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Antipholus of Syracuse

Comedy of Errors

Love and Water

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The Comedy of Error’s concluding dialogue between Dromio of Ephesus and Dromio of Syracuse neatly ties up an underlying theme of this farce, that true love — brotherly, marital or other — renders the lovers indistinguishable, “Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother.” But this metaphor of the mirror at the end of the play is a shift from the similes of drops of water that recurred previously.
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Keeping Adultery Hidden

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In comedy or tragedy, Shakespeare’s characters advise the prudence of spouses keeping their dalliances hidden. In Comedy of Errors, Luciana advises Antipholus of Syracuse, who she thinks is her brother-in-lawto conceal from his presumed wife Adriana, Luciana’s sister, his apparent infidelity. Iago’s observation about the adulteries of Venetian women in Othello, is similar.
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Farewell till then. I will go lose myself

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Antipholus of Syracuse
Farewell till then. I will go lose myself
And wander up and down to view the city.
First Merchant
Sir, I commend you to your own content.
 He exits.

I to the world am like a drop of water,
That in the ocean seeks another drop

Antipholus of Syracuse
He that commends me to mine own content,
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Source:
Act 1
Scene 2
Line 33

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Connected Notes:
Love and Water

Now, as I am a Christian, answer me

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Antipholus of Syracuse
Now, as I am a Christian, answer me
In what safe place you have bestowed my money,
Or I shall break that merry sconce of yours
That stands on tricks when I am undisposed.
Where is the thousand marks thou hadst of me?

They say this town is full of cozenage,
As nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,
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Source:
Act 1
Scene 2
Line 78

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Spoken by:
,

But I pray, sir, why am I beaten?

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Dromio of Syracuse
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.

Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season, 
When in the “why” and the “wherefore” is neither rhyme nor reason? 

Antipholus of Syracuse
Shall I tell you why?
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Source:
Act 2
Scene 2
Line 39

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Seasons, Elements and Humors

How ill agrees it with your gravity

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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.

This is the fairy land. O spite of spites!
We talk with goblins, owls,
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Source:
Act 2
Scene 2
Line 179

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Figures of Speech:
,

Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of Father Time

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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.
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Source:
Act 2
Scene 3
Line 90

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And may it be that you have quite forgot

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Luciana
And may it be that you have quite forgot
 A husband’s office? Shall, Antipholus,
Even in the spring of love thy love-springs rot?
 Shall love, in building, grow so ruinous?

Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted.
 Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint.
Be secret-false. What need she be acquainted?
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Do you know me, sir? Am I Dromio?

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Dromio of Syracuse
Do you know me, sir? Am I Dromio?
Am I your man? Am I myself?
Antipholus of Syracuse
Thou art Dromio, thou art
my man, thou art thyself.

But lest myself be guilty to self wrong,
I’ll stop mine ears against the mermaid’s song.

Dromio of Syracuse
I am an ass,
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Source:
Act 3
Scene 2
Line 79

Source Type:

Spoken by:
,

Most mighty duke, behold a man much wronged

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Abbess
Most mighty duke, behold a man much wronged.
 All gather to see them.
Adriana
I see two husbands, or mine eyes deceive me.

One of these men is genius to the other.
And so, of these, which is the natural man
And which the spirit?

Duke
One of these men is genius to the other.
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