Chapter 2

(Enter ALCESIMARCHUS and MELAENIS.)

ALCESIMARCHUS: I do believe that Love was the first to invent torture among mankind. This conjecture do I form from myself at home, not to go seek it out of doors;

I, who surpass all men, exceed them in the pangs of my feelings. I’m tossed, tormented, agitated, goaded, whirled on the wheel of love in my misery, I’m deprived of sensation, carried one way, carried another way, I’m torn and rent asunder; such clouded faculties of mind have I, where I am, there I am not; where I am not, there my thoughts are; to such a degree have I now all kinds of feelings in me; what I like, then all at once I like not the same; so much does love trifle with me changing my mind, drive me, pursue, desire, and seize for itself, retain, trepan, and promise; what it gives, it gives not; it deludes me; what this moment it has persuaded me, it now dissuades me from; what it has dissuaded me from, it now points out to me that same.

After the manner of the sea is it experienced by me; so much does it distract my enamoured feelings; and only in that, in my misery, I do not sink utterly, is there any evil removed from me thus ruined;

in such a way has my father detained me these six days running in the country, at his house there; nor has it been allowed me in the meantime to visit my mistress. Isn’t this dreadful to relate?

MELAENIS: Are you joking for this reason, because you’ve got another wife engaged, a rich lady of Lemnos? Have her then! We are neither of a family so great as you are, nor is our wealth so substantial as yours; but still

I have no fears that any one will impeach our oath; you then, if you shall feel any pain, will know for what reason you do feel pain.

ALCESIMARCHUS: May the Gods confound me—

MELAENIS: Whatever you wish for, I desire it may befall you.

ALCESIMARCHUS: If ever I’ll marry that wife which my father has engaged for me.

MELAENIS: And me, if ever I give you my daughter for a wife.

ALCESIMARCHUS: Will you allow me to be forsworn?

MELAENIS: Yes, and a little more easily than myself and my affairs to go to ruin, and my daughter to be trifled with. Begone! go seek where there is confidence enough in your oaths; here now, with us, Alcesimarchus, you’ve renounced your title to our friendship.

ALCESIMARCHUS: Make trial of me but once.

MELAENIS: I have made that trial full oft; which I lament has been so made.

ALCESIMARCHUS: Give her back to me.

MELAENIS: Under new circumstances I’ll use an old proverb: What I have given, I wish I had not given; what’s left, that I shall not give.

ALCESIMARCHUS: Won’t you restore her again to me?

MELAENIS: Answer yourself for me.

ALCESIMARCHUS: You won’t restore her then?

MELAENIS: You know the whole of my resolution already.

ALCESIMARCHUS: Is that quite resolved upon by you in your heart?

MELAENIS: Why, in fact, I’m thinking about something else;

i’ faith, I don’t at present catch these words of yours with my ears.

ALCESIMARCHUS: Not hear? Why, what are you doing?

MELAENIS: Then do you give heed at once, that you may know what you are doing.

ALCESIMARCHUS: Then, so may the Gods and Goddesses of above and below, and of middle rank, and so may Juno the queen and the daughter of supreme Jove, and so may Saturn his uncle—

MELAENIS: I’ troth, his father—

ALCESIMARCHUS: And so may Ops the opulent, his grandam—

MELAENIS: Indeed, his mother, rather.

ALCESIMARCHUS: Juno his daughter, and Saturn his uncle, supreme Jove—You are maddening me; it’s through you I make these mistakes.

MELAENIS: Go on saying so.

ALCESIMARCHUS: Is it that I’m to know what conclusion you are going to come to?

MELAENIS: Go on talking; I shall not send her back, that’s resolved upon.

ALCESIMARCHUS: Why then, so may Jupiter, and so may Juno and Saturn, to me, so may—I don’t know what to say—Now I know—Yes, madam, listen, that you may know my mind; may all the Deities, great and small, and those honored with the platter cause me not surviving to give a kiss this day to Silenium, if I don’t this very day murder you and your daughter and myself, and after that, with the break of day, if I don’t to-morrow kill you both, and indeed, by all the powers, if at the third onset I don’t demolish you all, if you don’t send her back to me. I’ve said what I intended. Farewell. (Goes into his FATHER’S house.)

MELAENIS: (to herself.) He’s gone in-doors in a rage. What shall I do now? If she comes back to him, matters will be just in the same position. When satiety begins to take possession;

he’ll be turning her out of doors, when he shall be bringing home this Lemnian wife. But still I’ll go and follow him; there’s necessity for caution, lest he, in love, should be doing some mischief. In fine, since with strict justice a poor person’s not allowed to contend with a rich one, I’ll lose my labour rather than lose my daughter. But who’s this that straight along the street is directing his course this way?

Both the other matter do I fear, and this do I dread; so utterly in trepidation am wretched I. (She stands aside.)

(Enter LAMPADISCUS.)

LAMPADISCUS: (to himself.) I’ve followed the old woman with my clamour through the streets; I’ve kept her most dreadfully plagued. In what a multitude of ways has she, this day, kept guard upon herself, and been able to remember nothing. How many alluring things, what advantages I’ve promised her.

How many inventions I’ve applied to her, how many stratagems in questioning her. With difficulty have I extorted it from her that she should tell me, because I promised to give her a cask of wine.

(Enter PHANOSTRATA, from her house.)

PHANOSTRATA: (to herself.) I seemed just now to be hearing the voice of my servant Lampadiscus before the house.

LAMPADISCUS: (stepping forward.) You are not deaf, mistress, you heard aright.

PHANOSTRATA: What are you doing here?

LAMPADISCUS: A thing for you to rejoice at.

PHANOSTRATA: What’s that?

LAMPADISCUS: (pointing to the house of SILENIUM.) A little while ago, I saw a woman coming out of that house there.

PHANOSTRATA: Her that took up my daughter?

LAMPADISCUS: You have the matter rgiht.

PHANOSTRATA: What after that?

LAMPADISCUS: I told her in what way I had seen her take up the daughter of my mistress from the Hippodrome.

Then she was in a fright.

MELAENIS: (apart.) Now my body’s in a shudder, my heart is throbbing; for I recollect that from the Hippodrome the little female infant was brought to me, and that I brought it up as my own.

PHANOSTRATA: Come, prithee, do go on; my soul’s longing to hear how the matter proceeded.

MELAENIS: (apart.) I only wish you couldn’t hear.

LAMPADISCUS: I proceed saying, This old woman calls you her daughter wrongfully. For this woman here is your foster-mother, so don’t think she is your mother. I’m to take you back and invite you to opulence, where you may be settled in a noble family, where your father may present you with twenty great talents for a portion. For this is not a place where after the Etrurian mode you are disgracefully to earn a dowry for yourself by prostitution of your person.

PHANOSTRATA: Is she, pray, a Courtesan, who took it up?

LAMPADISCUS: Yes, she was a Courtesan. But how it happened, I’ll tell you about that matter. I was now winning her over to me by my persuasion. The old woman embraced her knees, weeping and entreating that she would not forsake her; saying that she was her own daughter; and she took a solemn oath to me that she herself had borne her.

Her, said she, whom you are in search of, I gave to a friend of mine to bring her up as her own daughter; and she is alive, said she. Where is she? immediately said I.

PHANOSTRATA: Preserve me, ye Gods, I do entreat you.

MELAENIS: (apart.) But me you are undoing!

PHANOSTRATA: You ought to have enquired to whom she gave it.

LAMPADISCUS: I did enquire, and she said to the Courtesan Melaenis.

MELAENIS: (apart.) He has mentioned my name? I’m utterly undone!

LAMPADISCUS: When she mentioned her, I straightway asked, Where does she live? said I; take and show me. She has been carried off hence, says she, to live abroad.

MELAENIS: He’s sprinkling a little cold water now.

LAMPADISCUS: Wherever she has been carried off, thither we will follow. Do you trifle in this fashion? You are undone, if, i’ faith, you don’t disclose this. I insisted to such a degree, that the old woman swore that she would soon inform me.

PHANOSTRATA: But you oughtn’t to have let her go.

LAMPADISCUS: She’s all safe; but she said that she wished first to meet a certain woman, a friend of hers, with whom this was a matter of interest in common, and I’m sure she’ll come.

MELAENIS: (apart.) She’ll be discovering me, and adding her own distress to mine.

PHANOSTRATA: Make me acquainted what you now wish me to do.

LAMPADISCUS: Go in-doors, and be of good heart. If your husband shall come, bid him wait at home, lest he should be required by me, if I want him for anything. I’m going to run back to the old woman.

PHANOSTRATA: Lampadio, prithee, do take care.

LAMPADISCUS: I’ll have this matter well managed.

PHANOSTRATA: I trust in the Gods and in yourself.

LAMPADISCUS: And I in the same.—that you’ll now go home. (PHANOSTRATA goes into her house.)

MELAENIS: (coming forward.) Young man, stay and listen.

LAMPADISCUS: What, are you calling to me, woman?

MELAENIS: To you.

LAMPADISCUS: What’s the matter? For I’m fully engaged.

MELAENIS: (Pointing to the house of DEMIPHO.) Who lives there?

LAMPADISCUS: Demipho, my master.

MELAENIS: It is he, I suppose, that has betrothed his daughter with such great wealth to Alcesimarchus?

LAMPADISCUS: It is he himself.

MELAENIS: How now, you? What other daughter, then, are you people now in search of?

LAMPADISCUS: I’ll tell you; not his daughter by his wife, but his wife’s daughter.

MELAENIS: What’s the meaning of that speech?

LAMPADISCUS: By a former woman, I say, my master had a daughter born.

MELAENIS: Surely, just now you said you were in search of the daughter of her who has been talking here.

LAMPADISCUS: Her daughter I am in search of.

MELAENIS: In what way then, pray, is she a former woman, who is now his wife?

LAMPADISCUS: Woman, whoever you are, you weary me with your prating.

The middle woman whom he had for a wife, of her this maiden was born that’s being given to Alcesimarchus. That wife is dead. Do you understand now?

MELAENIS: I understand that quite well; but it’s this knotty point I’m enquiring about, how the first can be the last, the last be the first.

LAMPADISCUS: The fact is this; this woman he ravished before he took her home as his wife; before that she was pregnant, and before that she gave birth to a daughter: after she gave birth to her, she ordered the infant to be exposed; I myself exposed her; another woman took her away;

I was on the look-out; after that, my master married her. That girl, her daughter, we are now in search of. (MELAENIS turns aside her head.) Why now, with face upturned, are you looking up towards the heavens?

MELAENIS: Now, then, be off at once whither you were hastening; I won’t detain you; I understand it now.

LAMPADISCUS: I’ troth, to the Deities I do give thanks;

for if you hadn’t understood me, I do think you would never have let me go. (Exit.)

MELAENIS: (to herself.) Now it’s necessary for me to be honest, whether I will or no, although I had rather not; I find the thing is discovered. Now will I myself lay them under an obligation to me, rather than she shall peach upon me. I’ll go home, and I’ll bring Silenium to her parents. (Exit.)