The Comedy of Errors

Æge. Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall,

And by the doom of death end woes and all.

Duke. Merchant of Syracusa, plead no more;

5 Sprung from the rancorous outrage of your duke

To merchants, our well-dealing countrymen,

Who, wanting guilders to redeem their lives,

Have seal’d his rigorous statutes with their bloods,

10 Excludes all pity from our threatening looks.

For, since the mortal and intestine jars

15 To admit no traffic to our adverse towns:

His goods confiscate to the duke’s dispose;

Thy substance, valued at the highest rate,

Therefore by law thou art condemn’d to die.

Æge. Yet this my comfort: when your words are done,

My woes end likewise with the evening sun.

Duke. Well, Syracusian, say, in brief, the cause

30 Why thou departed’st from thy native home,

And for what cause thou camest to Ephesus.

Æge. A heavier task could not have been imposed

Yet, that the world may witness that my end

35 Was wrought by nature, not by vile offence,

I’ll utter what my sorrow gives me leave.

40 With her I lived in joy; our wealth increased

And the great care of goods at random left,

Drew me from kind embracements of my spouse:

45 From whom my absence was not six months old,

Before herself, almost at fainting under

The pleasing punishment that women bear,

Had made provision for her following me,

50 There had she not been long but she became

And, which was strange, the one so like the other

As could not be distinguish’d but by names.