Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
ANTIPHOLUS E: I never saw the chain, so help me Heaven! And this is false you burden me withal!
DUKE: Why what an intricate impeach is this! I think you all have drunk of Circe's cup!
If here you housed him, here he would have been! If he were mad, he would not plead so coldly!
You say he dined at home; the goldsmith here denies that saying. Sirrah, what say you?
DROMIO E: Sir, he dined with her there, at the Porpentine.
COURTESAN: He did, and from my finger snatched that ring.
ANTIPHOLUS E: 'Tis true, my liege; this ring I had of her.
DUKE: Saw thou him enter at the abbey here?
COURTESAN: As sure, my liege, as I do see your Grace.
DUKE: Why this is strange. Go call the abbess hither. I think all y'all are mated, or stark mad.
EGEON: Most mighty Duke, vouchsafe me speak a word!
Haply I see a friend will save my life, and pay the sum that may deliver me.
DUKE: Speak freely, Syracusian, what thou wilt.
EGEON: Is not your name, sir, called Antipholus? And is not that your bondman Dromio?
DROMIO E: Within this hour I was his bondman, sir, but he, I thank him, gnawed in two my cords!
Now am I Dromio, and his man, unbound.
EGEON: I am sure you both of you remember me.
DROMIO E: Ourselves we do remember, sir, by you, for lately we were bound, as you are now.
EGEON: Why look you strange on me? You know me well.
ANTIPHOLUS E: I never saw you in my life till now.
EGEON: Oh! Grief hath changed me since you saw me last!
And careful hours with time's deformed hand have written strange defeatures in my face.
But tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice?
ANTIPHOLUS E: Neither.
EGEON: Dromio, nor thou?
DROMIO E: No, trust me sir, nor I.
EGEON: I am sure thou dost?
DROMIO E: Aye sir, but I am sure I do not, and whatsoever a man denies, you are now bound to believe him.
EGEON: Not know my voice? Oh time's extremity, hast thou so cracked and splitted my poor tongue
In seven short years, that here my only son knows not my feeble key of untuned cares?
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 memory, my wasting lamps 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!
ANTIPHOLUS E: I never saw my father in my life.
EGEON: But seven years since, in Syracusa, boy, thou knowest we parted!
But perhaps, my son, thou shamest to acknowledge me in misery.
ANTIPHOLUS 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 I have been patron to Antipholus, in which time he ne'er saw Syracusa.
I see thy age and dangers make thee dote.
ABBESS: Most mighty Duke, behold a man much wronged.
ADRIANA: I see two husbands, or mine eyes deceive me.
DUKE: One of these men is genius to the other!
But which is the natural man, and which the spirit? Who deciphers them?
DROMIO S: I, sir, am Dromio; command him away.
DROMIO E: I, sir, am Dromio; pray let me stay.
ANTIPHOLUS S: Egeon art thou not? Or else his ghost?
DROMIO S: Oh my old master, who hath bound him here?
ABBESS: Whoever bound him, I will loose his bonds, and gain a husband by his liberty.
Speak, old Egeon, if thou be'st the man that had a wife once called Emilia, that bore thee at a burden two fair sons?