II Dressing
Beat. It is nearer mid-day than the dawn. Emanuel, do you want another shirt?
Eman. I don’t now need anything. This is clean enough. I will take another to-morrow. Please give me my stomacher.
Beat. Which? The single thickness or the double thickness?
Eman. Which you like. I don’t mind. Give me the single thickness so that I may be less heavy for playing ball (pila) to-day.
Beat. This is always your custom. You think of your play before your school-work.
Eman. What do you say, you stupid! When school itself is called play (ludus).
Beat. I don’t understand your playing with grammar and logic (grammaticationes et sophismata).
Eman. Give me the leathern shoe-straps.
Beat. They are torn to pieces. Take the silken ones as your schoolmaster has ordered. What now? Will you have the breeches and long stockings as it is summer?
Eman. No, indeed. Give me only the long stockings. Please, fasten them for me.
Beat. What! Have you arms of hay or of butter?
Eman. No, indeed. They are sewn together with threads. Alas! what straps (i.e. points) have you given me, without supports and all torn!
Beat. Don’t you remember that yesterday at dice-playing you lost the others altogether?
Eman. How do you know?
Beat. I observed you through a chink in the door as you were playing with Guzmanulus.
Eman. Oh! I beg that you won’t tell the teacher.
Beat. No, but I will tell him if ever you call me “ugly” again, as you are accustomed to do.
Eman. What if I call you greedy?
Beat. Call me what you will, but not ugly.
Eman. Give me my shoes.
Beat. Which? Those with the long straps (i.e. sandals)?
Eman. Those covered against the mud.
Beat. Against the dry mud, which they call dust. But thou doest well, for on the open road the strap gets broken and the buckle lost.
Eman. Put them on, I beg.
Beat. Do it yourself.
Eman. I cannot bend myself.
Beat. You could easily bend, but your laziness makes it difficult, or have you swallowed a sword as the mountebank did four days ago? Are you now so delicate? What will happen to you as you grow up?
Eman. Tie a double knot—for it is more elegant.
Beat. Certainly not, for then the knot would be loosened at that point and the shoe would fall from your foot. It is better either to have a double drawing tight or one knot and one loop. Take your tunic with long sleeves and your woven girdle.
Eman. No, certainly not that, but the leathern hunting girdle.
Beat. Your mother forbids that; do you wish to have everything according to your own caprice? And yesterday you broke the pin of the clasp!
Eman. I could not otherwise unbuckle it. Then give me that red one made of linen cloth.