Do their gay vestments his affections bait?
That's not my fault, he's master of my state:
What ruins are in me, that can be found
By him not ruin'd? then is he the ground
Of my defeatures 12: My decayed fair 13

A

sunny look of his would soon repair:

But, too unruly deer, he breaks the pale,

And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale 14. Luc. Self-harming jealousy!—fie, beat it hence. Adr. Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dis

pense.

I know his eye doth homage otherwhere;
Or else, what lets 15 it but he would be here?
Sister, you know, he promis'd me a chain;-
'Would, that alone aloné he would detain,

12 Defeat and defeature were used for disfigurement or alteration of features. Cotgrave has Un visage desfaict: Growne very leane, pale, wan, or decayed in feature and colour.'

It occurs again in the last act; and is also used by the poet in his Venus and Adonis :

'To mingle beauty with deformity,

And pure perfection with impure defeature.'

The word is so expressive, that it is surprising that it has fallen into disuse. It is, I believe, peculiar to Shakspeare in this sense; though defeature is used for discomfiture, defeat, overthrow, by others.

13 Fair, strictly speaking, is not used here for fairness, as Steevens supposed; but for beauty. Shakspeare has often employed it in this sense, without any relation to whiteness of skin or complexion. The use of the substantive instead of the adjective, in this instance, is not peculiar to him; but the common practice of his contemporaries. Marston, in one of his Satires, says:—

As the greene meads, whose native outward faire
Breathes sweet perfumes into the neighbour air.'

14 Though Shakspeare sometimes uses stale for a decoy or bait, I do not think that he meant it here; or that Adriana can mean to call herself his stalking horse. Probably she means she is thrown aside, forgotten, cast off, become stale to him. The dictionaries, in voce Exoletus, countenance this explanation.

15 Hinders.

So he would keep fair quarter with his bed!
I see, the jewel, best enamelled,

Will lose his beauty; and though gold 'bides still,
That others touch, yet often touching will
Wear gold and no man, that hath a name,
But falsehood and corruption doth it shame.
Since that my beauty cannot please his eye,
I'll weep what's left away, and weeping die.
Luc. How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!
[Exeunt.

SCENE II. The same.

Enter ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse.

Ant. S. 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 receiv'd 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?

Dro. S. What answer, sir? when spake I such a word?

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

Dro. S. I did not see you since you sent me hence, Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me. Ant. S. 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 displeas'd.

Dro. S. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair of another man.

Ant. S. Why is time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement?

Dro. S. Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts: and what he hath scanted men in hair, he hath given them in wit.

Ant. S. Why, but there's many a man hath more hair than wit7.

Dro. S. Not a man of those, but he hath the wit to lose his hair.

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

Dro. S. The plainer dealer, the sooner lost: Yet he loseth it in a kind of jollity.

Ant. S. For what reason?

Dro. S. For two; and sound ones too.
Ant. S. Nay, not sound, I pray you.

Dro. S. Sure ones then.

Ant. S. Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing 9.

Dro. S. Certain ones then.

Ant. S. Name them.

Dro. S. The one, to save the money that he spends in tiring; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his porridge.

6 The old copy reads them: the emendation is Theobald's. 7 The following lines Upon [Suckling's] Aglaura, printed in folio,' may serve to illustrate this proverbial sentence:

This great voluminous pamphlet may be said
To be like one that hath more hair than head;
More excrement than body:-trees which sprout
With broadest leaves have still the smallest fruit.'
Parnassus Biceps. 1656.

8 Shakspeare too frequently alludes to this loss of hair by a certain disease. It seems to have been a joke that pleased him, and probably tickled his auditors.

9 To false, as a verb, has been long obsolete; but it was current in Shakspeare's time. Thus in King Edward IV. 1626 :-

'She falsed her faith, and brake her wedlock bands.'

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

Dro. S. Marry, and did, sir; namely, e'en 10 no time to recover hair lost by nature.

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

Dro. S. Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and therefore, to the world's end, will have bald followers.

Ant. S. I knew, 'twould be a bald conclusion: But soft! who wafts 11 us yonder!

Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA.

Adr. 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 unurg'd would'st vow
That never words were musick to thine ear 12,
That never object pleasing in thine eye,
That never touch well welcome to thy hand,
That never meat sweet-savour'd in thy taste,
Unless I spake, look'd, touch'd, or carv'd to thee.
How comes it now, my husband, oh, how comes it,
That thou art then 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 may'st thou fall 13

10 The old copy, by mistake, has in.

11 i. e. beckons us. So in Hamlet:

-

It wafts me still:-go on, I'll follow thee.'

12 Imitated by Pope in his Epistle from Sappho to Phaon:

My musick then you could for ever hear,

And all my words were musick to your ear.'

13 Fall is here a verb active. So in Othello :

Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.'

A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
And take unmingled thence that drop again,
Without addition, or diminishing,

As take from me thyself, and not me too.
How dearly would it touch thee to the quick,
Should'st thou but hear I were licentious?
And that this body, consecrate to thee,
By ruffian lust should be contaminate?
Would'st thou not spit at me, and spurn
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 ?

at me,

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 two be one, and thou play false,
I do digest the poison of thy flesh,

Being strumpeted 14 by thy contagion.

Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed;

I live disstain'd 15, thou undishonoured.

Ant. S. 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.

Luc. Fie, brother! how the world is chang'd with you:

When were you wont to use my sister thus?
She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.
Ant. S. By Dromio?

Dro. S. By me?

14 Shakspeare is not singular in the use of this verb. So in Heywood's Iron Age, 1632:

By this adultress basely strumpeted.'

15 i. e. unstain'd.