Who, falling there to find his fellow forth, Enter DROMIO of Ephesus. Here comes the almanack of my true date. too late; The capon burns, the pig falls from the spit; The meat is cold, because you come not home; your ANT. S. Stop in your wind, sir; tell me this, I pray; Where have you left the money that I gave you? DRO. E. 0,-six-pence, that I had o'Wednesday last, To pay the saddler for my mistress' crupper ;The saddler had it, sir, I kept it not. ANT. S. I am not in a sportive humour now: Tell me, and dally not, where is the money? We being strangers here, how dar'st thou trust So great a charge from thine own custody? DRO.E. I pray you, jest, sir, as you sit at dinner; I from my mistress come to you in post; If I return, I shall be post indeed; For she will score your fault upon my pate. Methinks, your maw, like mine, should be your clock,9 And strike you home without a messenger. ANT. S. Come, Dromio, come, these jests are out of season; Reserve them till a merrier hour than this: me. ANT. S. Come on, sir knave, have done your foolishness, And tell me, how thou hast dispos'd thy charge. DRO. E. My charge was but to fetch you from the mart Home to your house, the Phoenix, sir, to dinner; My mistress, and her sister, stay for you. I shall be post indeed; For she will score your fault upon my pate.] Perhaps, before writing was a general accomplishment, a kind of rough reckoning, concerning wares issued out of a shop, was kept by chalk or notches on a post, till it could be entered on the books of a trader. So, in Every Man in his Humour, Kitely, the merchant, making his jealous enquiries concerning the familiarities used to his wife, Cob answers, - if I saw any body to be kiss'd, unless they would have kiss'd the post in the middle of the warehouse," &c. STEEVENS. 66 So, in Every Woman in her Humour, 1609: "Host. Out of my doors, knave, thou enterest not my doors; I have no chalk in my house; my posts shall not be guarded with a little sing-song." MALONE. 9 Methinks, your maw, like mine, should be your clock,] The old copy reads your cook. Mr. Pope made the change. So, Plautus: 66 me puero uterus erat solarium.” See Aul. Gell. L. III. ch. iii. STEEVENS. MALONE. ANT. S. Now, as I am a christian, answer me, In what safe place you have bestow'd my money; Or I shall break that merry sconce of yours,' That stands on tricks when I am undispos'd: Where is the thousand marks thou hadst of me? DRO. E. I have some marks of yours upon my pate, Some of my mistress' marks upon my shoulders, DRO. E. Your worship's wife, my mistress at the She that doth fast, till you come home to dinner, And prays, that you will hie you home to dinner. ANT. S. What, wilt thou flout me thus unto my face, Being forbid? There, take you that, sir knave. DRO. E. What mean you, sir? for God's sake, hold your hands; Nay, an you will not, sir, I'll take my heels. [Exit DRO. E. ANT. S. Upon my life, by some device or other, The villain is o'er-raught of all my money. 1 -that merry sconce of yours,] Sconce is head. So, in Hamlet, Act V: "why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce ?" Again, in Ram Alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611: 66 I say no more, "But 'tis within this sconce to go beyond them." STEEVENS. -o'er-raught-] That is, over-reached. JOHNSON. S They say, this town is full of cozenage; certain players "We o'er-raught on the way." Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B. VI. c. iii: 3 of cozenage;] This was the They say, this town is full character the ancients give of it. was proverbial amongst them. Εφεσια γραμματα, in the same sense. As, nimble jugglers, that deceive the eye, Dark-working sorcerers, that change the mind, Soul-killing witches, that deform the body;] Those, who attentively consider these three lines, must confess, that the poet intended the epithet given to each of these miscreants, should declare the power by which they perform their feats, and which would therefore be a just characteristick of each of them. Thus, by nimble jugglers, we are taught, that they perform their tricks by slight of hand: and by soul-killing witches, we are informed, the mischief they do is by the assistance of the devil, to whom they have given their souls: but then, by dark-working sorcerers, we are not instructed in the means by which they perform their ends. Besides, this epithet agrees as well to witches as to them; and therefore certainly our author could not design this in their characteristick. We should read: Drug-working sorcerers, that change the mind; and we know, by the history of ancient and modern superstition, that these kind of jugglers always pretended to work changes of the mind by these applications. WARBURTON. The learned commentator has endeavoured with much earnestness to recommend his alteration; but, if I may judge of other apprehensions by my own, without great success. This interpretation of soul-killing is forced and harsh. Sir T. Hanmer reads soul-selling, agreeable enough to the common opinion, but without such improvement as may justify the change. Perhaps the epithets have only been misplaced, and the lines should be read thus: Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks, Soul-killing sorcerers, that change the mind, This change seems to remove all difficulties. By soul-killing I understand destroying the rational faculties by such means as make men fancy themselves beasts. JOHNSON, Dark-working sorcerers, may only mean sorcerers who carry on their operations in the dark. Thus, says Bolingbroke, in The Second Part of King Henry VI: wizards know their times: "Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night," &c. Witches themselves, as well as those who employed them, were supposed to forfeit their souls by making use of a forbidden agency. In that sense they may be said to destroy the souls of others as well as their own. Hence, Sidney, in his Astrophel and Stella; "No witchcraft is so evill, as which man's minde destroyeth." The same compound epithet occurs in Christopher Middleton's Legend of Humphrey Duke of Glocester, 1600: 66 They charge her, that she did maintaine and feede "Soul-killing witches, and convers'd with devils.” The hint for this enumeration of cheats, &c. Shakspeare might have received from the old translation of the Menæchmi, 1595: "For this assure yourselfe, this towne Epidamnum is a place of outrageous expences, exceeding in all ryot and lasciviousnesse; and (I heare) as full of ribaulds, parasites, drunkards, catchpoles, cony-catchers, and sycophants, as it can hold: then for curtizans," &c. STEEVENS. liberties of sin:] Sir T. Hanmer reads-libertines, which, as the author has been enumerating not acts but persons, seems right. JOHNSON. By liberties of sin, I believe, Shakspeare means licensed offenders, such as mountebanks, fortune-tellers, &c. who cheat with impunity. Thus, says Ascham, "I was once in Italie myself; but I thank God my abode there was but nine daies; and yet I sawe in that little tyme in one citie (Venice) more libertie to sinne, than ever I yet heard tell of in London in nine yeare.' STEEVENS. |