasures;

       I am for other than for dancing measures.

       DUKE SENIOR

       Stay, Jaques, stay.

       JAQUES

       To see no pastime I; what you would have

       I’ll stay to know at your abandon’d cave.

       [Exit.]

       DUKE SENIOR

       Proceed, proceed: we will begin these rites,

       As we do trust they’ll end, in true delights.

       [A dance.]

       EPILOGUE

       ROSALIND

       It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue. If it be true that good wine needs no bush, ‘tis true that a good play needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine they do use good bushes; and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a case am I in, then, that am neither a good epilogue nor cannot insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play! I am not furnished like a beggar; therefore to beg will not become me: my way is to conjure you; and I’ll begin with the women. I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you: and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women;—as I perceive by your simpering, none of you hates them,—that between you and the women the play may please. If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied not; and, I am sure, as many as have good beards, or good faces, or sweet breaths, will, for my kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.

       [Exeunt.]

       THE END

      THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

       Table of Contents

      By William Shakespeare

       PERSONS REPRESENTED.

       SOLINUS, Duke of Ephesus.

       AEGEON, a Merchant of Syracuse.

       ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS, Twin brothers and sons to Aegion and

       ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE, and Aemelia, but unknown to each other.

       DROMIO OF EPHESUS, Twin brothers, and attendants on

       DROMIO OF SYRACUSE, the two Antipholuses.

       BALTHAZAR, a Merchant.

       ANGELO, a Goldsmith.

       A MERCHANT, friend to Antipholus of Syracuse.

       PINCH, a Schoolmaster and a Conjurer.

       AEMILIA, Wife to Aegeon, an Abbess at Ephesus.

       ADRIANA, Wife to Antipholus of Ephesus.

       LUCIANA, her Sister.

       LUCE, her Servant.

       A COURTEZAN

       Gaoler, Officers, Attendants

       SCENE: Ephesus

       ACT I.

      SCENE 1. A hall in the DUKE’S palace.

       [Enter the DUKE, AEGEON, GAOLER, OFFICERS, and other ATTENDANTS.]

       AEGEON.

       Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall,

       And, by the doom of death, end woes and all.

       DUKE.

       Merchant of Syracuse, plead no more;

       I am not partial to infringe our laws:

       The enmity and discord which of late

       Sprung from the rancorous outrage of your duke

       To merchants, our well-dealing countrymen,—

       Who, wanting guilders to redeem their lives,

       Have seal’d his rigorous statutes with their bloods,—

       Excludes all pity from our threat’ning looks.

       For, since the mortal and intestine jars

       ‘Twixt thy seditious countrymen and us,

       It hath in solemn synods been decreed,

       Both by the Syracusians and ourselves,

       To admit no traffic to our adverse towns;

       Nay, more,

       If any born at Ephesus be seen

       At any Syracusian marts and fairs;—

       Again, if any Syracusian born

       Come to the bay of Ephesus, he dies,

       His goods confiscate to the Duke’s dispose;

       Unless a thousand marks be levied,

       To quit the penalty and to ransom him.—

       Thy substance, valued at the highest rate,

       Cannot amount unto a hundred marks:

       Therefore by law thou art condemn’d to die.

       AEGEON.

       Yet this my comfort,—when your words are done,

       My woes end likewise with the evening sun.

       DUKE.

       Well, Syracusan, say, in brief, the cause

       Why thou departedst from thy native home,

       And for what cause thou cam’st to Ephesus.

       AEGEON.

       A heavier task could not have been impos’d

       Than I to speak my griefs unspeakable!

       Yet, that the world may witness that my end

       Was wrought by nature, not by vile offence,

       I’ll utter what my sorrow gives me leave.

       In Syracuse was I born; and wed

       Unto a woman, happy but for me,

       And by me too, had not our hap been bad.

       With her I liv’d in joy; our wealth increas’d