The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
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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.