Perde 5
[Textpart 4]
You are not angry?
CLEOSTRATA
I am not angry.
STALINO
Am I to trust your word?
CLEOSTRATA
You may my word.
STALINO
No person ever did have a more amiable wife than I’ve got.
CHALINUS
Keep to her, then.
CLEOSTRATA
Come you, give him back his walking-stick and cloak.Part of line 1009 in the Latin.
CHALINUS
Take them, if you wish.
Upon my faith, a great injustice has really been most egregiously done me; I’ve been married to two husbands; neither has behaved to me as to a new-made bride.
1010
The PLAYERS.
Spectators, what’s to be done within, we’ll tell you here. This Casina will be discovered to be the daughter of this person next doorOf this person next door: Schmieder suggests that Myrrhina has not hitherto seen Casina, but now, on hearing so much of her, enquires into her history, on which Chalinus explains how he begged her of the woman who was going to expose her, and Myrrhina then recognizes in her her own child, whom she had ordered to be exposed. This practice, especially with regard to female children, was by no means uncommon among the ancients, and even with the more respectable classes. We must remember, however, that in the Prologue it is stated that the servant who found her is ill in bed., and she’ll be married to Euthynicus, our master’s son.
Now it’s only fair that with your deserving hands you should give us deserved applause. He who does so, may he always keep his mistress without the knowledge of his wife. But he who doesn’t with his hands clap as loud as he can, in place of a mistress, may a he-goat, soused in bilge-water, be palmed off upon himPalmed off upon him: Warner, in his concluding Note to this Play, informs us that Machiavel had undoubtedly this Comedy of Plautus his eye when he wrote his Clinia..
1015
