William Shakespeare: The Comedy of Errors

ACT III. SCENE 2. The same. (continued)

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
I am an ass, I am a woman's man, and beside myself.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
What woman's man? and how besides thyself?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a woman; one that claims
me, one that haunts me, one that will have me.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
What claim lays she to thee?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
Marry, sir, such claim as you would lay to your horse: and she
would have me as a beast; not that, I being a beast, she would
have me; but that she, being a very beastly creature, lays claim
to me.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
What is she?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
A very reverent body; ay, such a one as a man may not speak of
without he say sir-reverence. I have but lean luck in the match,
and yet is she a wondrous fat marriage.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
How dost thou mean?--a fat marriage?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
Marry, sir, she's the kitchen-wench, and all grease; and I know
not what use to put her to, but to make a lamp of her and run
from her by her own light. I warrant, her rags, and the tallow in
them will burn a Poland winter: if she lives till doomsday,
she'll burn week longer than the whole world.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
What complexion is she of?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
Swart, like my shoe; but her face nothing like so clean kept: for
why? she sweats, a man may go over shoes in the grime of it.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
That's a fault that water will mend.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.
No, sir, 'tis in grain; Noah's flood could not do it.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.
What's her name?