The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works

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by William Shakespeare


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  fellow.

  DUKE SENIOR I like him very well.

  TOUCHSTONE God ’ild you sir, I desire you of the like.

  I press in here, sir, amongst the rest of the country

  copulatives, to swear and to forswear, according as

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  marriage binds and blood breaks. A poor virgin sir, an

  ill-favoured thing sir, but mine own; a poor humour of

  mine sir, to take that that no man else will. Rich

  honesty dwells like a miser sir, in a poor house, as your

  pearl in your foul oyster.

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  DUKE SENIOR By my faith, he is very swift and

  sententious.

  TOUCHSTONE According to the fool’s bolt sir, and such

  dulcet diseases.

  JAQUES But for the seventh cause. How did you find the

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  quarrel on the seventh cause?

  TOUCHSTONE Upon a lie seven times removed. (Bear

  your body more seeming, Audrey.) As thus sir. I did

  dislike the cut of a certain courtier’s beard; he sent me

  word, if I said his beard was not well cut, he was in the

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  mind it was; this is called the Retort Courteous. If I

  sent him word again, it was not well cut, he would

  send me word he cut it to please himself; this is called

  the Quip Modest. If again it was not well cut, he

  disabled my judgement; this is called the Reply

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  Churlish. If again it was not well cut, he would answer

  I spake not true; this is called the Reproof Valiant. If

  again it was not well cut, he would say, I lie; this is

  called the Countercheck Quarrelsome. And so to the

  Lie Circumstantial and the Lie Direct.

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  JAQUES And how oft did you say his beard was not well

  cut?

  TOUCHSTONE I durst go no further than the Lie

  Circumstantial, nor he durst not give me the Lie

  Direct. And so we measured swords and parted.

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  JAQUES Can you nominate in order now the degrees of

  the lie?

  TOUCHSTONE O sir, we quarrel in print, by the book; as

  you have books for good manners. I will name you the

  degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the

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  second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply

  Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth,

  the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie

  with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. All

  these you may avoid but the Lie Direct; and you may

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  avoid that too, with an If. I knew when seven justices

  could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were

  met themselves, one of them thought but of an If, as,

  ‘If you said so, then I said so’. And they shook hands

  and swore brothers. Your If is the only peacemaker:

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  much virtue in If.

  JAQUES Is not this a rare fellow my Lord? He’s as good

  at anything, and yet a fool.

  DUKE SENIOR He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and

  under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.

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  Enter HYMEN, ROSALIND and CELIA. Still music.

  HYMEN Then is there mirth in heaven,

  When earthly things made even

  Atone together.

  Good Duke receive thy daughter,

  Hymen from heaven brought her,

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  Yea brought her hither,

  That thou mightst join her hand with his

  Whose heart within his bosom is.

  ROSALIND [to the Duke]

  To you I give myself, for I am yours.

  [to Orlando] To you I give myself, for I am yours.

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  DUKE SENIOR

  If there be truth in sight, you are my daughter.

  ORLANDO

  If there be truth in sight, you are my Rosalind.

  PHEBE If sight and shape be true,

  Why then my love adieu.

  ROSALIND I’ll have no father, if you be not he.

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  I’ll have no husband, if you be not he.

  Nor ne’er wed woman, if you be not she.

  HYMEN Peace ho! I bar confusion.

  ’Tis I must make conclusion

  Of these most strange events.

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  Here’s eight that must take hands

  To join in Hymen’s bands,

  If truth holds true contents.

  You and you no cross shall part.

  You and you are heart in heart.

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  You to his love must accord,

  Or have a woman to your lord.

  You and you are sure together,

  As the winter to foul weather.

  Whiles a wedlock hymn we sing,

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  Feed yourselves with questioning,

  That reason wonder may diminish

  How thus we met, and these things finish.

  Song.

  Wedding is great Juno’s crown,

  O blessed bond of board and bed.

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  ’Tis Hymen peoples every town;

  High wedlock then be honoured.

  Honour, high honour and renown

  To Hymen, god of every town.

  DUKE SENIOR

  O my dear niece, welcome thou art to me,

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  Even daughter welcome, in no less degree.

  PHEBE [to Silvius]

  I will not eat my word; now thou art mine,

  Thy faith my fancy to thee doth combine.

  Enter JACQUES DE BOYS.

  JAQUES DE BOYS

  Let me have audience for a word or two.

  I am the second son of old Sir Rowland

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  That bring these tidings to this fair assembly.

  Duke Frederick hearing how that every day

  Men of great worth resorted to this forest,

  Address’d a mighty power, which were on foot

  In his own conduct, purposely to take

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  His brother here, and put him to the sword.

  And to the skirts of this wild wood he came,

  Where, meeting with an old religious man,

  After some question with him, was converted

  Both from his enterprise and from the world,

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  His crown bequeathing to his banish’d brother,

  And all their lands restor’d to them again

  That were with him exil’d. This to be true,

  I do engage my life.

  DUKE SENIOR Welcome young man.

  Thou offer’st fairly to thy brothers’ wedding;

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  To one his lands withheld, and to the other

  A land itself at large, a potent dukedom.

  First, in this forest, let us do those ends

  That here were well begun and well begot:

  And after, every of this happy number

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  That have endur’d shrewd days and nights with us,

  Shall share the good of our returned fortune,

  According to the measure of their states.

  Meantime forget this new-fall’n dignity,

  And fall into our rustic revelry.

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  Play music, and you brides and bridegrooms all,

  With measure heap’d in joy, to th’measures fall.

  JAQUES Sir, by your patience. If I heard you rightly,

  The Duke hath put on a religious life,

  And thrown into neglect the pompous court?

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  JAQUES DE BOYS He hath.

  JAQUES To him will I. O
ut of these convertites,

  There is much matter to be heard and learn’d.

  [to Duke Senior] You to your former honour I

  bequeath,

  Your patience and your virtue well deserve it.

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  [to Orlando] You to a love that your true faith doth

  merit:

  [to Oliver] You to your land and love and great allies:

  [to Silvius] You to a long and well-deserved bed:

  [to Touchstone] And you to wrangling, for thy loving

  voyage

  Is but for two months victuall’d. So to your

  pleasures.

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  I am for other than for dancing measures.

  DUKE SENIOR Stay, Jaques, stay.

  JAQUES To see no pastime, I. What you would have

  I’ll stay to know at your abandon’d cave. Exit.

  DUKE SENIOR

  Proceed, proceed. We will begin these rites,

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  As we do trust they’ll end, in true delights.

  A dance, after which Rosalind

  is left alone to speak the Epilogue.

  ROSALIND It is not the fashion to see the lady the

  epilogue; but it is no more unhandsome than to see the

  lord the prologue. If it be true that good wine needs no

  bush, ’tis true that a good play needs no epilogue. Yet

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  to good wine they do use good bushes; and good plays

  prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a

  case am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue, nor

  cannot insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play?

  I am not furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg will

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  not become me. My way is to conjure you, and I’ll

  begin with the women. I charge you, O women, for the

  love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as

  please you. And I charge you, O men, for the love you

  bear to women – as I perceive by your simpering none

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  of you hates them – that between you and the women

  the play may please. If I were a woman, I would kiss as

  many of you as had beards that pleased me,

  complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied

  not. And I am sure, as many as have good beards, or

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  good faces, or sweet breaths, will for my kind offer,

  when I make curtsy, bid me farewell. Exit.

  The Comedy of Errors

  First published in the Folio of 1623 as the fifth of the comedies, The Comedy of Errors was nonetheless among Shakespeare’s earliest plays, and seems, on grounds both of its style and of topical references in it, to belong to the early 1590s. Its first recorded performance was on 28 December 1594, during the Christmas revels at Gray’s Inn. On this occasion it replaced the evening’s ‘intended’ performance, cancelled after the festivities got out of hand, following which ‘it was thought good not to offer anything of account, save dancing and revelling with gentlewomen; and after such sports, a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the players’.

  The reference is almost certainly to Shakespeare’s play, which is clearly based on Plautus’ Menaechmi, a lively farce of twins separated in their youth, who now find themselves both in Epidamnum, where one has been raised by a merchant. The twins are constantly mistaken for one another, to the dismay of the citizens and the bewilderment of the brothers themselves. Only when they are seen together at the end is the cause of the confusions made clear; they are then reunited and propose to return together to Syracuse, home of the visiting brother, and start their lives anew. The twin from Epidamnum finally prepares to sell all his property – including his shrewish wife.

  Shakespeare outdoes Plautus and multiplies the potential confusions by giving his twin brothers twin servants, likewise separated in infancy. He also borrows from another play by Plautus, Amphitruo, for 3.1, where Adriana excludes her husband from his own house while dining with Antipholus of Syracuse, whom she has mistaken for him. Shakespeare shifts his action from Epidamnum to Ephesus, famous for its Temple of Diana, but also well known to his audience from St Paul’s journey to the city (Acts 19) and his Epistle to the Ephesians. This location imports Christian values into Plautus’ action and contributes to the emotional and psychological gravity that finds its full voice in the family reunions at the end and in the quashing of the death sentence on Egeon, both so different in spirit from the cynicism of the ending of the Menaechmi.

  The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s shortest play, only some 1700 lines long. In common only with The Tempest, it observes the neoclassical unities of time and place, conventions which help to suspend the audience’s disbelief in the implausible situation for the brief hour and a half of performance. In one view a set piece, a self-conscious experiment in writing Roman comedy, adolescent in some regards, in another The Comedy of Errors anticipates themes and techniques which Shakespeare would develop and deepen in the mature comedies and later romances. Its affinities with Twelfth Night and Pericles are particularly marked.

  In its own terms, The Comedy of Errors is a highly satisfying play and a reliable crowd-pleaser. Its theatrical effectiveness, a late nineteenth-century discovery, depended upon recovering the staging practices of the Elizabethan theatre. In the eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries the play was thought too indecorous and inconsequential to be played without adaptation, and Thomas Hull’s version, called simply The Twins, with added songs and an intensified love interest, largely displaced it from the stage. In 1895 William Poel, with his Elizabethan Stage Society, returned the play once more to Gray’s Inn, where he attempted exactly to reproduce the fluid staging of its original performances. Shakespeare’s play was recognized as a potential theatrical success and returned to the repertory. Today it is a popular play, regularly revived and often inventively staged. Its comic ingenuity and energy make it accessible and attractive to audiences, who are often surprised to find behind the slapstick comedy of situation a more complex and sustaining story, as broken families are knit together in an action that can indeed seem, as it does for Antipholus of Syracuse, enchanted.

 

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