Perde 2
[Textpart 3]
You are hindering me from doing so.
DEMIPHO
Then do you make your excuse that you have used all diligence.
Don’t you go to the harbour, I tell you that now.
465
CHARINUS
That shall be attended to.
465
DEMIPHO
I’ll be off to the harbour, and (I have need of caution lest he should find it out) I’ll not buy her myself, but commission my friend Lysimachus; he said just now that he was going to the harbour. I’m delaying while I’m standing here.
[Textpart 4]
I’m lost—I’m undone.
CHARINUS
They say that the Bacchanals tore Pentheus to pieces Tore Pentheus to pieces: Pentheus, king of Thebes, was torn in pieces by his mother Agave, and the other Bacchanalian women, for obstructing their celebration of the orgies of Bacchus. See the Metamorphoses of Ovid, B. 3, l. 720.. I do believe that that was the merest trifle compared with the manner in which I am rent asunder in different ways.
Why do I exist? Why don’t I die? What good is there for me in life? I’m determined, I’ll go to a doctor To a doctor: Colman renders medicum, an apothecary; and remarks, that the passage may put the reader in mind of Shakspeare’s Romeo in allusion to the passage commencing, I do know an apothecary, etc., and there I’ll put myself to death by poison, since that is being taken from me for the sake of which I desire to remain in existence.
EUTYCHUS
Stop, prithee, stop, Charinus.
CHARINUS
Who is it, that calls me back?
your friend and companion, your nearest neighbour as well.
475
CHARINUS
You don’t know You don’t know: The note of interrogation in Weise’s edition at the end of these words seems out of place. what a vast weight of my woes I am enduring.
EUTYCHUS
I do know. I listened to it all at the door: I know the whole matter.
CHARINUS
What is it that you know?
EUTYCHUS
Your father wishes to sell—
CHARINUS
You have the whole matter.
CHARINUS
You know by far too much.
EUTYCHUS
—Against your wish.
