payment page
Patience unmoved! No marvel though she pause;
They can be meek that have no other cause.
A wretched soul bruised with adversity
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry,
But were we burdened with like weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain.
So thou, that hast no unkind mate to grieve thee,
With urging helpless patience would relieve me;
But if thou live to see like right bereft,
This fool-begged patience in thee will be left. (2.1.32–41)
Adriana addresses these curt lines to her sister, Luciana, who has just argued that Adriana should be patient with her husband and strive harder to obey him. Adriana is eager to point out her sister’s hypocrisy. Luciana is unmarried, which makes it easy for her to preach about the virtues of female patience and obedience. Since she doesn’t have to put up with the frustration of having a husband, she has the privilege of being meek. However, if she were to get married, then Luciana would surely “complain” about having been “burdened with like weight of pain.” In other words, Luciana’s pious observations about the proper hierarchy between men and women aren’t substantiated by real-life experience.
How dearly would it touch thee to the quick,
Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious
And that this body, consecrate to thee,
By ruffian lust should be contaminate!
Wouldst thou not spit at me, and spurn at me,
And hurl the name of husband in my face,
And tear the stained skin off my harlot brow,
And from my false hand cut the wedding ring,
And break it with a deep-divorcing vow? (2.2.141–49)
Adriana says these words to Antipholus of Syracuse, thinking that he is her husband. Her jealousy and her assertiveness come through in these lines. She suspects that he is off cheating with other women, and she confronts him by asking him what he would do if he found out she was an adulteress. In brutal detail, she envisions how he would yell at her, physically abuse her, even going so far as to sever the finger bearing her wedding ring and thereby divorcing her. The graphic nature of her description is startling, though it’s clearly meant to underscore his hypocrisy and, hence, to justify her fury.
My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will.
He is deformèd, crooked, old, and sere,
Ill-faced, worse-bodied, shapeless everywhere,
Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind,
Stigmatical in making, worse in mind. (4.2.20–24)
Once again, we find Adriana in a rage about her husband. This time, she lashes out upon hearing from Luciana that the man she believes to be her husband has been putting the moves on her sister. Of course, the man whom we’ve previously seen wooing Luciana is not Adriana’s husband, but rather Antipholus of Syracuse. Even so, the mix-up provides another opportunity for Adriana to demonstrate her gift for serving up cutting insults.
