Perde 1
[Textpart 2]
She is immortal; she lives, and is likely to live.
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CALLICLES
I’ faith, you tell me good news; and I pray the Gods that, surviving you, she may last out your life.
MEGARONIDES
By my troth! if indeed she were only married to yourself, I could wish it sincerely.
CALLICLES
Do you wish that we should exchange?—that I should take yours, and you mine?
I’d be making you not to get a bit the better of the bargain of me.
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MEGARONIDES
Indeed, I fancy Indeed I fancy: Neque, which implies a negative, seems to be more in accordance with the sense of the passage than the affirmative nempe, which is the reading of Ritschel; it has therefore been adopted. you would not be surprising me unawares.
CALLICLES
Aye, faith, I should cause you not to be knowing Not to be knowing: That is, the risk you would run in taking her or your wife. the thing you were about.
MEGARONIDES
Keep what you’ve got; the evil that we know is the best. But if I were now to take one that I know not, I should not know what to do.
CALLICLES
In good sooth, just as one lives Just as one lives: The meaning of this passage seems to be somewhat obscure, and many of the Editions give this line to Megaronides. It is probable however, that Callicles intends, as a consolation for them both, to say that life itself is a blessing, and that they ought not by unnecessary anxieties to shorten it, but rather to submit with patience to their domestic grievances. a long life, one lives a happy life.
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MEGARONIDES
But give your attention to this, and have done with your joking, for I am come hither to you for a given purpose.
CALLICLES
Why have you come?
MEGARONIDES
That I may rebuke you soundly with many harsh words.
CALLICLES
Me, do you say?
MEGARONIDES
Is there any one else here besides you and me?
CALLICLES
There is no one.
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MEGARONIDES
Why, then, do you ask if ’tis you I mean to rebuke? Unless, indeed, you think that I am about to reprove my own self. For if your former principles now flag in you, or if the manners of the age are working a change in your disposition, and if you preserve not those of the olden time, but are catching up these new ones,
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you will strike all your friends with a malady so direful, that they will turn sick at seeing and hearing you.
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CALLICLES
How comes it into your mind to utter these expressions?
MEGARONIDES
Because it becomes all good men and all good women to have a care to keep suspicion and guilt away from themselves.
CALLICLES
Both cannot be done.
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