You know since Pentecost the sum is due,
And since I have not much importuned you;
Nor now I had not, but that I am bound
To Persia and want guilders for my voyage:
Therefore make present satisfaction,
Or I’ll attach you by this officer.

Even just the sum that I do owe to you
Is growing to me by Antipholus,
And in the instant that I met with you
He had of me a chain: at five o’clock
I shall receive the money for the same.
Pleaseth you walk with me down to his house,
I will discharge my bond and thank you too.

While I go to the goldsmith’s house, go thou
And buy a rope’s end: that will I bestow
Among my wife and her confederates,
For locking me out of my doors by day.
But, soft! I see the goldsmith. Get thee gone;
Buy thou a rope and bring it home to me.

A man is well holp up that trusts to you:
I promised your presence and the chain;
But neither chain nor goldsmith came to me.
Belike you thought our love would last too long,
If it were chain’d together, and therefore came not.

Saving your merry humour, here’s the note
How much your chain weighs to the utmost carat,
The fineness of the gold and chargeful fashion,
Which doth amount to three odd ducats more
Than I stand debted to this gentleman:
I pray you, see him presently discharged,
For he is bound to sea and stays but for it.

I am not furnish’d with the present money;
Besides, I have some business in the town.
Good signior, take the stranger to my house
And with you take the chain and bid my wife
Disburse the sum on the receipt thereof:
Perchance I will be there as soon as you.

An if I have not, sir, I hope you have;
Or else you may return without your money.

Nay, come, I pray you, sir, give me the chain:
Both wind and tide stays for this gentleman,
And I, to blame, have held him here too long.

Good Lord! you use this dalliance to excuse
Your breach of promise to the Porpentine.
I should have chid you for not bringing it,
But, like a shrew, you first begin to brawl.

Come, come, you know I gave it you even now.
Either send the chain or send by me some token.

Fie, now you run this humour out of breath,
Come, where’s the chain? I pray you, let me see it.

My business cannot brook this dalliance.
Good sir, say whether you’ll answer me or no:
If not, I’ll leave him to the officer.

You wrong me more, sir, in denying it:
Consider how it stands upon my credit.

This touches me in reputation.
Either consent to pay this sum for me
Or I attach you by this officer.

Consent to pay thee that I never had!
Arrest me, foolish fellow, if thou darest.

Here is thy fee; arrest him, officer.
I would not spare my brother in this case,
If he should scorn me so apparently.

I do obey thee till I give thee bail.
But, sirrah, you shall buy this sport as dear
As all the metal in your shop will answer.

Sir, sir, I shall have law in Ephesus,
To your notorious shame; I doubt it not.

Master, there’s a bark of Epidamnum
That stays but till her owner comes aboard
And then, sir, she bears away. Our fraughtage, sir,
I have convey’d aboard and I have bought
The oil, the balsamum and aqua-vitae.
The ship is in her trim; the merry wind
Blows fair from land: they stay for nought at all
But for their owner, master, and yourself.

How now! a madman! Why, thou peevish sheep,
What ship of Epidamnum stays for me?

Thou drunken slave, I sent thee for a rope
And told thee to what purpose and what end.

You sent me for a rope’s end as soon:
You sent me to the bay, sir, for a bark.

I will debate this matter at more leisure
And teach your ears to list me with more heed.
To Adriana, villain, hie thee straight:
Give her this key, and tell her, in the desk
That’s cover’d o’er with Turkish tapestry
There is a purse of ducats; let her send it:
Tell her I am arrested in the street
And that shall bail me: hie thee, slave, be gone!
On, officer, to prison till it come. Exeunt Second Merchant, Angelo, Officer, and Antipholus of Ephesus.

To Adriana! that is where we dined,
Where Dowsabel did claim me for her husband:
She is too big, I hope, for me to compass.
Thither I must, although against my will,
For servants must their masters’ minds fulfil. Exit.

Ah, Luciana, did he tempt thee so?
Mightst thou perceive austerely in his eye
That he did plead in earnest? yea or no?
Look’d he or red or pale, or sad or merrily?
What observation madest thou in this case
Of his heart’s meteors tilting in his face?

With words that in an honest suit might move.
First he did praise my beauty, then my speech.

I cannot, nor I will not, hold me still;
My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will.
He is deformed, crooked, old and sere,
Ill-faced, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere;
Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind,
Stigmatical in making, worse in mind.

Who would be jealous then of such a one?
No evil lost is wail’d when it is gone.

Ah, but I think him better than I say,
And yet would herein others’ eyes were worse.
Far from her nest the lapwing cries away:
My heart prays for him, though my tongue do curse.

No, he’s in Tartar limbo, worse than hell.
A devil in an everlasting garment hath him;
One whose hard heart is button’d up with steel;
A fiend, a fury, pitiless and rough;
A wolf, nay, worse, a fellow all in buff;
A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that countermands
The passages of alleys, creeks and narrow lands;
A hound that runs counter and yet draws dry-foot well;
One that before the judgment carries poor souls to hell.

I know not at whose suit he is arrested well;
But he’s in a suit of buff which ’rested him, that can I tell.
Will you send him, mistress, redemption, the money in his desk?

Go fetch it, sister. Exit Luciana. This I wonder at,
That he, unknown to me, should be in debt.
Tell me, was he arrested on a band?

Not on a band, but on a stronger thing;
A chain, a chain! Do you not hear it ring?

No, no, the bell: ’tis time that I were gone:
It was two ere I left him, and now the clock strikes one.

Time is a very bankrupt and owes more than he’s worth to season.
Nay, he’s a thief too: have you not heard men say,
That Time comes stealing on by night and day?
If Time be in debt and theft, and a sergeant in the way,
Hath he not reason to turn back an hour in a day?

Go, Dromio; there’s the money, bear it straight,
And bring thy master home immediately.
Come, sister: I am press’d down with conceit⁠—
Conceit, my comfort and my injury. Exeunt.

There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me
As if I were their well-acquainted friend;
And everyone doth call me by my name.
Some tender money to me; some invite me;
Some other give me thanks for kindnesses;
Some offer me commodities to buy:
Even now a tailor call’d me in his shop
And show’d me silks that he had bought for me
And therewithal took measure of my body.
Sure, these are but imaginary wiles
And Lapland sorcerers inhabit here.

The fellow is distract, and so am I;
And here we wander in illusions:
Some blessed power deliver us from hence!

Well met, well met, Master Antipholus.
I see, sir, you have found the goldsmith now:
Is that the chain you promised me today?

Your man and you are marvellous merry, sir.
Will you go with me? We’ll mend our dinner here?

Avoid then, fiend! what tell’st thou me of supping?
Thou art, as you are all, a sorceress:
I conjure thee to leave me and be gone.

Give me the ring of mine you had at dinner,
Or, for my diamond, the chain you promised,
And I’ll be gone, sir, and not trouble you.

Some devils ask but the parings of one’s nail,
A rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin,
A nut, a cherry-stone;
But she, more covetous, would have a chain.
Master, be wise: an if you give it her,
The devil will shake her chain and fright us with it.

I pray you, sir, my ring, or else the chain:
I hope you do not mean to cheat me so.

Now, out of doubt Antipholus is mad,
Else would he never so demean himself.
A ring he hath of mine worth forty ducats,
And for the same he promised me a chain:
Both one and other he denies me now.
The reason that I gather he is mad,
Besides this present instance of his rage,
Is a mad tale he told today at dinner,
Of his own doors being shut against his entrance.
Belike his wife, acquainted with his fits,
On purpose shut the doors against his way.
My way is now to hie home to his house,
And tell his wife that, being lunatic,
He rush’d into my house and took perforce
My ring away. This course I fittest choose;
For forty ducats is too much to lose. Exit.

Fear me not, man; I will not break away:
I’ll give thee, ere I leave thee, so much money,
To warrant thee, as I am ’rested for.
My wife is in a wayward mood today,
And will not lightly trust the messenger.
That I should be attach’d in Ephesus,
I tell you ’twill sound harshly in her ears.

Here comes my man; I think he brings the money.
How now, sir! have you that I sent you for?

His incivility confirms no less.
Good Doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer;
Establish him in his true sense again,
And I will please you what you will demand.

I charge thee, Satan, housed within this man,
To yield possession to my holy prayers
And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight:
I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven!

You minion, you, are these your customers?
Did this companion with the saffron face
Revel and feast it at my house today,
Whilst upon me the guilty doors were shut
And I denied to enter in my house?

O husband, God doth know you dined at home;
Where would you had remain’d until this time,
Free from these slanders and this open shame!

In verity you did; my bones bear witness,
That since have felt the vigour of his rage.

It is no shame: the fellow finds his vein
And yielding to him humours well his frenzy.

Alas, I sent you money to redeem you,
By Dromio here, who came in haste for it.

Money by me! heart and good-will you might;
But surely, master, not a rag of money.

God and the rope-maker bear me witness
That I was sent for nothing but a rope!

Mistress, both man and master is possess’d;
I know it by their pale and deadly looks:
They must be bound and laid in some dark room.

Say, wherefore didst thou lock me forth today?
And why dost thou deny the bag of gold?

And, gentle master, I received no gold;
But I confess, sir, that we were lock’d out.

Dissembling harlot, thou art false in all
And art confederate with a damned pack
To make a loathsome abject scorn of me:
But with these nails I’ll pluck out these false eyes
That would behold in me this shameful sport.

What, will you murder me? Thou gaoler, thou,
I am thy prisoner: wilt thou suffer them
To make a rescue?

Masters, let him go:
He is my prisoner, and you shall not have him.

What wilt thou do, thou peevish officer?
Hast thou delight to see a wretched man
Do outrage and displeasure to himself?

He is my prisoner: if I let him go,
The debt he owes will be required of me.

I will discharge thee ere I go from thee:
Bear me forthwith unto his creditor
And, knowing how the debt grows, I will pay it.
Good master doctor, see him safe convey’d
Home to my house. O most unhappy day!

Go bear him hence. Sister, go you with me. Exeunt all but Adriana, Luciana, Officer, and Courtesan.
Say now, whose suit is he arrested at?

When as your husband all in rage today
Came to my house and took away my ring⁠—
The ring I saw upon his finger now⁠—
Straight after did I meet him with a chain.

It may be so, but I did never see it.
Come, gaoler, bring me where the goldsmith is:
I long to know the truth hereof at large.

And come with naked swords.
Let’s call more help to have them bound again.

Come to the Centaur; fetch our stuff from thence:
I long that we were safe and sound aboard.

I will not stay tonight for all the town;
Therefore away, to get our stuff aboard. Exeunt.