The Comedy of Errors Text: Act 2, Scene 2

This page contains the original text of The Comedy of Errors, Act 2, Scene 2. Shakespeare’s original Comedy of Errors text is extremely long, so we’ve split the text into one Scene per page. All Acts are listed on The Comedy of Errors text page, or linked to from the bottom of this page.

The Comedy of Errors, Act 2, Scene 2: A public place

    Enter ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

The gold I gave to Dromio is laid up
Safe at the Centaur; and the heedful slave
Is wander’d forth, in care to seek me out
By computation and mine host’s report.
I could not speak with Dromio since at first
I sent him from the mart. See, here he comes.

    Enter DROMIO of Syracuse
How now sir! is your merry humour alter’d?
As you love strokes, so jest with me again.
You know no Centaur? you received no gold?
Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner?
My house was at the Phoenix? Wast thou mad,
That thus so madly thou didst answer me?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

What answer, sir? when spake I such a word?
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Even now, even here, not half an hour since.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

I did not see you since you sent me hence,
Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Villain, thou didst deny the gold’s receipt,
And told’st me of a mistress and a dinner;
For which, I hope, thou felt’st I was displeased.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

I am glad to see you in this merry vein:
What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth?
Think’st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that.

    Beating him

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Hold, sir, for God’s sake! now your jest is earnest:
Upon what bargain do you give it me?
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Because that 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.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Sconce call you it? so you would leave battering, I
had rather have it a head: an you use these blows
long, I must get a sconce for my head and ensconce
it too; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders.
But, I pray, sir why am I beaten?
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Dost thou not know?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Shall I tell you why?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every why hath
a wherefore.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Why, first,–for flouting me; and then, wherefore–
For urging it the second time to me.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

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.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Thank me, sir, for what?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

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

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

No, sir; I think the meat wants that I have.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

In good time, sir; what’s that?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Basting.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Well, sir, then ’twill be dry.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

If it be, sir, I pray you, eat none of it.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Your reason?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Lest it make you choleric and purchase me another
dry basting.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

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

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

I durst have denied that, before you were so choleric.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

By what rule, sir?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald
pate of father Time himself.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Let’s hear it.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

There’s no time for a man to recover his hair that
grows bald by nature.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

May he not do it by fine and recovery?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig and recover the
lost hair of another man.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is,
so plentiful an excrement?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts;
and what he hath scanted men in hair he hath given them in wit.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

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

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

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

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

The plainer dealer, the sooner lost: yet he loseth
it in a kind of jollity.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

For what reason?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

For two; and sound ones too.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Nay, not sound, I pray you.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Sure ones, then.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Certain ones then.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Name them.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

The one, to save the money that he spends in
trimming; the other, that at dinner they should not
drop in his porridge.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

You would all this time have proved there is no
time for all things.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Marry, and did, sir; namely, no time to recover hair
lost by nature.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

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

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald and therefore
to the world’s end will have bald followers.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

I knew ‘twould be a bald conclusion:
But, soft! who wafts us yonder?

Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA

ADRIANA

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 unurged 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 carved to thee.
How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,
That thou art thus 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 mayest thou fall
A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
And take unmingled that same drop again,
Without addition or diminishing,
As take from me thyself and not me too.
How dearly would it touch me 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 too be one and thou play false,
I do digest the poison of thy flesh,
Being strumpeted by thy contagion.
Keep then far league and truce with thy true bed;
I live unstain’d, thou undishonoured.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not:
In Ephesus I am but two hours old,
As strange unto your town as to your talk;
Who, every word by all my wit being scann’d,
Want wit in all one word to understand.

LUCIANA

Fie, brother! how the world is changed with you!
When were you wont to use my sister thus?
She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

By Dromio?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

By me?

ADRIANA

By thee; and this thou didst return from him,
That he did buffet thee, and, in his blows,
Denied my house for his, me for his wife.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman?
What is the course and drift of your compact?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

I, sir? I never saw her till this time.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Villain, thou liest; for even her very words
Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

I never spake with her in all my life.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

How can she thus then call us by our names,
Unless it be by inspiration.

ADRIANA

How ill agrees it with your gravity
To counterfeit thus grossly with your slave,
Abetting him to thwart me in my mood!
Be it my wrong you are from me exempt,
But wrong not that wrong with a more contempt.
Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine:
Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,
Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state,
Makes me with thy strength to communicate:
If aught possess thee from me, it is dross,
Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss;
Who, all for want of pruning, with intrusion
Infect thy sap and live on thy confusion.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme:
What, was I married to her in my dream?
Or sleep I now and think I hear all this?
What error drives our eyes and ears amiss?
Until I know this sure uncertainty,
I’ll entertain the offer’d fallacy.

LUCIANA

Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

O, for my beads! I cross me for a sinner.
This is the fairy land: O spite of spites!
We talk with goblins, owls and sprites:
If we obey them not, this will ensue,
They’ll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.

LUCIANA

Why pratest thou to thyself and answer’st not?
Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot!

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

I am transformed, master, am I not?
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

I think thou art in mind, and so am I.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Thou hast thine own form.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

No, I am an ape.

LUCIANA

If thou art changed to aught, ’tis to an ass.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

‘Tis true; she rides me and I long for grass.
‘Tis so, I am an ass; else it could never be
But I should know her as well as she knows me.

ADRIANA

Come, come, no longer will I be a fool,
To put the finger in the eye and weep,
Whilst man and master laugh my woes to scorn.
Come, sir, to dinner. Dromio, keep the gate.
Husband, I’ll dine above with you to-day
And shrive you of a thousand idle pranks.
Sirrah, if any ask you for your master,
Say he dines forth, and let no creature enter.
Come, sister. Dromio, play the porter well.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
Sleeping or waking? mad or well-advised?
Known unto these, and to myself disguised!
I’ll say as they say and persever so,
And in this mist at all adventures go.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Master, shall I be porter at the gate?

ADRIANA

Ay; and let none enter, lest I break your pate.

LUCIANA

Come, come, Antipholus, we dine too late.

Exeunt

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Read more scenes from The Comedy of Errors:

The Comedy of Errors Act 1, Scene 1
The Comedy of Errors Act 1, Scene 2

The Comedy of Errors Act 2, Scene 1
The Comedy of Errors Act 2, Scene 2

The Comedy of Errors Act 3, Scene 1
The Comedy of Errors Act 3, Scene 2

The Comedy of Errors Act 4, Scene 1
The Comedy of Errors Act 4, Scene 2
The Comedy of Errors Act 4, Scene 3
The Comedy of Errors Act 4, Scene 4

The Comedy of Errors Act 5, Scene 1

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