Æge. Most mighty Duke, vouchsafe me speak a word:

Haply I see a friend will save my life,

And pay the sum that may deliver me.

Æge. Is not your name, sir, call’d Antipholus?

And is not that your bondman, Dromio?

Dro. E. Within this hour I was his bondman, sir,

But he, I thank him, gnaw’d in two my cords:

290 Now am I Dromio, and his man unbound.

Dro. E. Ourselves we do remember, sir, by you;

For lately we were bound, as you are now.

You are not Pinch’s patient, are you, sir?

Æge. O, grief hath changed me since you saw me last,

And careful hours with time’s deformed hand

Have written strange defeatures in my face:

300 But tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice?

Æge. Not know my voice! O time’s extremity,

Hast thou so crack’d and splitted my poor tongue

In seven short years, that here my only son

Knows not my feeble key of untuned cares?

310 Though now this grained 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,

315 My dull deaf ears a little use to hear:

All these old witnesses—I cannot err—

Tell me thou art my son Antipholus.

Æge. But seven years since, in Syracusa, boy,

320 Thou know’st we parted: but perhaps, my son,

Thou shamest to acknowledge me in misery.

Ant. E. The Duke and all that know me in the city

Can witness with me that it is not so:

I ne’er saw Syracusa in my life.

325 Duke. I tell thee, Syracusian, twenty years

Have I been patron to Antipholus,

During which time he ne’er saw Syracusa:

I see thy age and dangers make thee dote.

Duke. One of these men is Genius to the other;

And so of these. Which is the natural man,

And which the spirit? who deciphers them?

Abb. Whoever bound him, I will loose his bonds,

And gain a husband by his liberty.

340 Speak, old Ægeon, if thou be’st the man

That hadst a wife once call’d Æmilia,

That bore thee at a burden two fair sons:

O, if thou be’st the same Ægeon, speak,

And speak unto the same Æmilia!

345 Æge. If I dream not, thou art Æmilia:

If thou art she, tell me where is that son

That floated with thee on the fatal raft?

Abb. By men of Epidamnum he and I

And the twin Dromio, all were taken up;

350 But by and by rude fishermen of Corinth

By force took Dromio and my son from them,

And me they left with those of Epidamnum.

What then became of them I cannot tell;

I to this fortune that you see me in.

355 Duke. Why, here begins his morning story right:

These two Antipholuses, these two so like,

And these two Dromios, one in semblance,—

Besides her urging of her wreck at sea,—

These are the parents to these children,

360 Which accidentally are met together.

Antipholus, thou camest from Corinth first?

Ant. E. Brought to this town by that most famous warrior.

Duke Menaphon, your most renowned uncle.

Ant. S. And so do I; yet did she call me so:

And this fair gentlewoman, her sister here,

Did call me brother. [To Lucia.] What I told you then,

I hope I shall have leisure to make good;

375 If this be not a dream I see and hear.

380 Adr. I sent you money, sir, to be your bail,

By Dromio; but I think he brought it not.

Ant. S. This purse of ducats I received from you,

And Dromio my man did bring them me.

385 I see we still did meet each other’s man;

And I was ta’en for him, and he for me;

And thereupon these ERRORS are arose.

Abb. Renowned Duke, vouchsafe to take the pains

To go with us into the abbey here,

And hear at large discoursed all our fortunes;—

395 And all that are assembled in this place,

That by this sympathized one day’s error

Have suffer’d wrong, go keep us company,

And we shall make full satisfaction.—

Thirty-three years have I but gone in travail

400 Of you, my sons; and till this present hour

My heavy burthen ne’er delivered.

The Duke, my husband, and my children both,

And you the calendars of their nativity,

Go to a gossips’ feast, and go with me;

405 After so long grief, such nativity!

410 Ant. S. He speaks to me. —I am your master, Dromio:

Come, go with us; we’ll look to that anon:

Embrace thy brother there; rejoice with him.

Dro. S. There is a fat friend at your master’s house,

That kitchen’d me for you to-day at dinner:

415 She now shall be my sister, not my wife.

Dro. E. Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother:

I see by you I am a sweet-faced youth.

Will you walk in to see their gossiping?

Dro. E. Nay, then, thus:—  

We came into the world like brother and brother;

And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.