Mer. Well, officer, arrest him at my suit. Ang. This touches me in reputation:- Ant. E. Consent to pay thee that I never had! Arrest me, foolish fellow, if thou dar'st. Ang. Here is thy fee; arrest him, officer;- Off. I do arrest you, sir; you hear the suit. Ang. Sir, sir, I shall have law in Ephesus, To your notorious shame, I doubt it not. Enter DROMIO of Syracuse. Dro. S. Master, there is a bark of Epidamnum, That stays but till her owner comes aboard, And then, sir, bears away: our fraughtage, sir, I have convey'd aboard; and I have bought The oil, the balsamum, and aqua-vitæ. The ship is in her trim; the merry wind Blows fair from land: they stay for nought at all, But for their owner, master, and yourself. Ant. E. How now! a madman? Why thou peevish sheep,' What ship of Epidamnum stays for me? Dro. S. A ship you sent me to, to hire waftage. Ant. E. Thou drunken slave, I sent thee for a rope; And told thee to what purpose, and what end. →→→→→→ thou peevish sheep,] Peevish is silly. Dro. S. You sent me, sir, for a rope's-end as soon: You sent me to the bay, sir, for a bark. Ant. E. I will debate this matter at more leisure, And teach your ears to listen with more heed. To Adriana, villain, hie thee straight: Give her this key, and tell her, in the desk That's cover'd o'er with Turkish tapestry, There is a purse of ducats; let her send it; Tell her, I am arrested in the street, And that shall bail me: hie thee, slave; be gone. On, officer, to prison till it come. [Exeunt Merchant, ANGELO, Officer, and ANT. E. Dro. S. To Adriana! that is where we din'd, Where Dowsabel did claim me for her husband: She is too big, I hope, for me to compass. Thither I must, although against my will, For servants must their masters' minds fulfil. [Exit. SCENE II. The same. Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA. Adr. Ah, Luciana, did he tempt thee so? Might'st thou perceive austerely in his eye That he did plead in earnest, yea or no? Look'd he or red, or pale; or sad, or merrily? What observation mad'st thou in this case, Of his heart's meteors tilting in his face? Luc. First, he denied you had in him no right. Adr. He meant, he did me none; the more my spite. meteors tilting in his face?] Alluding to those meteors in the sky, which have the appearance of lines of armies meeting in the shock. Luc. Then swore he, that he was a stranger here. Adr. And true he swore, though yet forsworn he were. Luc. Then pleaded I for you. Adr. And what said he? Luc. That love I begg'd for you, he begg'd of me. Adr. With what persuasion did he tempt thy love? Luc. With words, that in an honest suit might move. First, he did praise my beauty; then, my speech. Adr. Did'st speak him fair? Luc. Have patience, I beseech. Adr. I cannot, nor I will not, hold me still; My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will. He is deformed, crooked, old, and sere, Ill-fac'd, worse-bodied, shapeless every where; Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind; Stigmatical in making,' worse in mind. Luc. Who would be jealous then of such a one ? No evil lost is wail'd when it is gone. Adr. Ah! but I think him better than I say, And yet would herein others' eyes were worse: Far from her nest the lapwing cries away; 9 I 2 My heart prays for him, though my tongue do curse. Enter DROMIO of Syracuse. Dro. S. Here, go; the desk, the purse; sweet now, make haste. Luc. How hast thou lost thy breath? Dro. S. By running fast. sere,] That is, dry, withered. JOHNSON. 1 Stigmatical in making,] That is, marked or stigmatized by nature with deformity, as a token of his vicious disposition. 2 Far from her nest the lapwing, &c.] This expression seems to be proverbial-I have met with it in many of the old comick writers. STEEVENS. Adr. Where is thy master, Dromio? is he well? Dro. S. No, he's in Tartar limbo, worse than hell. A devil in an everlasting garment3 hath him, One, whose hard heart is button'd up with steel; A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough; A wolf, nay, worse, a fellow all in buff; A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that countermands The passages of alleys, creeks, and narrow lands; A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry foot well;5 One that, before the judgment, carries poor hell." souls to 3 an everlasting garment-] The sergeants, in those days, were clad in buff, as Dromio tells us the man was who arrested Antipholus. Buff is also a cant expression for a man's skin, a covering which lasts him as long as his life. Dromio therefore calls buff an everlasting garment: and in pursuance of this quibble on the word buff, he calls the sergeant, in the next scene, the "Picture of old Adam;" that is, of Adam before his fall, whilst he remained unclad: "What, have you got the picture of old Adam new apparelled?" 4 and narrow lands;] Lands, I believe, in the present instance, mean, what we now call landing-places at the water-side. 5 A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry-foot well:] To run counter is to run backward, by mistaking the course of the animal pursued; to draw dry-foot is, I believe, to pursue by the track or prick of the foot; to run counter and draw dry-foot well are, therefore, inconsistent. The jest consists in the ambiguity of the word counter, which means the wrong way in the chace, and a prison in London. The officer that arrested him was a sergeant of the counter. For the congruity of this jest with the scene of action, let our author answer. JOHNSON. A hound that draws dry-foot, means what is usually called a blood-hound, trained to follow men by the scent. The expression occurs in an Irish statute of the 10th of William III. for preservation of the game, which enacts, that all persons licensed for making and training up of setting dogs, shall, in every two years, during the continuance of their licence, be compelled to train up, teach, and make, one or more hounds, to hunt on dry-foot. The practice of keeping blood-hounds was long continued in Ireland, and they were found of great use in detecting murderers and robbers. M. MASON. Adr. Why, man, what is the matter? Dro. S. I do not know the matter; he is 'rested on the case. Adr. What, is he arrested? tell me, at whose suit. Dro. S. I know not at whose suit he is arrested, well; But he's in a suit of buff, which 'rested him, that can I tell : Will you send him, mistress, redemption, the money in the desk? Adr. Go fetch it, sister.-This I wonder at, [Exit LUCIANA. 6 poor souls to hell.] Hell was the cant term for an obscure dungeon in any of our prisons. There was likewise a place of this name under the Exchequer Chamber, where the king's debtors were confined till they had paid the uttermost farthing." STEEVENS. 66 An account of the local situation of HELL may be found in the Journals of the House of Commons, Vol. X. p. 83, as the Commons passed through it to King William and Queen Mary's Coronation, and gave directions concerning it. In Queen Elizabeth's time the office of Clerk of the Treasury was situated there, as I find in Sir James Dyer's Reports, fol. 245, A, where mention is made of "one Christopher Hole Secondary del Treasurie, et un auncient attorney and practiser in le office del Clerke del Treasurie al HELL. This I take to be the Treasury of the Court of Common Pleas, of which Sir James Dyer was Chief Justice, and which is now kept immediately under the Court of Exchequer. The office of the Tally-Court of the Chamberlain of the Exchequer is still there, and tallies for many centuries back are piled up and preserved in this office. Two or three adjacent apartments have within a few years been converted to hold the Vouchers of the publick Accounts, which had become so numerous as to overstock the place in which they were kept at Lincoln's Inn. These, therefore, belong to the Auditors of public Accounts. Other rooms are turned into coalcellars.-There is a pump still standing of excellent water, called HELL Pump-And the place is to this day well known by the name of Hell. VAILLANT. |