The Portable Roman Reader (Portable Library)

The Portable Roman Reader (Portable Library) by Various

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his sentence only, as you tell me, I must live or die.
    GETA: Here comes Phædria.
    ANTIPHO: Where?
    GETA: See, he’s coming from his usual place of exercise.

ACT II, SCENE VII
    ( Phædria, Dorio , Antipho, and Geta )
    PHÆDRIA ( not seeing Antipho and Geta ): Prithee hear me, Dorio.
    DORIO: Not I.
    PHÆDRIA: A little.
    DORIO: Don’t trouble me.
    PHÆDRIA: Hear what I have to say.
    DORIO: But ‘tis tiresome to hear the same a thousand times over and over.
    PHÆDRIA: But you’ll be pleas’d with what I’m going to say now.
    DORIO: Well, let’s hear.
    PHÆDRIA: Can’t I prevail on you to stay three days longer? Where are you going?
    DORIO: I should wonder if you had offered anything new to me.
    ANTIPHO ( aside to Geta ): The bawd, I fear, is drawing an old house over his head.
    GETA ( aside to Antipho ): I fear so too.
    PHÆDRIA: You do not believe me.
    DORIO: There you’re right.
    PHÆDRIA: Upon my credit.
    DORIO: Mere flams.
    PHÆDRIA: You’ll have no reason to repent, you’ll confess so afterwards.
    DORIO: Words, words.
    PHÆDRIA: Believe me, you’ll be glad of it; ‘tis true, by Hercules.
    DORIO: ‘Tis all a dream.
    PHÆDRIA: Do but try, ‘tis not long.
    DORIO: The same story over again.
    PHÆDRIA: I’ll acknowledge you for a kinsman, a father, a friend, a—
    DORIO: ‘Tis all but talk.
    PHÆDRIA: That you can be so hardened and inexorable, to be moved neither by pity nor entreaty!
    DORIO: That you can be so inconsiderate and ignorant, Phædria, to think by your fine speeches to wheedle me out of what’s my own for nothing!
    ANTIPHO ( aside to Geta ): I pity him.
    PHÆDRIA ( to himself ): Ah! what he says is too true.
    GETA ( aside to Antipho ): How they both keep to their characters!
    PHÆDRIA: When Antipho is in full possession of his love, that I should have this plague!
    ANTIPHO: Ah! Phædria, what’s the matter?
    PHÆDRIA: O! fortunate Antipho!
    ANTIPHO: I fortunate?
    PHÆDRIA: Yes, in having what you love at home, and in not having to do with such a villain as this.
    ANTIPHO: What I love at home? Yes, as the saying is, I have a wolf by the ears; for I know not how to let her go, nor how to keep her.
    DORIO: That’s my case with this spark.
    ANTIPHO ( to the bawd ): O! brave bawd, don’t depart from your character. ( To Phædria ) What has he done at last?
    PHÆDRIA: Done? Like an inhuman fellow, he has sold my Pamphila.
    GETA: What? Sold her?
    ANTIPHO: Sold her, say you?
    PHÆDRIA: He has sold her.
    DORIO: A horrid crime, to sell a wench that I paid for!
    PHÆDRIA ( to Antipho ): I can’t persuade him to break off with the other, and stay three days, till I get the money which my friends promis’d. ( To the bawd ) If I don’t give it you then, don’t stay an hour longer.
    DORIO: You stun me.
    ANTIPHO: ‘Tis but a little time that he requires, Dorio: be prevail’d upon: he’ll make it doubly up to you, and you’ll deserve it.
    DORIO: These are but words.
    ANTIPHO ( to Phædria ): Will you endure that Pamphila should be carried from this town? ( To the bawd ) Can you be so hardhearted as to tear these lovers from one another?
    DORIO: ‘Tis neither I, nor you, that do it.
    GETA: May the Gods deny you nothing that you deserve.
    DORIO: I have, contrary to my disposition, indulged you many months, you’ve promised, and whimpered, but never performed anything; now I have found one that proceeds in quite a different strain, who can pay without sniveling; give place to your betters.
    ANTIPHO ( to the bawd ): Certainly, if I remember rightly, there was a day fixed formerly, in which you were to let him have her.
    PHÆDRIA: There was so.
    DORIO: Do I deny it?
    ANTIPHO: Is that day pass’d?
    DORIO: No, but this is come before it.
    ANTIPHO: Aren’t you ashamed of your roguery?
    DORIO: Not when ‘tis to my advantage.
    GETA: Dirty rascal!
    PHÆDRIA: Dorio, d‘y’ think you do as you ought?
    DORIO: ‘Tis my custom, if you like me, use me.
    ANTIPHO: Do you impose upon him thus?
    DORIO: Rather,

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