The Comedy of Errors: Act V

Thou art a villain to impeach me thus.

Then they fled
Into this abbey, whither we pursued them,
And here the Abbess shuts the gates on us
And will not suffer us to fetch him out,
Nor send him forth that we may bear him hence.

Hath he not lost much wealth by wrack of sea?

Hath not else his eye
Strayed his affection in unlawful love,
A sin prevailing much in youthful men
Who give their eyes the liberty of gazing?

She never reprehended him but mildly
When he demeaned himself rough, rude, and wildly.—

Why bear you these rebukes and answer not?

She did betray me to my own reproof.—

He took this place for sanctuary,
And it shall privilege him from your hands
Till I have brought him to his wits again
Or lose my labor in assaying it.

Complain unto the Duke of this indignity.

I will fall prostrate at his feet
And never rise until my tears and prayers
Have won his grace to come in person hither
And take perforce my husband from the Abbess.

Anon, I’m sure, the Duke himself in person
Comes this way to the melancholy vale,
The place of death and sorry execution
Behind the ditches of the abbey here.

Anon, I’m sure, the Duke himself in person
Comes this way to the melancholy vale,
The place of death and sorry execution
Behind the ditches of the abbey here.

My master and his man are both broke loose,
Beaten the maids a-row, and bound the doctor,
Whose beard they have singed off with brands of fire,
And ever as it blazed they threw on him
Great pails of puddled mire to quench the hair.

My master preaches patience to him, and the while
His man with scissors nicks him like a fool;
And sure, unless you send some present help,
Between them they will kill the conjurer.

Hark, hark, I hear him, mistress.

So befall my soul
As this is false he burdens me withal.

O perjured woman!—They are both forsworn.

My liege, I am advisèd what I say,
Neither disturbed with the effect of wine,
Nor heady-rash provoked with raging ire,
Albeit my wrongs might make one wiser mad.

My liege, I am advisèd what I say,
Neither disturbed with the effect of wine,
Nor heady-rash provoked with raging ire,
Albeit my wrongs might make one wiser mad.

By th’ way we met
My wife, her sister, and a rabble more
Of vile confederates.

Along with them
They brought one Pinch, a hungry, lean-faced villain,
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,
A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller,
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,
A living dead man.

This pernicious slave,
Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer,
And, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,
And with no face (as ’twere) outfacing me,
Cries out I was possessed.

Then all together
They fell upon me, bound me, bore me thence,
And in a dark and dankish vault at home
There left me and my man, both bound together,
Till gnawing with my teeth my bonds in sunder,
I gained my freedom

Most mighty duke, vouchsafe me speak a word.

Though now this grainèd face of mine be hid
In sap-consuming winter’s drizzled snow,
And all the conduits of my blood froze up,
Yet hath my night of life some memory,
My wasting lamps some fading glimmer left,
My dull deaf ears a little use to hear.