William Shakespeare: The Comedy of Errors

ACT V. SCENE 1. The same. (continued)

AEGEON.
I am sure you both of you remember me.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS.
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?

AEGEON.
Why look you strange on me? you know me well.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS.
I never saw you in my life, till now.

AEGEON.
Oh! grief hath chang'd me since you saw me last;
And careful hours with Time's deformed hand,
Have written strange defeatures in my face:
But tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice?

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS.
Neither.

AEGEON.
Dromio, nor thou?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS.
No, trust me, sir, nor I.

AEGEON.
I am sure thou dost.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS.
Ay, sir, but I am sure I do not; and whatsoever a man denies, you
are now bound to believe him.

AEGEON.
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 untun'd cares?
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,
My dull deaf ears a little use to hear:
All these old witnesses,--I cannot err,--
Tell me thou art my son Antipholus.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS.
I never saw my father in my life.

AEGEON.
But seven years since, in Syracusa, boy,
Thou know'st we parted; but perhaps, my son,
Thou sham'st to acknowledge me in misery.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS.
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.