Perde 1
[Textpart 1]
I wish the same. Ever, if you are wise, so bestow your love, that if the public should know the object which you love, it may be no disgrace to you.
PALINURUS
Ever do you take care that you be not disgraced Be not disgraced: Intestabilis. One who is, infamous, and whose evidence cannot be taken as a witness in the courts of law. Lambinus suggests that here, as in other instances where the word is used by Plautus, an indelicate pun is intended..
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PHAEDROMUS
What means that expression?
PALINURUS
For you to proceed with caution on your path; the object that you love, love in the presence of witnesses.
PHAEDROMUS
Why, ’tis a Procurer that lives here.
PALINURUS
No one drives you away from there, nor yet forbids you, if you have the money, to buy what’s openly on sale.
No one forbids any person from going along the public road, so long as he doesn’t make a path through the field that’s fenced around; so long as you keep yourself away from the wife, the widow, the maiden, youthful age, and free-born children, love what you please.
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PHAEDROMUS
This is the house of a Procurer.
PALINURUS
A curse befall it.
PALINURUS
Because it serves in an infamous service.
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PHAEDROMUS
You speak out.
PALINURUS
Be it so, most especially.
PHAEDROMUS
Once more, will you hold your tongue?
PALINURUS
You bade me speak out Bade me speak out: Phaedromus had said to Palinurus, Obloquere, which may either mean you are abusive or do you speak out. Phaedromus intends it in the former sense, but Palinurus pretends to understand it in the latter; and when his master tells him to be quiet, he says, Why, I thought you told me to speak out., I thought.
PHAEDROMUS
Then, now I forbid you. But, as I had begun to say, he has a young female slave—
PALINURUS
This Procurer, you mean, who’s living here?
PHAEDROMUS
You have hold of it exactly.
PALINURUS
The less shall I be in dread of its falling.
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PHAEDROMUS
You are impertinent. He wishes to make her a courtesan, while she is desperately in love with me; whereas I don’t wish to have her upon loan.
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