Page 1675 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

DROMIO S.

Marry, and did, sir; namely, e’en no time to [100] recover hair lost by
nature.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

But your reason was not substantial, why there is no time to recover.

DROMIO S.

Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and therefore to the world’s end will
have bald followers. [105]

ANTIPHOLUS S.

I knew ’twould be a bald conclusion. But soft, who wafts us yonder?

Enter Adriana and Luciana.

ADRIANA

Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown;
Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects.
I am not Adriana, nor thy wife. [110]
The time was once when thou unurged wouldst vow
That never words were music to thine ear,
That never object pleasing in thine eye,
That never touch well welcome to thy hand,
That never meat sweet-savoured in thy taste, [115]
Unless I spake, or looked, or touched, or carved to thee.
How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,
That thou art then estrangèd from thyself?
Thyself I call it, being strange to me
That undividable, incorporate, [120]
Am better than thy dear self’s better part.
Ah, do not tear away thyself from me;
For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall
A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
And take unmingled thence that drop again [125]
Without addition or diminishing,
As take from me thyself, and not me too.
How dearly would it touch thee to the quick
Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious,
And that this body, consecrate to thee, [130]
By ruffian lust should be contaminate?