Immagini della pagina
PDF
ePub

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

[blocks in formation]

First Merchant, friend to Antipholus of Syracuse.

Second Merchant, to whom Angelo is a debtor.

PINCH, a Schoolmaster.

EMILIA, Wife to Ægeon, an Abbess at Ephesus.

ADRIANA, Wife to Antipholus of Ephesus.

LUCIANA, her Sister.

LUCE, Servant to Adriana.

A Courtesan.

Gaoler, Officers, and other Attendants.

SCENE: EPHESUS.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

ACT I

SCENE I.-A Hall in the Duke's Palace.

Enter DUKE, ÆGEON, Gaoler, Officers and other
Attendants.

Egeon. Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall,
And by the doom of death end woes and all.
Duke. Merchant of Syracusa, plead no more;
I am not partial to infringe our laws :
The enmity and discord which of late

Sprung from the rancorous outrage of your duke
To merchants, our well-dealing countrymen,

Who, wanting guilders to redeem their lives,

5

A hall... palace] Malone; The Duke's palace Theobald; A publick Place Capell. Duke] the Duke of Ephesus Ff. Egeon] Rowe; with the Merchant of Siracusa Ff. Officers] Capell; Officer Staunton; omitted in Ff. 1. Solinus] F 1; Salinus Ff 2, 3, 4.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

Have seal'd his rigorous statutes with their bloods,
Excludes all pity from our threatening looks.
For, since the mortal and intestine jars
'Twixt thy seditious countrymen and us,
It hath in solemn synods been decreed,
Both by the Syracusians and ourselves,
To admit no traffic to our adverse towns:
Nay, more, if any, born at Ephesus,
Be seen at Syracusian marts and fairs,
Again, if any Syracusian born

Come to the bay of Ephesus, he dies,

His goods confiscate to the duke's dispose;
Unless a thousand marks be levied,

To quit the penalty, and to ransom him.

14. Syracusians] F 4; Siracusians Ff 1, 2, 3; Syracusans Pope. Nay more, if ... Ephesus Be seene at any] Ff; Nay, more, If At any Malone; any omitted by Pope. Netherlands and parts of Germany; (b) a Dutch silver coin worth about Is. 8d. English (New Eng. Dict.). Valued from one shilling and sixpence to two shillings, says Steevens. Used here and in IV. i. 4 in a general sense for money. So in Marlowe, Faustus, sc. iv. line 34 (Bullen, i. 229): "Wagner. Hold, take these guilders"; where the stage-direction following is "gives him money."

II. intestine] Not quite in the sense of "internal," as between people of the same state; as in 1 Henry IV. I. i. 12: "in the intestine shock And furious close of civil butchery (the only other passage in Shakespeare where the word seems to occur); but rather as amplifying and emphasising the previous word "mortal."

14. Syracusians] Pope's spelling has been adopted by some Editors, but there seems little reason for any deviation from the spelling of the

66

IO

15

20

16, 17.

seen

22. and to] F 1; and Ff 1, 2, 3. Folios, which also occurs in v. i. 124: "a reverend Syracusian merchant." Marshall points out that the form Syracusian is found in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (ed. 1676), P. 345: or as that Syracusian in a tempest," etc. Similarly,Dryden in his MacFlecknoe, 83, has "Pure clinches [i.e. puns] the suburbian muse affords." 15. adverse] Compare Twelfth Night, v. i. 87: "Into the danger of this adverse town." 16, 17. Nay, more, Globe and Cambridge editions print as three lines, thus:"Nay, more,

fairs] The

If any born at Ephesus be seen
At any Syracusian marts and

fairs";

but there can be little doubt that the "any" of the Folios in the last line has been caught up by mistake from the preceding line, and that Pope was right in omitting it.

« IndietroContinua »