How ill agrees it with your gravity
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, and sprites.
If we obey them not, this will ensue:
They’ll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.
Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine.
She takes his arm.
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.Metaphor
Antipholus of Syracuse, aside
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?Synecdoche
Until I know this sure uncertainty
I’ll entertain the offered fallacy.
Luciana
Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner.
Dromio of Syracuse
O, for my beads! I cross me for a sinner.
He crosses himself.
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 prat’st thou to thyself and answer’st not?
Dromio—thou, Dromio—thou snail, thou slug, thou sot.
Dromio of Syracuse
I am transformèd, 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 laughs my woes to scorn.
Come, sir, to dinner.—Dromio, keep the gate.—
Husband, I’ll dine above with you today,
And shrive you of a thousand idle pranks.
To Dromio. 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, aside
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.
They exit.