The Way of the World

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Title: The Way of the World
A Comedy
Author: William Congreve
Release Date: January 25, 2015 [eBook #1292]
[This file was first posted on March 26, 1998]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY OF THE WORLD***
Transcribed from the 1895 Methuen & Co. edition (_Comedies of William
Congreve_, _Volume_ 2) by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
THE WAY OF THE WORLD
A COMEDY
_Audire est operæ pretium_, _procedere recte_
_Qui mæchis non vultis_.—HOR. _Sat._ i. 2, 37.
—_Metuat doti deprensa_.—_Ibid_.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
RALPH, EARL OF MOUNTAGUE, ETC.
MY LORD,—Whether the world will arraign me of vanity or not, that I have
presumed to dedicate this comedy to your lordship, I am yet in doubt;
though, it may be, it is some degree of vanity even to doubt of it. One
who has at any time had the honour of your lordship’s conversation,
cannot be supposed to think very meanly of that which he would prefer to
your perusal. Yet it were to incur the imputation of too much
sufficiency to pretend to such a merit as might abide the test of your
lordship’s censure.
Whatever value may be wanting to this play while yet it is mine, will be
sufficiently made up to it when it is once become your lordship’s; and it
is my security, that I cannot have overrated it more by my dedication
than your lordship will dignify it by your patronage.
That it succeeded on the stage was almost beyond my expectation; for but
little of it was prepared for that general taste which seems now to be
predominant in the palates of our audience.
Those characters which are meant to be ridiculed in most of our comedies
are of fools so gross, that in my humble opinion they should rather
disturb than divert the well-natured and reflecting part of an audience;
they are rather objects of charity than contempt, and instead of moving
our mirth, they ought very often to excite our compassion.
This reflection moved me to design some characters which should appear
ridiculous not so much through a natural folly (which is incorrigible,
and therefore not proper for the stage) as through an affected wit: a wit
which, at the same time that it is affected, is also false. As there is
some difficulty in the formation of a character of this nature, so there
is some hazard which attends the progress of its success upon the stage:
for many come to a play so overcharged with criticism, that they very
often let fly their censure, when through their rashness they have
mistaken their aim. This I had occasion lately to observe: for this play
had been acted two or three days before some of these hasty judges could
find the leisure to distinguish betwixt the character of a Witwoud and a
Truewit.
I must beg your lordship’s pardon for this digression from the true
course of this epistle; but that it may not seem altogether impertinent,
I beg that I may plead the occasion of it, in part of that excuse of
which I stand in need, for recommending this comedy to your protection.
It is only by the countenance of your lordship, and the _few_ so
qualified, that such who write with care and pains can hope to be
distinguished: for the prostituted name of poet promiscuously levels all
that bear it.
Terence, the most correct writer in the world, had a Scipio and a Lelius,
if not to assist him, at least to support him in his reputation. And
notwithstanding his extraordinary merit, it may be their countenance was
not more than necessary.
The purity of his style, the delicacy of his turns, and the justness of
his characters, were all of them beauties which the greater part of his
audience were incapable of tasting. Some of the coarsest strokes of
Plautus, so severely censured by Horace, were more likely to affect the
multitude; such, who come with expectation to laugh at the last act of a
play, and are better entertained with two or three unseasonable jests
than with the artful solution of the fable.
As Terence excelled in his performances, so had he great advantages to
encourage his undertakings, for he built most on the foundations of
Menander: his plots were generally modelled, and his characters ready
drawn to his hand. He copied Menander; and Menander had no less light in
the formation of his characters from the observations of Theophrastus, of
whom he was a disciple; and Theophrastus, it is known, was not only the
disciple, but the immediate successor of Aristotle, the first and
greatest judge of poetry. These were great models to design by; and the
further advantage which Terence possessed towards giving his plays the
due ornaments of purity of style, and justness of manners, was not less
considerable from the freedom of conversation which was permitted him
with Lelius and Scipio, two of the greatest and most polite men of his
age. And, indeed, the privilege of such a conversation is the only
certain means of attaining to the perfection of dialogue.
If it has happened in any part of this comedy that I have gained a turn
of style or expression more correct, or at least more corrigible, than in
those which I have formerly written, I must, with equal pride and
gratitude, ascribe it to the honour of your lordship’s admitting me into
your conversation, and that of a society where everybody else was so well
worthy of you, in your retirement last summer from the town: for it was
immediately after, that this comedy was written. If I have failed in my
performance, it is only to be regretted, where there were so many not
inferior either to a Scipio or a Lelius, that there should be one wanting
equal in capacity to a Terence.
If I am not mistaken, poetry is almost the only art which has not yet
laid claim to your lordship’s patronage. Architecture and painting, to
the great honour of our country, have flourished under your influence and
protection. In the meantime, poetry, the eldest sister of all arts, and
parent of most, seems to have resigned her birthright, by having
neglected to pay her duty to your lordship, and by permitting others of a
later extraction to prepossess that place in your esteem, to which none
can pretend a better title. Poetry, in its nature, is sacred to the good
and great: the relation between them is reciprocal, and they are ever
propitious to it. It is the privilege of poetry to address them, and it
is their prerogative alone to give it protection.
This received maxim is a general apology for all writers who consecrate
their labours to great men: but I could wish, at this time, that this
address were exempted from the common pretence of all dedications; and
that as I can distinguish your lordship even among the most deserving, so
this offering might become remarkable by some particular instance of
respect, which should assure your lordship that I am, with all due sense
of your extreme worthiness and humanity, my lord, your lordship’s most
obedient and most obliged humble servant,
WILL. CONGREVE.
PROLOGUE.
Spoken by MR. BETTERTON.
OF those few fools, who with ill stars are curst,
Sure scribbling fools, called poets, fare the worst:
For they’re a sort of fools which fortune makes,
And, after she has made ’em fools, forsakes.
With Nature’s oafs ’tis quite a diff’rent case,
For Fortune favours all her idiot race.
In her own nest the cuckoo eggs we find,
O’er which she broods to hatch the changeling kind:
No portion for her own she has to spare,
So much she dotes on her adopted care.
Poets are bubbles, by the town drawn in,
Suffered at first some trifling stakes to win:
But what unequal hazards do they run!
Each time they write they venture all they’ve won:
The Squire that’s buttered still, is sure to be undone.
This author, heretofore, has found your favour,
But pleads no merit from his past behaviour.
To build on that might prove a vain presumption,
Should grants to poets made admit resumption,
And in Parnassus he must lose his seat,
If that be found a forfeited estate.
He owns, with toil he wrought the following scenes,
But if they’re naught ne’er spare him for his pains:
Damn him the more; have no commiseration
For dulness on mature deliberation.
He swears he’ll not resent one hissed-off scene,
Nor, like those peevish wits, his play maintain,
Who, to assert their sense, your taste arraign.
Some plot we think he has, and some new thought;
Some humour too, no farce—but that’s a fault.
Satire, he thinks, you ought not to expect;
For so reformed a town who dares correct?
To please, this time, has been his sole pretence,
He’ll not instruct, lest it should give offence.
Should he by chance a knave or fool expose,
That hurts none here, sure here are none of those.
In short, our play shall (with your leave to show it)
Give you one instance of a passive poet,
Who to your judgments yields all resignation:
So save or damn, after your own discretion.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
MEN.
FAINALL, in love with Mrs. Marwood, _Mr. Betterton_.
MIRABELL, in love with Mrs. Millamant, _Mr. Verbruggen_.
WITWOUD, follower of Mrs. Millamant, _Mr. Bowen_.
PETULANT, follower of Mrs. Millamant, _Mr. Bowman_.
SIR WILFULL WITWOUD, half brother to Witwoud, _Mr. Underhill_.
and nephew to Lady Wishfort,
WAITWELL, servant to Mirabell, _Mr. Bright_.
WOMEN.
LADY WISHFORT, enemy to Mirabell, for having _Mrs. Leigh_.
falsely pretended love to her,
MRS. MILLAMANT, a fine lady, niece to Lady _Mrs. Bracegirdle_.
Wishfort, and loves Mirabell,
MRS. MARWOOD, friend to Mr. Fainall, and likes _Mrs. Barry_.
Mirabell,
MRS. FAINALL, daughter to Lady Wishfort, and _Mrs. Bowman_.
wife to Fainall, formerly friend to Mirabell,
FOIBLE, woman to Lady Wishfort, _Mrs. Willis_.
MINCING, woman to Mrs. Millamant, _Mrs. Prince_.
DANCERS, FOOTMEN, ATTENDANTS.
SCENE: London.
_The time equal to that of the presentation_.
ACT I.—SCENE I.
_A Chocolate-house_.
MIRABELL _and_ FAINALL _rising from cards_. BETTY _waiting_.
MIRA. You are a fortunate man, Mr. Fainall.
FAIN. Have we done?
MIRA. What you please. I’ll play on to entertain you.
FAIN. No, I’ll give you your revenge another time, when you are not so
indifferent; you are thinking of something else now, and play too
negligently: the coldness of a losing gamester lessens the pleasure of
the winner. I’d no more play with a man that slighted his ill fortune
than I’d make love to a woman who undervalued the loss of her reputation.
MIRA. You have a taste extremely delicate, and are for refining on your
pleasures.
FAIN. Prithee, why so reserved? Something has put you out of humour.
MIRA. Not at all: I happen to be grave to-day, and you are gay; that’s
all.
FAIN. Confess, Millamant and you quarrelled last night, after I left
you; my fair cousin has some humours that would tempt the patience of a
Stoic. What, some coxcomb came in, and was well received by her, while
you were by?
MIRA. Witwoud and Petulant, and what was worse, her aunt, your wife’s
mother, my evil genius—or to sum up all in her own name, my old Lady
Wishfort came in.
FAIN. Oh, there it is then: she has a lasting passion for you, and with
reason.—What, then my wife was there?
MIRA. Yes, and Mrs. Marwood and three or four more, whom I never saw
before; seeing me, they all put on their grave faces, whispered one
another, then complained aloud of the vapours, and after fell into a
profound silence.
FAIN. They had a mind to be rid of you.
MIRA. For which reason I resolved not to stir. At last the good old
lady broke through her painful taciturnity with an invective against long
visits. I would not have understood her, but Millamant joining in the
argument, I rose and with a constrained smile told her, I thought nothing
was so easy as to know when a visit began to be troublesome; she reddened
and I withdrew, without expecting her reply.
FAIN. You were to blame to resent what she spoke only in compliance with
her aunt.
MIRA. She is more mistress of herself than to be under the necessity of
such a resignation.
FAIN. What? though half her fortune depends upon her marrying with my
lady’s approbation?
MIRA. I was then in such a humour, that I should have been better
pleased if she had been less discreet.
FAIN. Now I remember, I wonder not they were weary of you; last night
was one of their cabal-nights: they have ’em three times a week and meet
by turns at one another’s apartments, where they come together like the
coroner’s inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week. You
and I are excluded, and it was once proposed that all the male sex should
be excepted; but somebody moved that to avoid scandal there might be one
man of the community, upon which motion Witwoud and Petulant were
enrolled members.
MIRA. And who may have been the foundress of this sect? My Lady
Wishfort, I warrant, who publishes her detestation of mankind, and full
of the vigour of fifty-five, declares for a friend and ratafia; and let
posterity shift for itself, she’ll breed no more.
FAIN. The discovery of your sham addresses to her, to conceal your love
to her niece, has provoked this separation. Had you dissembled better,
things might have continued in the state of nature.
MIRA. I did as much as man could, with any reasonable conscience; I
proceeded to the very last act of flattery with her, and was guilty of a
song in her commendation. Nay, I got a friend to put her into a lampoon,
and compliment her with the imputation of an affair with a young fellow,
which I carried so far, that I told her the malicious town took notice
that she was grown fat of a sudden; and when she lay in of a dropsy,
persuaded her she was reported to be in labour. The devil’s in’t, if an
old woman is to be flattered further, unless a man should endeavour
downright personally to debauch her: and that my virtue forbade me. But
for the discovery of this amour, I am indebted to your friend, or your
wife’s friend, Mrs. Marwood.
FAIN. What should provoke her to be your enemy, unless she has made you
advances which you have slighted? Women do not easily forgive omissions
of that nature.
MIRA. She was always civil to me, till of late. I confess I am not one
of those coxcombs who are apt to interpret a woman’s good manners to her
prejudice, and think that she who does not refuse ’em everything can
refuse ’em nothing.
FAIN. You are a gallant man, Mirabell; and though you may have cruelty
enough not to satisfy a lady’s longing, you have too much generosity not
to be tender of her honour. Yet you speak with an indifference which
seems to be affected, and confesses you are conscious of a negligence.
MIRA. You pursue the argument with a distrust that seems to be
unaffected, and confesses you are conscious of a concern for which the
lady is more indebted to you than is your wife.
FAIN. Fie, fie, friend, if you grow censorious I must leave you:—I’ll
look upon the gamesters in the next room.
MIRA. Who are they?
FAIN. Petulant and Witwoud.—Bring me some chocolate.
MIRA. Betty, what says your clock?
BET. Turned of the last canonical hour, sir.
MIRA. How pertinently the jade answers me! Ha! almost one a’ clock!
[_Looking on his watch_.] Oh, y’are come!
SCENE II.
MIRABELL _and_ FOOTMAN.
MIRA. Well, is the grand affair over? You have been something tedious.
SERV. Sir, there’s such coupling at Pancras that they stand behind one
another, as ’twere in a country-dance. Ours was the last couple to lead
up; and no hopes appearing of dispatch, besides, the parson growing
hoarse, we were afraid his lungs would have failed before it came to our
turn; so we drove round to Duke’s Place, and there they were riveted in a
trice.
MIRA. So, so; you are sure they are married?
SERV. Married and bedded, sir; I am witness.
MIRA. Have you the certificate?
SERV. Here it is, sir.
MIRA. Has the tailor brought Waitwell’s clothes home, and the new
liveries?
SERV. Yes, sir.
MIRA. That’s well. Do you go home again, d’ye hear, and adjourn the
consummation till farther order; bid Waitwell shake his ears, and Dame
Partlet rustle up her feathers, and meet me at one a’ clock by Rosamond’s
pond, that I may see her before she returns to her lady. And, as you
tender your ears, be secret.
SCENE III.
MIRABELL, FAINALL, BETTY.
FAIN. Joy of your success, Mirabell; you look pleased.
MIRA. Ay; I have been engaged in a matter of some sort of mirth, which
is not yet ripe for discovery. I am glad this is not a cabal-night. I
wonder, Fainall, that you who are married, and of consequence should be
discreet, will suffer your wife to be of such a party.
FAIN. Faith, I am not jealous. Besides, most who are engaged are women
and relations; and for the men, they are of a kind too contemptible to
give scandal.
MIRA. I am of another opinion: the greater the coxcomb, always the more
the scandal; for a woman who is not a fool can have but one reason for
associating with a man who is one.
FAIN. Are you jealous as often as you see Witwoud entertained by
Millamant?
MIRA. Of her understanding I am, if not of her person.
FAIN. You do her wrong; for, to give her her due, she has wit.
MIRA. She has beauty enough to make any man think so, and complaisance
enough not to contradict him who shall tell her so.
FAIN. For a passionate lover methinks you are a man somewhat too
discerning in the failings of your mistress.
MIRA. And for a discerning man somewhat too passionate a lover, for I
like her with all her faults; nay, like her for her faults. Her follies
are so natural, or so artful, that they become her, and those
affectations which in another woman would be odious serve but to make her
more agreeable. I’ll tell thee, Fainall, she once used me with that
insolence that in revenge I took her to pieces, sifted her, and separated
her failings: I studied ’em and got ’em by rote. The catalogue was so
large that I was not without hopes, one day or other, to hate her
heartily. To which end I so used myself to think of ’em, that at length,
contrary to my design and expectation, they gave me every hour less and
less disturbance, till in a few days it became habitual to me to remember
’em without being displeased. They are now grown as familiar to me as my
own frailties, and in all probability in a little time longer I shall
like ’em as well.
FAIN. Marry her, marry her; be half as well acquainted with her charms
as you are with her defects, and, my life on’t, you are your own man
again.
MIRA. Say you so?
FAIN. Ay, ay; I have experience. I have a wife, and so forth.
SCENE IV.
[_To them_] MESSENGER.
MESS. Is one Squire Witwoud here?
BET. Yes; what’s your business?
MESS. I have a letter for him, from his brother Sir Wilfull, which I am
charged to deliver into his own hands.
BET. He’s in the next room, friend. That way.
SCENE V.
MIRABELL, FAINALL, BETTY.
MIRA. What, is the chief of that noble family in town, Sir Wilfull
Witwoud?
FAIN. He is expected to-day. Do you know him?
MIRA. I have seen him; he promises to be an extraordinary person. I
think you have the honour to be related to him.
FAIN. Yes; he is half-brother to this Witwoud by a former wife, who was
sister to my Lady Wishfort, my wife’s mother. If you marry Millamant,
you must call cousins too.
MIRA. I had rather be his relation than his acquaintance.
FAIN. He comes to town in order to equip himself for travel.
MIRA. For travel! Why the man that I mean is above forty.
FAIN. No matter for that; ’tis for the honour of England that all Europe
should know we have blockheads of all ages.
MIRA. I wonder there is not an act of parliament to save the credit of
the nation and prohibit the exportation of fools.
FAIN. By no means, ’tis better as ’tis; ’tis better to trade with a
little loss, than to be quite eaten up with being overstocked.
MIRA. Pray, are the follies of this knight-errant and those of the
squire, his brother, anything related?
FAIN. Not at all: Witwoud grows by the knight like a medlar grafted on a
crab. One will melt in your mouth and t’other set your teeth on edge;
one is all pulp and the other all core.
MIRA. So one will be rotten before he be ripe, and the other will be
rotten without ever being ripe at all.
FAIN. Sir Wilfull is an odd mixture of bashfulness and obstinacy. But
when he’s drunk, he’s as loving as the monster in The Tempest, and much
after the same manner. To give bother his due, he has something of
good-nature, and does not always want wit.
MIRA. Not always: but as often as his memory fails him and his
commonplace of comparisons. He is a fool with a good memory and some few
scraps of other folks’ wit. He is one whose conversation can never be
approved, yet it is now and then to be endured. He has indeed one good
quality: he is not exceptious, for he so passionately affects the
reputation of understanding raillery that he will construe an affront
into a jest, and call downright rudeness and ill language satire and
fire.
FAIN. If you have a mind to finish his picture, you have an opportunity
to do it at full length. Behold the original.
SCENE VI.
[_To them_] WITWOUD.
WIT. Afford me your compassion, my dears; pity me, Fainall, Mirabell,
pity me.
MIRA. I do from my soul.
FAIN. Why, what’s the matter?
WIT. No letters for me, Betty?
BET. Did not a messenger bring you one but now, sir?
WIT. Ay; but no other?
BET. No, sir.
WIT. That’s hard, that’s very hard. A messenger, a mule, a beast of
burden, he has brought me a letter from the fool my brother, as heavy as
a panegyric in a funeral sermon, or a copy of commendatory verses from
one poet to another. And what’s worse, ’tis as sure a forerunner of the
author as an epistle dedicatory.
MIRA. A fool, and your brother, Witwoud?
WIT. Ay, ay, my half-brother. My half-brother he is, no nearer, upon
honour.
MIRA. Then ’tis possible he may be but half a fool.
WIT. Good, good, Mirabell, _le drôle_! Good, good, hang him, don’t
let’s talk of him.—Fainall, how does your lady? Gad, I say anything in
the world to get this fellow out of my head. I beg pardon that I should
ask a man of pleasure and the town a question at once so foreign and
domestic. But I talk like an old maid at a marriage, I don’t know what I
say: but she’s the best woman in the world.
FAIN. ’Tis well you don’t know what you say, or else your commendation
would go near to make me either vain or jealous.
WIT. No man in town lives well with a wife but Fainall. Your judgment,
Mirabell?
MIRA. You had better step and ask his wife, if you would be credibly
informed.
WIT. Mirabell!
MIRA. Ay.
WIT. My dear, I ask ten thousand pardons. Gad, I have forgot what I was
going to say to you.
MIRA. I thank you heartily, heartily.
WIT. No, but prithee excuse me:—my memory is such a memory.
MIRA. Have a care of such apologies, Witwoud; for I never knew a fool
but he affected to complain either of the spleen or his memory.
FAIN. What have you done with Petulant?
WIT. He’s reckoning his money; my money it was: I have no luck to-day.
FAIN. You may allow him to win of you at play, for you are sure to be
too hard for him at repartee: since you monopolise the wit that is
between you, the fortune must be his of course.
MIRA. I don’t find that Petulant confesses the superiority of wit to be
your talent, Witwoud.
WIT. Come, come, you are malicious now, and would breed debates.
Petulant’s my friend, and a very honest fellow, and a very pretty fellow,
and has a smattering—faith and troth, a pretty deal of an odd sort of a
small wit: nay, I’ll do him justice. I’m his friend, I won’t wrong him.
And if he had any judgment in the world, he would not be altogether
contemptible. Come, come, don’t detract from the merits of my friend.
FAIN. You don’t take your friend to be over-nicely bred?
WIT. No, no, hang him, the rogue has no manners at all, that I must own;
no more breeding than a bum-baily, that I grant you:—’tis pity; the
fellow has fire and life.
MIRA. What, courage?
WIT. Hum, faith, I don’t know as to that, I can’t say as to that. Yes,
faith, in a controversy he’ll contradict anybody.
MIRA. Though ’twere a man whom he feared or a woman whom he loved.
WIT. Well, well, he does not always think before he speaks. We have all
our failings; you are too hard upon him, you are, faith. Let me excuse
him,—I can defend most of his faults, except one or two; one he has,
that’s the truth on’t,—if he were my brother I could not acquit him—that
indeed I could wish were otherwise.
MIRA. Ay, marry, what’s that, Witwoud?
WIT. Oh, pardon me. Expose the infirmities of my friend? No, my dear,
excuse me there.
FAIN. What, I warrant he’s unsincere, or ’tis some such trifle.
WIT. No, no; what if he be? ’Tis no matter for that, his wit will
excuse that. A wit should no more be sincere than a woman constant: one
argues a decay of parts, as t’other of beauty.
MIRA. Maybe you think him too positive?
WIT. No, no; his being positive is an incentive to argument, and keeps
up conversation.
FAIN. Too illiterate?
WIT. That? That’s his happiness. His want of learning gives him the
more opportunities to show his natural parts.
MIRA. He wants words?
WIT. Ay; but I like him for that now: for his want of words gives me the
pleasure very often to explain his meaning.
FAIN. He’s impudent?
WIT. No that’s not it.
MIRA. Vain?
WIT. No.
MIRA. What, he speaks unseasonable truths sometimes, because he has not
wit enough to invent an evasion?
WIT. Truths? Ha, ha, ha! No, no, since you will have it, I mean he
never speaks truth at all, that’s all. He will lie like a chambermaid,
or a woman of quality’s porter. Now that is a fault.
SCENE VII.
[_To them_] COACHMAN.
COACH. Is Master Petulant here, mistress?
BET. Yes.
COACH. Three gentlewomen in a coach would speak with him.
FAIN. O brave Petulant! Three!
BET. I’ll tell him.
COACH. You must bring two dishes of chocolate and a glass of cinnamon
water.
SCENE VIII.
MIRABELL, FAINALL, WITWOUD.
WIT. That should be for two fasting strumpets, and a bawd troubled with
wind. Now you may know what the three are.
MIRA. You are very free with your friend’s acquaintance.
WIT. Ay, ay; friendship without freedom is as dull as love without
enjoyment or wine without toasting: but to tell you a secret, these are
trulls whom he allows coach-hire, and something more by the week, to call
on him once a day at public places.
MIRA. How!
WIT. You shall see he won’t go to ’em because there’s no more company
here to take notice of him. Why, this is nothing to what he used to
do:—before he found out this way, I have known him call for himself—
FAIN. Call for himself? What dost thou mean?
WIT. Mean? Why he would slip you out of this chocolate-house, just when
you had been talking to him. As soon as your back was turned—whip he was
gone; then trip to his lodging, clap on a hood and scarf and a mask, slap
into a hackney-coach, and drive hither to the door again in a trice;
where he would send in for himself; that I mean, call for himself, wait
for himself, nay, and what’s more, not finding himself, sometimes leave a
letter for himself.
MIRA. I confess this is something extraordinary. I believe he waits for
himself now, he is so long a coming; oh, I ask his pardon.
SCENE IX.
PETULANT, MIRABELL, FAINALL, WITWOUD, BETTY.
BET. Sir, the coach stays.
PET. Well, well, I come. ’Sbud, a man had as good be a professed
midwife as a professed whoremaster, at this rate; to be knocked up and
raised at all hours, and in all places. Pox on ’em, I won’t come. D’ye
hear, tell ’em I won’t come. Let ’em snivel and cry their hearts out.
FAIN. You are very cruel, Petulant.
PET. All’s one, let it pass. I have a humour to be cruel.
MIRA. I hope they are not persons of condition that you use at this
rate.
PET. Condition? Condition’s a dried fig, if I am not in humour. By
this hand, if they were your—a—a—your what-d’ee-call-’ems themselves,
they must wait or rub off, if I want appetite.
MIRA. What-d’ee-call-’ems! What are they, Witwoud?
WIT. Empresses, my dear. By your what-d’ee-call-’ems he means Sultana
Queens.
PET. Ay, Roxolanas.
MIRA. Cry you mercy.
FAIN. Witwoud says they are—
PET. What does he say th’are?
WIT. I? Fine ladies, I say.
PET. Pass on, Witwoud. Harkee, by this light, his relations—two
co-heiresses his cousins, and an old aunt, who loves cater-wauling better
than a conventicle.
WIT. Ha, ha, ha! I had a mind to see how the rogue would come off. Ha,
ha, ha! Gad, I can’t be angry with him, if he had said they were my
mother and my sisters.
MIRA. No?
WIT. No; the rogue’s wit and readiness of invention charm me, dear
Petulant.
BET. They are gone, sir, in great anger.
PET. Enough, let ’em trundle. Anger helps complexion, saves paint.
FAIN. This continence is all dissembled; this is in order to have
something to brag of the next time he makes court to Millamant, and swear
he has abandoned the whole sex for her sake.
MIRA. Have you not left off your impudent pretensions there yet? I
shall cut your throat, sometime or other, Petulant, about that business.
PET. Ay, ay, let that pass. There are other throats to be cut.
MIRA. Meaning mine, sir?
PET. Not I—I mean nobody—I know nothing. But there are uncles and
nephews in the world—and they may be rivals. What then? All’s one for
that.
MIRA. How? Harkee, Petulant, come hither. Explain, or I shall call
your interpreter.
PET. Explain? I know nothing. Why, you have an uncle, have you not,
lately come to town, and lodges by my Lady Wishfort’s?
MIRA. True.
PET. Why, that’s enough. You and he are not friends; and if he should
marry and have a child, yon may be disinherited, ha!
MIRA. Where hast thou stumbled upon all this truth?
PET. All’s one for that; why, then, say I know something.
MIRA. Come, thou art an honest fellow, Petulant, and shalt make love to
my mistress, thou shalt, faith. What hast thou heard of my uncle?
PET. I? Nothing, I. If throats are to be cut, let swords clash.
Snug’s the word; I shrug and am silent.
MIRA. Oh, raillery, raillery! Come, I know thou art in the women’s
secrets. What, you’re a cabalist; I know you stayed at Millamant’s last
night after I went. Was there any mention made of my uncle or me? Tell
me; if thou hadst but good nature equal to thy wit, Petulant, Tony
Witwoud, who is now thy competitor in fame, would show as dim by thee as
a dead whiting’s eye by a pearl of orient; he would no more be seen by
thee than Mercury is by the sun: come, I’m sure thou wo’t tell me.
PET. If I do, will you grant me common sense, then, for the future?
MIRA. Faith, I’ll do what I can for thee, and I’ll pray that heav’n may
grant it thee in the meantime.
PET. Well, harkee.
FAIN. Petulant and you both will find Mirabell as warm a rival as a
lover.
WIT. Pshaw, pshaw, that she laughs at Petulant is plain. And for my
part, but that it is almost a fashion to admire her, I should—harkee—to
tell you a secret, but let it go no further between friends, I shall
never break my heart for her.
FAIN. How?
WIT. She’s handsome; but she’s a sort of an uncertain woman.
FAIN. I thought you had died for her.
WIT. Umh—no—
FAIN. She has wit.
WIT. ’Tis what she will hardly allow anybody else. Now, demme, I should
hate that, if she were as handsome as Cleopatra. Mirabell is not so sure
of her as he thinks for.
FAIN. Why do you think so?
WIT. We stayed pretty late there last night, and heard something of an
uncle to Mirabell, who is lately come to town, and is between him and the
best part of his estate. Mirabell and he are at some distance, as my
Lady Wishfort has been told; and you know she hates Mirabell worse than a
quaker hates a parrot, or than a fishmonger hates a hard frost. Whether
this uncle has seen Mrs. Millamant or not, I cannot say; but there were
items of such a treaty being in embryo; and if it should come to life,
poor Mirabell would be in some sort unfortunately fobbed, i’faith.
FAIN. ’Tis impossible Millamant should hearken to it.
WIT. Faith, my dear, I can’t tell; she’s a woman and a kind of a
humorist.
MIRA. And this is the sum of what you could collect last night?
PET. The quintessence. Maybe Witwoud knows more; he stayed longer.
Besides, they never mind him; they say anything before him.
MIRA. I thought you had been the greatest favourite.
PET. Ay, tête-à-tête; but not in public, because I make remarks.
MIRA. You do?
PET. Ay, ay, pox, I’m malicious, man. Now he’s soft, you know, they are
not in awe of him. The fellow’s well bred, he’s what you call a—what
d’ye-call-’em—a fine gentleman, but he’s silly withal.
MIRA. I thank you, I know as much as my curiosity requires. Fainall,
are you for the Mall?
FAIN. Ay, I’ll take a turn before dinner.
WIT. Ay, we’ll all walk in the park; the ladies talked of being there.
MIRA. I thought you were obliged to watch for your brother Sir Wilfull’s
arrival.
WIT. No, no, he comes to his aunt’s, my Lady Wishfort; pox on him, I
shall be troubled with him too; what shall I do with the fool?
PET. Beg him for his estate, that I may beg you afterwards, and so have
but one trouble with you both.
WIT. O rare Petulant, thou art as quick as fire in a frosty morning;
thou shalt to the Mall with us, and we’ll be very severe.
PET. Enough; I’m in a humour to be severe.
MIRA. Are you? Pray then walk by yourselves. Let not us be accessory
to your putting the ladies out of countenance with your senseless
ribaldry, which you roar out aloud as often as they pass by you, and when
you have made a handsome woman blush, then you think you have been
severe.
PET. What, what? Then let ’em either show their innocence by not
understanding what they hear, or else show their discretion by not
hearing what they would not be thought to understand.
MIRA. But hast not thou then sense enough to know that thou ought’st to
be most ashamed thyself when thou hast put another out of countenance?
PET. Not I, by this hand: I always take blushing either for a sign of
guilt or ill-breeding.
MIRA. I confess you ought to think so. You are in the right, that you
may plead the error of your judgment in defence of your practice.
Where modesty’s ill manners, ’tis but fit
That impudence and malice pass for wit.
ACT II.—SCENE I.
_St. James’s Park_.
MRS. FAINALL _and_ MRS. MARWOOD.
MRS. FAIN. Ay, ay, dear Marwood, if we will be happy, we must find the
means in ourselves, and among ourselves. Men are ever in extremes;
either doting or averse. While they are lovers, if they have fire and
sense, their jealousies are insupportable: and when they cease to love
(we ought to think at least) they loathe, they look upon us with horror
and distaste, they meet us like the ghosts of what we were, and as from
such, fly from us.
MRS. MAR. True, ’tis an unhappy circumstance of life that love should
ever die before us, and that the man so often should outlive the lover.
But say what you will, ’tis better to be left than never to have been
loved. To pass our youth in dull indifference, to refuse the sweets of
life because they once must leave us, is as preposterous as to wish to
have been born old, because we one day must be old. For my part, my
youth may wear and waste, but it shall never rust in my possession.
MRS. FAIN. Then it seems you dissemble an aversion to mankind only in
compliance to my mother’s humour.
MRS. MAR. Certainly. To be free, I have no taste of those insipid dry
discourses with which our sex of force must entertain themselves apart
from men. We may affect endearments to each other, profess eternal
friendships, and seem to dote like lovers; but ’tis not in our natures
long to persevere. Love will resume his empire in our breasts, and every
heart, or soon or late, receive and readmit him as its lawful tyrant.
MRS. FAIN. Bless me, how have I been deceived! Why, you profess a
libertine.
MRS. MAR. You see my friendship by my freedom. Come, be as sincere,
acknowledge that your sentiments agree with mine.
MRS. FAIN. Never.
MRS. MAR. You hate mankind?
MRS. FAIN. Heartily, inveterately.
MRS. MAR. Your husband?
MRS. FAIN. Most transcendently; ay, though I say it, meritoriously.
MRS. MAR. Give me your hand upon it.
MRS. FAIN. There.
MRS. MAR. I join with you; what I have said has been to try you.
MRS. FAIN. Is it possible? Dost thou hate those vipers, men?
MRS. MAR. I have done hating ’em, and am now come to despise ’em; the
next thing I have to do is eternally to forget ’em.
MRS. FAIN. There spoke the spirit of an Amazon, a Penthesilea.
MRS. MAR. And yet I am thinking sometimes to carry my aversion further.
MRS. FAIN. How?
MRS. MAR. Faith, by marrying; if I could but find one that loved me very
well, and would be throughly sensible of ill usage, I think I should do
myself the violence of undergoing the ceremony.
MRS. FAIN. You would not make him a cuckold?
MRS. MAR. No; but I’d make him believe I did, and that’s as bad.
MRS. FAIN. Why had not you as good do it?
MRS. MAR. Oh, if he should ever discover it, he would then know the
worst, and be out of his pain; but I would have him ever to continue upon
the rack of fear and jealousy.
MRS. FAIN. Ingenious mischief! Would thou wert married to Mirabell.
MRS. MAR. Would I were.
MRS. FAIN. You change colour.
MRS. MAR. Because I hate him.
MRS. FAIN. So do I; but I can hear him named. But what reason have you
to hate him in particular?
MRS. MAR. I never loved him; he is, and always was, insufferably proud.
MRS. FAIN. By the reason you give for your aversion, one would think it
dissembled; for you have laid a fault to his charge, of which his enemies
must acquit him.
MRS. MAR. Oh, then it seems you are one of his favourable enemies.
Methinks you look a little pale, and now you flush again.
MRS. FAIN. Do I? I think I am a little sick o’ the sudden.
MRS. MAR. What ails you?
MRS. FAIN. My husband. Don’t you see him? He turned short upon me
unawares, and has almost overcome me.
SCENE II.
[_To them_] FAINALL _and_ MIRABELL.
MRS. MAR. Ha, ha, ha! he comes opportunely for you.
MRS. FAIN. For you, for he has brought Mirabell with him.
FAIN. My dear.
MRS. FAIN. My soul.
FAIN. You don’t look well to-day, child.
MRS. FAIN. D’ye think so?
MIRA. He is the only man that does, madam.
MRS. FAIN. The only man that would tell me so at least, and the only man
from whom I could hear it without mortification.
FAIN. Oh, my dear, I am satisfied of your tenderness; I know you cannot
resent anything from me; especially what is an effect of my concern.
MRS. FAIN. Mr. Mirabell, my mother interrupted you in a pleasant
relation last night: I would fain hear it out.
MIRA. The persons concerned in that affair have yet a tolerable
reputation. I am afraid Mr. Fainall will be censorious.
MRS. FAIN. He has a humour more prevailing than his curiosity, and will
willingly dispense with the hearing of one scandalous story, to avoid
giving an occasion to make another by being seen to walk with his wife.
This way, Mr. Mirabell, and I dare promise you will oblige us both.
SCENE III.
FAINALL, MRS. MARWOOD.
FAIN. Excellent creature! Well, sure, if I should live to be rid of my
wife, I should be a miserable man.
MRS. MAR. Ay?
FAIN. For having only that one hope, the accomplishment of it of
consequence must put an end to all my hopes, and what a wretch is he who
must survive his hopes! Nothing remains when that day comes but to sit
down and weep like Alexander when he wanted other worlds to conquer.
MRS. MAR. Will you not follow ’em?
FAIN. Faith, I think not,
MRS. MAR. Pray let us; I have a reason.
FAIN. You are not jealous?
MRS. MAR. Of whom?
FAIN. Of Mirabell.
MRS. MAR. If I am, is it inconsistent with my love to you that I am
tender of your honour?
FAIN. You would intimate then, as if there were a fellow-feeling between
my wife and him?
MRS. MAR. I think she does not hate him to that degree she would be
thought.
FAIN. But he, I fear, is too insensible.
MRS. MAR. It may be you are deceived.
FAIN. It may be so. I do not now begin to apprehend it.
MRS. MAR. What?
FAIN. That I have been deceived, madam, and you are false.
MRS. MAR. That I am false? What mean you?
FAIN. To let you know I see through all your little arts.—Come, you both
love him, and both have equally dissembled your aversion. Your mutual
jealousies of one another have made you clash till you have both struck
fire. I have seen the warm confession red’ning on your cheeks, and
sparkling from your eyes.
MRS. MAR. You do me wrong.
FAIN. I do not. ’Twas for my ease to oversee and wilfully neglect the
gross advances made him by my wife, that by permitting her to be engaged,
I might continue unsuspected in my pleasures, and take you oftener to my
arms in full security. But could you think, because the nodding husband
would not wake, that e’er the watchful lover slept?
MRS. MAR. And wherewithal can you reproach me?
FAIN. With infidelity, with loving another, with love of Mirabell.
MRS. MAR. ’Tis false. I challenge you to show an instance that can
confirm your groundless accusation. I hate him.
FAIN. And wherefore do you hate him? He is insensible, and your
resentment follows his neglect. An instance? The injuries you have done
him are a proof: your interposing in his love. What cause had you to
make discoveries of his pretended passion? To undeceive the credulous
aunt, and be the officious obstacle of his match with Millamant?
MRS. MAR. My obligations to my lady urged me: I had professed a
friendship to her, and could not see her easy nature so abused by that
dissembler.
FAIN. What, was it conscience then? Professed a friendship! Oh, the
pious friendships of the female sex!
MRS. MAR. More tender, more sincere, and more enduring, than all the
vain and empty vows of men, whether professing love to us or mutual faith
to one another.
FAIN. Ha, ha, ha! you are my wife’s friend too.
MRS. MAR. Shame and ingratitude! Do you reproach me? You, you upbraid
me? Have I been false to her, through strict fidelity to you, and
sacrificed my friendship to keep my love inviolate? And have you the
baseness to charge me with the guilt, unmindful of the merit? To you it
should be meritorious that I have been vicious. And do you reflect that
guilt upon me which should lie buried in your bosom?
FAIN. You misinterpret my reproof. I meant but to remind you of the
slight account you once could make of strictest ties when set in
competition with your love to me.
MRS. MAR. ’Tis false, you urged it with deliberate malice. ’Twas spoke
in scorn, and I never will forgive it.
FAIN. Your guilt, not your resentment, begets your rage. If yet you
loved, you could forgive a jealousy: but you are stung to find you are
discovered.
MRS. MAR. It shall be all discovered. You too shall be discovered; be
sure you shall. I can but be exposed. If I do it myself I shall prevent
your baseness.
FAIN. Why, what will you do?
MRS. MAR. Disclose it to your wife; own what has past between us.
FAIN. Frenzy!
MRS. MAR. By all my wrongs I’ll do’t. I’ll publish to the world the
injuries you have done me, both in my fame and fortune: with both I
trusted you, you bankrupt in honour, as indigent of wealth.
FAIN. Your fame I have preserved. Your fortune has been bestowed as the
prodigality of your love would have it, in pleasures which we both have
shared. Yet, had not you been false I had e’er this repaid it. ’Tis
true—had you permitted Mirabell with Millamant to have stolen their
marriage, my lady had been incensed beyond all means of reconcilement:
Millamant had forfeited the moiety of her fortune, which then would have
descended to my wife. And wherefore did I marry but to make lawful prize
of a rich widow’s wealth, and squander it on love and you?
MRS. MAR. Deceit and frivolous pretence!
FAIN. Death, am I not married? What’s pretence? Am I not imprisoned,
fettered? Have I not a wife? Nay, a wife that was a widow, a young
widow, a handsome widow, and would be again a widow, but that I have a
heart of proof, and something of a constitution to bustle through the
ways of wedlock and this world. Will you yet be reconciled to truth and
me?
MRS. MAR. Impossible. Truth and you are inconsistent.—I hate you, and
shall for ever.
FAIN. For loving you?
MRS. MAR. I loathe the name of love after such usage; and next to the
guilt with which you would asperse me, I scorn you most. Farewell.
FAIN. Nay, we must not part thus.
MRS. MAR. Let me go.
FAIN. Come, I’m sorry.
MRS. MAR. I care not. Let me go. Break my hands, do—I’d leave ’em to
get loose.
FAIN. I would not hurt you for the world. Have I no other hold to keep
you here?
MRS. MAR. Well, I have deserved it all.
FAIN. You know I love you.
MRS. MAR. Poor dissembling! Oh, that—well, it is not yet—
FAIN. What? What is it not? What is it not yet? It is not yet too
late—
MRS. MAR. No, it is not yet too late—I have that comfort.
FAIN. It is, to love another.
MRS. MAR. But not to loathe, detest, abhor mankind, myself, and the
whole treacherous world.
FAIN. Nay, this is extravagance. Come, I ask your pardon. No tears—I
was to blame, I could not love you and be easy in my doubts. Pray
forbear—I believe you; I’m convinced I’ve done you wrong; and any way,
every way will make amends: I’ll hate my wife yet more, damn her, I’ll
part with her, rob her of all she’s worth, and we’ll retire somewhere,
anywhere, to another world; I’ll marry thee—be pacified.—’Sdeath, they
come: hide your face, your tears. You have a mask: wear it a moment.
This way, this way: be persuaded.
SCENE IV.
MIRABELL _and_ MRS. FAINALL.
MRS. FAIN. They are here yet.
MIRA. They are turning into the other walk.
MRS. FAIN. While I only hated my husband, I could bear to see him; but
since I have despised him, he’s too offensive.
MIRA. Oh, you should hate with prudence.
MRS. FAIN. Yes, for I have loved with indiscretion.
MIRA. You should have just so much disgust for your husband as may be
sufficient to make you relish your lover.
MRS. FAIN. You have been the cause that I have loved without bounds, and
would you set limits to that aversion of which you have been the
occasion? Why did you make me marry this man?
MIRA. Why do we daily commit disagreeable and dangerous actions? To
save that idol, reputation. If the familiarities of our loves had
produced that consequence of which you were apprehensive, where could you
have fixed a father’s name with credit but on a husband? I knew Fainall
to be a man lavish of his morals, an interested and professing friend, a
false and a designing lover, yet one whose wit and outward fair behaviour
have gained a reputation with the town, enough to make that woman stand
excused who has suffered herself to be won by his addresses. A better
man ought not to have been sacrificed to the occasion; a worse had not
answered to the purpose. When you are weary of him you know your remedy.
MRS. FAIN. I ought to stand in some degree of credit with you, Mirabell.
MIRA. In justice to you, I have made you privy to my whole design, and
put it in your power to ruin or advance my fortune.
MRS. FAIN. Whom have you instructed to represent your pretended uncle?
MIRA. Waitwell, my servant.
MRS. FAIN. He is an humble servant to Foible, my mother’s woman, and may
win her to your interest.
MIRA. Care is taken for that. She is won and worn by this time. They
were married this morning.
MRS. FAIN. Who?
MIRA. Waitwell and Foible. I would not tempt my servant to betray me by
trusting him too far. If your mother, in hopes to ruin me, should
consent to marry my pretended uncle, he might, like Mosca in the _Fox_,
stand upon terms; so I made him sure beforehand.
MRS. FAIN. So, if my poor mother is caught in a contract, you will
discover the imposture betimes, and release her by producing a
certificate of her gallant’s former marriage.
MIRA. Yes, upon condition that she consent to my marriage with her
niece, and surrender the moiety of her fortune in her possession.
MRS. FAIN. She talked last night of endeavouring at a match between
Millamant and your uncle.
MIRA. That was by Foible’s direction and my instruction, that she might
seem to carry it more privately.
MRS. FAIN. Well, I have an opinion of your success, for I believe my
lady will do anything to get an husband; and when she has this, which you
have provided for her, I suppose she will submit to anything to get rid
of him.
MIRA. Yes, I think the good lady would marry anything that resembled a
man, though ’twere no more than what a butler could pinch out of a
napkin.
MRS. FAIN. Female frailty! We must all come to it, if we live to be
old, and feel the craving of a false appetite when the true is decayed.
MIRA. An old woman’s appetite is depraved like that of a girl. ’Tis the
green-sickness of a second childhood, and, like the faint offer of a
latter spring, serves but to usher in the fall, and withers in an
affected bloom.
MRS. FAIN. Here’s your mistress.
SCENE V.
[_To them_] MRS. MILLAMANT, WITWOUD, MINCING.
MIRA. Here she comes, i’faith, full sail, with her fan spread and
streamers out, and a shoal of fools for tenders.—Ha, no, I cry her mercy.
MRS. FAIN. I see but one poor empty sculler, and he tows her woman after
him.
MIRA. You seem to be unattended, madam. You used to have the _beau
monde_ throng after you, and a flock of gay fine perukes hovering round
you.
WIT. Like moths about a candle. I had like to have lost my comparison
for want of breath.
MILLA. Oh, I have denied myself airs to-day. I have walked as fast
through the crowd—
WIT. As a favourite just disgraced, and with as few followers.
MILLA. Dear Mr. Witwoud, truce with your similitudes, for I am as sick
of ’em—
WIT. As a physician of a good air. I cannot help it, madam, though ’tis
against myself.
MILLA. Yet again! Mincing, stand between me and his wit.
WIT. Do, Mrs. Mincing, like a screen before a great fire. I confess I
do blaze to-day; I am too bright.
MRS. FAIN. But, dear Millamant, why were you so long?
MILLA. Long! Lord, have I not made violent haste? I have asked every
living thing I met for you; I have enquired after you, as after a new
fashion.
WIT. Madam, truce with your similitudes.—No, you met her husband, and
did not ask him for her.
MIRA. By your leave, Witwoud, that were like enquiring after an old
fashion to ask a husband for his wife.
WIT. Hum, a hit, a hit, a palpable hit; I confess it.
MRS. FAIN. You were dressed before I came abroad.
MILLA. Ay, that’s true. Oh, but then I had—Mincing, what had I? Why
was I so long?
MINC. O mem, your laship stayed to peruse a packet of letters.
MILLA. Oh, ay, letters—I had letters—I am persecuted with letters—I hate
letters. Nobody knows how to write letters; and yet one has ’em, one
does not know why. They serve one to pin up one’s hair.
WIT. Is that the way? Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with all
your letters? I find I must keep copies.
MILLA. Only with those in verse, Mr. Witwoud. I never pin up my hair
with prose. I think I tried once, Mincing.
MINC. O mem, I shall never forget it.
MILLA. Ay, poor Mincing tift and tift all the morning.
MINC. Till I had the cramp in my fingers, I’ll vow, mem. And all to no
purpose. But when your laship pins it up with poetry, it fits so
pleasant the next day as anything, and is so pure and so crips.
WIT. Indeed, so crips?
MINC. You’re such a critic, Mr. Witwoud.
MILLA. Mirabell, did you take exceptions last night? Oh, ay, and went
away. Now I think on’t I’m angry—no, now I think on’t I’m pleased:—for I
believe I gave you some pain.
MIRA. Does that please you?
MILLA. Infinitely; I love to give pain.
MIRA. You would affect a cruelty which is not in your nature; your true
vanity is in the power of pleasing.
MILLA. Oh, I ask your pardon for that. One’s cruelty is one’s power,
and when one parts with one’s cruelty one parts with one’s power, and
when one has parted with that, I fancy one’s old and ugly.
MIRA. Ay, ay; suffer your cruelty to ruin the object of your power, to
destroy your lover—and then how vain, how lost a thing you’ll be! Nay,
’tis true; you are no longer handsome when you’ve lost your lover: your
beauty dies upon the instant. For beauty is the lover’s gift: ’tis he
bestows your charms:—your glass is all a cheat. The ugly and the old,
whom the looking-glass mortifies, yet after commendation can be flattered
by it, and discover beauties in it: for that reflects our praises rather
than your face.
MILLA. Oh, the vanity of these men! Fainall, d’ye hear him? If they
did not commend us, we were not handsome! Now you must know they could
not commend one if one was not handsome. Beauty the lover’s gift! Lord,
what is a lover, that it can give? Why, one makes lovers as fast as one
pleases, and they live as long as one pleases, and they die as soon as
one pleases; and then, if one pleases, one makes more.
WIT. Very pretty. Why, you make no more of making of lovers, madam,
than of making so many card-matches.
MILLA. One no more owes one’s beauty to a lover than one’s wit to an
echo. They can but reflect what we look and say: vain empty things if we
are silent or unseen, and want a being.
MIRA. Yet, to those two vain empty things, you owe two the greatest
pleasures of your life.
MILLA. How so?
MIRA. To your lover you owe the pleasure of hearing yourselves praised,
and to an echo the pleasure of hearing yourselves talk.
WIT. But I know a lady that loves talking so incessantly, she won’t give
an echo fair play; she has that everlasting rotation of tongue that an
echo must wait till she dies before it can catch her last words.
MILLA. Oh, fiction; Fainall, let us leave these men.
MIRA. Draw off Witwoud. [_Aside to_ MRS. FAINALL.]
MRS. FAIN. Immediately; I have a word or two for Mr. Witwoud.
SCENE VI.
MRS. MILLAMANT, MIRABELL, MINCING.
MIRA. I would beg a little private audience too. You had the tyranny to
deny me last night, though you knew I came to impart a secret to you that
concerned my love.
MILLA. You saw I was engaged.
MIRA. Unkind! You had the leisure to entertain a herd of fools: things
who visit you from their excessive idleness, bestowing on your easiness
that time which is the incumbrance of their lives. How can you find
delight in such society? It is impossible they should admire you; they
are not capable; or, if they were, it should be to you as a
mortification: for, sure, to please a fool is some degree of folly.
MILLA. I please myself.—Besides, sometimes to converse with fools is for
my health.
MIRA. Your health! Is there a worse disease than the conversation of
fools?
MILLA. Yes, the vapours; fools are physic for it, next to assafoetida.
MIRA. You are not in a course of fools?
MILLA. Mirabell, if you persist in this offensive freedom you’ll
displease me. I think I must resolve after all not to have you:—we
shan’t agree.
MIRA. Not in our physic, it may be.
MILLA. And yet our distemper in all likelihood will be the same; for we
shall be sick of one another. I shan’t endure to be reprimanded nor
instructed; ’tis so dull to act always by advice, and so tedious to be
told of one’s faults, I can’t bear it. Well, I won’t have you,
Mirabell—I’m resolved—I think—you may go—ha, ha, ha! What would you give
that you could help loving me?
MIRA. I would give something that you did not know I could not help it.
MILLA. Come, don’t look grave then. Well, what do you say to me?
MIRA. I say that a man may as soon make a friend by his wit, or a
fortune by his honesty, as win a woman with plain-dealing and sincerity.
MILLA. Sententious Mirabell! Prithee don’t look with that violent and
inflexible wise face, like Solomon at the dividing of the child in an old
tapestry hanging!
MIRA. You are merry, madam, but I would persuade you for a moment to be
serious.
MILLA. What, with that face? No, if you keep your countenance, ’tis
impossible I should hold mine. Well, after all, there is something very
moving in a lovesick face. Ha, ha, ha! Well I won’t laugh; don’t be
peevish. Heigho! Now I’ll be melancholy, as melancholy as a
watch-light. Well, Mirabell, if ever you will win me, woo me now.—Nay,
if you are so tedious, fare you well: I see they are walking away.
MIRA. Can you not find in the variety of your disposition one moment—
MILLA. To hear you tell me Foible’s married, and your plot like to
speed? No.
MIRA. But how you came to know it—
MILLA. Without the help of the devil, you can’t imagine; unless she
should tell me herself. Which of the two it may have been, I will leave
you to consider; and when you have done thinking of that, think of me.
SCENE VII.
MIRABELL _alone_.
MIRA. I have something more.—Gone! Think of you? To think of a
whirlwind, though ’twere in a whirlwind, were a case of more steady
contemplation, a very tranquillity of mind and mansion. A fellow that
lives in a windmill has not a more whimsical dwelling than the heart of a
man that is lodged in a woman. There is no point of the compass to which
they cannot turn, and by which they are not turned, and by one as well as
another; for motion, not method, is their occupation. To know this, and
yet continue to be in love, is to be made wise from the dictates of
reason, and yet persevere to play the fool by the force of instinct.—Oh,
here come my pair of turtles. What, billing so sweetly? Is not
Valentine’s day over with you yet?
SCENE VIII.
[_To him_] WAITWELL, FOIBLE.
MIRA. Sirrah, Waitwell, why, sure, you think you were married for your
own recreation and not for my conveniency.
WAIT. Your pardon, sir. With submission, we have indeed been solacing
in lawful delights; but still with an eye to business, sir. I have
instructed her as well as I could. If she can take your directions as
readily as my instructions, sir, your affairs are in a prosperous way.
MIRA. Give you joy, Mrs. Foible.
FOIB. O—las, sir, I’m so ashamed.—I’m afraid my lady has been in a
thousand inquietudes for me. But I protest, sir, I made as much haste as
I could.
WAIT. That she did indeed, sir. It was my fault that she did not make
more.
MIRA. That I believe.
FOIB. But I told my lady as you instructed me, sir, that I had a
prospect of seeing Sir Rowland, your uncle, and that I would put her
ladyship’s picture in my pocket to show him, which I’ll be sure to say
has made him so enamoured of her beauty, that he burns with impatience to
lie at her ladyship’s feet and worship the original.
MIRA. Excellent Foible! Matrimony has made you eloquent in love.
WAIT. I think she has profited, sir. I think so.
FOIB. You have seen Madam Millamant, sir?
MIRA. Yes.
FOIB. I told her, sir, because I did not know that you might find an
opportunity; she had so much company last night.
MIRA. Your diligence will merit more. In the meantime—[_gives money_]
FOIB. O dear sir, your humble servant.
WAIT. Spouse—
MIRA. Stand off, sir, not a penny. Go on and prosper, Foible. The
lease shall be made good and the farm stocked, if we succeed.
FOIB. I don’t question your generosity, sir, and you need not doubt of
success. If you have no more commands, sir, I’ll be gone; I’m sure my
lady is at her toilet, and can’t dress till I come. Oh dear, I’m sure
that [_looking out_] was Mrs. Marwood that went by in a mask; if she has
seen me with you I’m sure she’ll tell my lady. I’ll make haste home and
prevent her. Your servant, Sir.—B’w’y, Waitwell.
SCENE IX.
MIRABELL, WAITWELL.
WAIT. Sir Rowland, if you please. The jade’s so pert upon her
preferment she forgets herself.
MIRA. Come, sir, will you endeavour to forget yourself—and transform
into Sir Rowland?
WAIT. Why, sir, it will be impossible I should remember myself.
Married, knighted, and attended all in one day! ’Tis enough to make any
man forget himself. The difficulty will be how to recover my
acquaintance and familiarity with my former self, and fall from my
transformation to a reformation into Waitwell. Nay, I shan’t be quite
the same Waitwell neither—for now I remember me, I’m married, and can’t
be my own man again.
Ay, there’s my grief; that’s the sad change of life:
To lose my title, and yet keep my wife.
ACT III.—SCENE I.
_A room in Lady Wishfort’s house_.
LADY WISHFORT _at her toilet_, PEG _waiting_.
LADY. Merciful! No news of Foible yet?
PEG. No, madam.
LADY. I have no more patience. If I have not fretted myself till I am
pale again, there’s no veracity in me. Fetch me the red—the red, do you
hear, sweetheart? An errant ash colour, as I’m a person. Look you how
this wench stirs! Why dost thou not fetch me a little red? Didst thou
not hear me, Mopus?
PEG. The red ratafia, does your ladyship mean, or the cherry brandy?
LADY. Ratafia, fool? No, fool. Not the ratafia, fool—grant me
patience!—I mean the Spanish paper, idiot; complexion, darling. Paint,
paint, paint, dost thou understand that, changeling, dangling thy hands
like bobbins before thee? Why dost thou not stir, puppet? Thou wooden
thing upon wires!
PEG. Lord, madam, your ladyship is so impatient.—I cannot come at the
paint, madam: Mrs. Foible has locked it up, and carried the key with her.
LADY. A pox take you both.—Fetch me the cherry brandy then.
SCENE II.
LADY WISHFORT.
I’m as pale and as faint, I look like Mrs. Qualmsick, the curate’s wife,
that’s always breeding. Wench, come, come, wench, what art thou doing?
Sipping? Tasting? Save thee, dost thou not know the bottle?
SCENE III.
LADY WISHFORT, PEG _with a bottle and china cup_.
PEG. Madam, I was looking for a cup.
LADY. A cup, save thee, and what a cup hast thou brought! Dost thou
take me for a fairy, to drink out of an acorn? Why didst thou not bring
thy thimble? Hast thou ne’er a brass thimble clinking in thy pocket with
a bit of nutmeg? I warrant thee. Come, fill, fill. So, again. See who
that is. [_One knocks_.] Set down the bottle first. Here, here, under
the table:—what, wouldst thou go with the bottle in thy hand like a
tapster? As I’m a person, this wench has lived in an inn upon the road,
before she came to me, like Maritornes the Asturian in Don Quixote. No
Foible yet?
PEG. No, madam; Mrs. Marwood.
LADY. Oh, Marwood: let her come in. Come in, good Marwood.
SCENE IV.
[_To them_] MRS. MARWOOD.
MRS. MAR. I’m surprised to find your ladyship in _déshabillé_ at this
time of day.
LADY. Foible’s a lost thing; has been abroad since morning, and never
heard of since.
MRS. MAR. I saw her but now, as I came masked through the park, in
conference with Mirabell.
LADY. With Mirabell? You call my blood into my face with mentioning
that traitor. She durst not have the confidence. I sent her to
negotiate an affair, in which if I’m detected I’m undone. If that
wheedling villain has wrought upon Foible to detect me, I’m ruined. O my
dear friend, I’m a wretch of wretches if I’m detected.
MRS. MAR. O madam, you cannot suspect Mrs. Foible’s integrity.
LADY. Oh, he carries poison in his tongue that would corrupt integrity
itself. If she has given him an opportunity, she has as good as put her
integrity into his hands. Ah, dear Marwood, what’s integrity to an
opportunity? Hark! I hear her. Dear friend, retire into my closet,
that I may examine her with more freedom—you’ll pardon me, dear friend, I
can make bold with you—there are books over the chimney—Quarles and Pryn,
and the _Short View of the Stage_, with Bunyan’s works to entertain
you.—Go, you thing, and send her in. [_To_ PEG.]
SCENE V.
LADY WISHFORT, FOIBLE.
LADY. O Foible, where hast thou been? What hast thou been doing?
FOIB. Madam, I have seen the party.
LADY. But what hast thou done?
FOIB. Nay, ’tis your ladyship has done, and are to do; I have only
promised. But a man so enamoured—so transported! Well, if worshipping
of pictures be a sin—poor Sir Rowland, I say.
LADY. The miniature has been counted like. But hast thou not betrayed
me, Foible? Hast thou not detected me to that faithless Mirabell? What
hast thou to do with him in the park? Answer me, has he got nothing out
of thee?
FOIB. So, the devil has been beforehand with me; what shall I say?—Alas,
madam, could I help it, if I met that confident thing? Was I in fault?
If you had heard how he used me, and all upon your ladyship’s account,
I’m sure you would not suspect my fidelity. Nay, if that had been the
worst I could have borne: but he had a fling at your ladyship too, and
then I could not hold; but, i’faith I gave him his own.
LADY. Me? What did the filthy fellow say?
FOIB. O madam, ’tis a shame to say what he said, with his taunts and his
fleers, tossing up his nose. Humh, says he, what, you are a-hatching
some plot, says he, you are so early abroad, or catering, says he,
ferreting for some disbanded officer, I warrant. Half pay is but thin
subsistence, says he. Well, what pension does your lady propose? Let me
see, says he, what, she must come down pretty deep now, she’s
superannuated, says he, and—
LADY. Ods my life, I’ll have him—I’ll have him murdered. I’ll have him
poisoned. Where does he eat? I’ll marry a drawer to have him poisoned
in his wine. I’ll send for Robin from Locket’s—immediately.
FOIB. Poison him? Poisoning’s too good for him. Starve him, madam,
starve him; marry Sir Rowland, and get him disinherited. Oh, you would
bless yourself to hear what he said.
LADY. A villain; superannuated?
FOIB. Humh, says he, I hear you are laying designs against me too, says
he, and Mrs. Millamant is to marry my uncle (he does not suspect a word
of your ladyship); but, says he, I’ll fit you for that, I warrant you,
says he, I’ll hamper you for that, says he, you and your old frippery
too, says he, I’ll handle you—
LADY. Audacious villain! Handle me? Would he durst? Frippery? Old
frippery? Was there ever such a foul-mouthed fellow? I’ll be married
to-morrow, I’ll be contracted to-night.
FOIB. The sooner the better, madam.
LADY. Will Sir Rowland be here, say’st thou? When, Foible?
FOIB. Incontinently, madam. No new sheriff’s wife expects the return of
her husband after knighthood with that impatience in which Sir Rowland
burns for the dear hour of kissing your ladyship’s hand after dinner.
LADY. Frippery? Superannuated frippery? I’ll frippery the villain;
I’ll reduce him to frippery and rags, a tatterdemalion!—I hope to see him
hung with tatters, like a Long Lane pent-house, or a gibbet thief. A
slander-mouthed railer! I warrant the spendthrift prodigal’s in debt as
much as the million lottery, or the whole court upon a birthday. I’ll
spoil his credit with his tailor. Yes, he shall have my niece with her
fortune, he shall.
FOIB. He? I hope to see him lodge in Ludgate first, and angle into
Blackfriars for brass farthings with an old mitten.
LADY. Ay, dear Foible; thank thee for that, dear Foible. He has put me
out of all patience. I shall never recompose my features to receive Sir
Rowland with any economy of face. This wretch has fretted me that I am
absolutely decayed. Look, Foible.
FOIB. Your ladyship has frowned a little too rashly, indeed, madam.
There are some cracks discernible in the white vernish.
LADY. Let me see the glass. Cracks, say’st thou? Why, I am arrantly
flayed: I look like an old peeled wall. Thou must repair me, Foible,
before Sir Rowland comes, or I shall never keep up to my picture.
FOIB. I warrant you, madam: a little art once made your picture like
you, and now a little of the same art must make you like your picture.
Your picture must sit for you, madam.
LADY. But art thou sure Sir Rowland will not fail to come? Or will a
not fail when he does come? Will he be importunate, Foible, and push?
For if he should not be importunate I shall never break decorums. I
shall die with confusion if I am forced to advance—oh no, I can never
advance; I shall swoon if he should expect advances. No, I hope Sir
Rowland is better bred than to put a lady to the necessity of breaking
her forms. I won’t be too coy neither—I won’t give him despair. But a
little disdain is not amiss; a little scorn is alluring.
FOIB. A little scorn becomes your ladyship.
LADY. Yes, but tenderness becomes me best—a sort of a dyingness. You
see that picture has a sort of a—ha, Foible? A swimmingness in the eyes.
Yes, I’ll look so. My niece affects it; but she wants features. Is Sir
Rowland handsome? Let my toilet be removed—I’ll dress above. I’ll
receive Sir Rowland here. Is he handsome? Don’t answer me. I won’t
know; I’ll be surprised. I’ll be taken by surprise.
FOIB. By storm, madam. Sir Rowland’s a brisk man.
LADY. Is he? Oh, then, he’ll importune, if he’s a brisk man. I shall
save decorums if Sir Rowland importunes. I have a mortal terror at the
apprehension of offending against decorums. Oh, I’m glad he’s a brisk
man. Let my things be removed, good Foible.
SCENE VI.
MRS. FAINALL, FOIBLE.
MRS. FAIN. O Foible, I have been in a fright, lest I should come too
late. That devil, Marwood, saw you in the park with Mirabell, and I’m
afraid will discover it to my lady.
FOIB. Discover what, madam?
MRS. FAIN. Nay, nay, put not on that strange face. I am privy to the
whole design, and know that Waitwell, to whom thou wert this morning
married, is to personate Mirabell’s uncle, and, as such winning my lady,
to involve her in those difficulties from which Mirabell only must
release her, by his making his conditions to have my cousin and her
fortune left to her own disposal.
FOIB. O dear madam, I beg your pardon. It was not my confidence in your
ladyship that was deficient; but I thought the former good correspondence
between your ladyship and Mr. Mirabell might have hindered his
communicating this secret.
MRS. FAIN. Dear Foible, forget that.
FOIB. O dear madam, Mr. Mirabell is such a sweet winning gentleman. But
your ladyship is the pattern of generosity. Sweet lady, to be so good!
Mr. Mirabell cannot choose but be grateful. I find your ladyship has his
heart still. Now, madam, I can safely tell your ladyship our success:
Mrs. Marwood had told my lady, but I warrant I managed myself. I turned
it all for the better. I told my lady that Mr. Mirabell railed at her.
I laid horrid things to his charge, I’ll vow; and my lady is so incensed
that she’ll be contracted to Sir Rowland to-night, she says; I warrant I
worked her up that he may have her for asking for, as they say of a Welsh
maidenhead.
MRS. FAIN. O rare Foible!
FOIB. Madam, I beg your ladyship to acquaint Mr. Mirabell of his
success. I would be seen as little as possible to speak to him—besides,
I believe Madam Marwood watches me. She has a month’s mind; but I know
Mr. Mirabell can’t abide her. [_Calls_.] John, remove my lady’s toilet.
Madam, your servant. My lady is so impatient, I fear she’ll come for me,
if I stay.
MRS. FAIN. I’ll go with you up the back stairs, lest I should meet her.
SCENE VII.
MRS. MARWOOD _alone_.
MRS. MAR. Indeed, Mrs. Engine, is it thus with you? Are you become a
go-between of this importance? Yes, I shall watch you. Why this wench
is the _passe-partout_, a very master-key to everybody’s strong box. My
friend Fainall, have you carried it so swimmingly? I thought there was
something in it; but it seems it’s over with you. Your loathing is not
from a want of appetite then, but from a surfeit. Else you could never
be so cool to fall from a principal to be an assistant, to procure for
him! A pattern of generosity, that I confess. Well, Mr. Fainall, you
have met with your match.—O man, man! Woman, woman! The devil’s an ass:
if I were a painter, I would draw him like an idiot, a driveller with a
bib and bells. Man should have his head and horns, and woman the rest of
him. Poor, simple fiend! ‘Madam Marwood has a month’s mind, but he
can’t abide her.’ ’Twere better for him you had not been his confessor
in that affair, without you could have kept his counsel closer. I shall
not prove another pattern of generosity; he has not obliged me to that
with those excesses of himself, and now I’ll have none of him. Here
comes the good lady, panting ripe, with a heart full of hope, and a head
full of care, like any chymist upon the day of projection.
SCENE VIII.
[_To her_] LADY WISHFORT.
LADY. O dear Marwood, what shall I say for this rude forgetfulness? But
my dear friend is all goodness.
MRS. MAR. No apologies, dear madam. I have been very well entertained.
LADY. As I’m a person, I am in a very chaos to think I should so forget
myself. But I have such an olio of affairs, really I know not what to
do. [_Calls_.] Foible!—I expect my nephew Sir Wilfull ev’ry moment
too.—Why, Foible!—He means to travel for improvement.
MRS. MAR. Methinks Sir Wilfull should rather think of marrying than
travelling at his years. I hear he is turned of forty.
LADY. Oh, he’s in less danger of being spoiled by his travels. I am
against my nephew’s marrying too young. It will be time enough when he
comes back, and has acquired discretion to choose for himself.
MRS. MAR. Methinks Mrs. Millamant and he would make a very fit match.
He may travel afterwards. ’Tis a thing very usual with young gentlemen.
LADY. I promise you I have thought on’t—and since ’tis your judgment,
I’ll think on’t again. I assure you I will; I value your judgment
extremely. On my word, I’ll propose it.
SCENE IX.
[_To them_] FOIBLE.
LADY. Come, come, Foible—I had forgot my nephew will be here before
dinner—I must make haste.
FOIB. Mr. Witwoud and Mr. Petulant are come to dine with your ladyship.
LADY. Oh dear, I can’t appear till I am dressed. Dear Marwood, shall I
be free with you again, and beg you to entertain ’em? I’ll make all
imaginable haste. Dear friend, excuse me.
SCENE X.
MRS. MARWOOD, MRS. MILLAMANT, MINCING.
MILLA. Sure, never anything was so unbred as that odious man. Marwood,
your servant.
MRS. MAR. You have a colour; what’s the matter?
MILLA. That horrid fellow Petulant has provoked me into a flame—I have
broke my fan—Mincing, lend me yours.—Is not all the powder out of my
hair?
MRS. MAR. No. What has he done?
MILLA. Nay, he has done nothing; he has only talked. Nay, he has said
nothing neither; but he has contradicted everything that has been said.
For my part, I thought Witwoud and he would have quarrelled.
MINC. I vow, mem, I thought once they would have fit.
MILLA. Well, ’tis a lamentable thing, I swear, that one has not the
liberty of choosing one’s acquaintance as one does one’s clothes.
MRS. MAR. If we had that liberty, we should be as weary of one set of
acquaintance, though never so good, as we are of one suit, though never
so fine. A fool and a doily stuff would now and then find days of grace,
and be worn for variety.
MILLA. I could consent to wear ’em, if they would wear alike; but fools
never wear out. They are such _drap de Berri_ things! Without one could
give ’em to one’s chambermaid after a day or two.
MRS. MAR. ’Twere better so indeed. Or what think you of the playhouse?
A fine gay glossy fool should be given there, like a new masking habit,
after the masquerade is over, and we have done with the disguise. For a
fool’s visit is always a disguise, and never admitted by a woman of wit,
but to blind her affair with a lover of sense. If you would but appear
barefaced now, and own Mirabell, you might as easily put off Petulant and
Witwoud as your hood and scarf. And indeed ’tis time, for the town has
found it, the secret is grown too big for the pretence. ’Tis like Mrs.
Primly’s great belly: she may lace it down before, but it burnishes on
her hips. Indeed, Millamant, you can no more conceal it than my Lady
Strammel can her face, that goodly face, which in defiance of her
Rhenish-wine tea will not be comprehended in a mask.
MILLA. I’ll take my death, Marwood, you are more censorious than a
decayed beauty, or a discarded toast:—Mincing, tell the men they may come
up. My aunt is not dressing here; their folly is less provoking than
your malice.
SCENE XI.
MRS. MILLAMANT, MRS. MARWOOD.
MILLA. The town has found it? What has it found? That Mirabell loves
me is no more a secret than it is a secret that you discovered it to my
aunt, or than the reason why you discovered it is a secret.
MRS. MAR. You are nettled.
MILLA. You’re mistaken. Ridiculous!
MRS. MAR. Indeed, my dear, you’ll tear another fan, if you don’t
mitigate those violent airs.
MILLA. O silly! Ha, ha, ha! I could laugh immoderately. Poor
Mirabell! His constancy to me has quite destroyed his complaisance for
all the world beside. I swear I never enjoined it him to be so coy. If
I had the vanity to think he would obey me, I would command him to show
more gallantry: ’tis hardly well-bred to be so particular on one hand and
so insensible on the other. But I despair to prevail, and so let him
follow his own way. Ha, ha, ha! Pardon me, dear creature, I must laugh;
ha, ha, ha! Though I grant you ’tis a little barbarous; ha, ha, ha!
MRS. MAR. What pity ’tis so much fine raillery, and delivered with so
significant gesture, should be so unhappily directed to miscarry.
MILLA. Heh? Dear creature, I ask your pardon. I swear I did not mind
you.
MRS. MAR. Mr. Mirabell and you both may think it a thing impossible,
when I shall tell him by telling you—
MILLA. Oh dear, what? For it is the same thing, if I hear it. Ha, ha,
ha!
MRS. MAR. That I detest him, hate him, madam.
MILLA. O madam, why, so do I. And yet the creature loves me, ha, ha,
ha! How can one forbear laughing to think of it? I am a sibyl if I am
not amazed to think what he can see in me. I’ll take my death, I think
you are handsomer, and within a year or two as young. If you could but
stay for me, I should overtake you—but that cannot be. Well, that
thought makes me melancholic.—Now I’ll be sad.
MRS. MAR. Your merry note may be changed sooner than you think.
MILLA. D’ye say so? Then I’m resolved I’ll have a song to keep up my
spirits.
SCENE XII.
[_To them_] MINCING.
MINC. The gentlemen stay but to comb, madam, and will wait on you.
MILLA. Desire Mrs. — that is in the next room, to sing the song I would
have learnt yesterday. You shall hear it, madam. Not that there’s any
great matter in it—but ’tis agreeable to my humour.
SONG.
Set by Mr. JOHN ECCLES.
I
Love’s but the frailty of the mind
When ’tis not with ambition joined;
A sickly flame, which if not fed expires,
And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires.
II
’Tis not to wound a wanton boy
Or am’rous youth, that gives the joy;
But ’tis the glory to have pierced a swain
For whom inferior beauties sighed in vain.
III
Then I alone the conquest prize,
When I insult a rival’s eyes;
If there’s delight in love, ’tis when I see
That heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.
SCENE XIII.
[_To them_] PETULANT, WITWOUD.
MILLA. Is your animosity composed, gentlemen?
WIT. Raillery, raillery, madam; we have no animosity. We hit off a
little wit now and then, but no animosity. The falling out of wits is
like the falling out of lovers:—we agree in the main, like treble and
bass. Ha, Petulant?
PET. Ay, in the main. But when I have a humour to contradict—
WIT. Ay, when he has a humour to contradict, then I contradict too.
What, I know my cue. Then we contradict one another like two
battledores; for contradictions beget one another like Jews.
PET. If he says black’s black—if I have a humour to say ’tis blue—let
that pass—all’s one for that. If I have a humour to prove it, it must be
granted.
WIT. Not positively must. But it may; it may.
PET. Yes, it positively must, upon proof positive.
WIT. Ay, upon proof positive it must; but upon proof presumptive it only
may. That’s a logical distinction now, madam.
MRS. MAR. I perceive your debates are of importance, and very learnedly
handled.
PET. Importance is one thing and learning’s another; but a debate’s a
debate, that I assert.
WIT. Petulant’s an enemy to learning; he relies altogether on his parts.
PET. No, I’m no enemy to learning; it hurts not me.
MRS. MAR. That’s a sign, indeed, it’s no enemy to you.
PET. No, no, it’s no enemy to anybody but them that have it.
MILLA. Well, an illiterate man’s my aversion; I wonder at the impudence
of any illiterate man to offer to make love.
WIT. That I confess I wonder at, too.
MILLA. Ah, to marry an ignorant that can hardly read or write!
PET. Why should a man be any further from being married, though he can’t
read, than he is from being hanged? The ordinary’s paid for setting the
psalm, and the parish priest for reading the ceremony. And for the rest
which is to follow in both cases, a man may do it without book. So all’s
one for that.
MILLA. D’ye hear the creature? Lord, here’s company; I’ll begone.
SCENE XIV.
SIR WILFULL WITWOUD _in a riding dress_, MRS. MARWOOD, PETULANT, WITWOUD,
FOOTMAN.
WIT. In the name of Bartlemew and his Fair, what have we here?
MRS. MAR. ’Tis your brother, I fancy. Don’t you know him?
WIT. Not I:—yes, I think it is he. I’ve almost forgot him; I have not
seen him since the revolution.
FOOT. Sir, my lady’s dressing. Here’s company, if you please to walk
in, in the meantime.
SIR WIL. Dressing! What, it’s but morning here, I warrant, with you in
London; we should count it towards afternoon in our parts down in
Shropshire:—why, then, belike my aunt han’t dined yet. Ha, friend?
FOOT. Your aunt, sir?
SIR WIL. My aunt, sir? Yes my aunt, sir, and your lady, sir; your lady
is my aunt, sir. Why, what dost thou not know me, friend? Why, then,
send somebody hither that does. How long hast thou lived with thy lady,
fellow, ha?
FOOT. A week, sir; longer than anybody in the house, except my lady’s
woman.
SIR WIL. Why, then, belike thou dost not know thy lady, if thou seest
her. Ha, friend?
FOOT. Why, truly, sir, I cannot safely swear to her face in a morning,
before she is dressed. ’Tis like I may give a shrewd guess at her by
this time.
SIR WIL. Well, prithee try what thou canst do; if thou canst not guess,
enquire her out, dost hear, fellow? And tell her her nephew, Sir Wilfull
Witwoud, is in the house.
FOOT. I shall, sir.
SIR WIL. Hold ye, hear me, friend, a word with you in your ear: prithee
who are these gallants?
FOOT. Really, sir, I can’t tell; here come so many here, ’tis hard to
know ’em all.
SCENE XV.
SIR WILFULL WITWOUD, PETULANT, WITWOUD, MRS. MARWOOD.
SIR WIL. Oons, this fellow knows less than a starling: I don’t think a
knows his own name.
MRS. MAR. Mr. Witwoud, your brother is not behindhand in forgetfulness.
I fancy he has forgot you too.
WIT. I hope so. The devil take him that remembers first, I say.
SIR WIL. Save you, gentlemen and lady.
MRS. MAR. For shame, Mr. Witwoud; why won’t you speak to him?—And you,
sir.
WIT. Petulant, speak.
PET. And you, sir.
SIR WIL. No offence, I hope? [_Salutes_ MARWOOD.]
MRS. MAR. No, sure, sir.
WIT. This is a vile dog, I see that already. No offence? Ha, ha, ha.
To him, to him, Petulant, smoke him.
PET. It seems as if you had come a journey, sir; hem, hem. [_Surveying
him round_.]
SIR WIL. Very likely, sir, that it may seem so.
PET. No offence, I hope, sir?
WIT. Smoke the boots, the boots, Petulant, the boots; ha, ha, ha!
SIR WILL. Maybe not, sir; thereafter as ’tis meant, sir.
PET. Sir, I presume upon the information of your boots.
SIR WIL. Why, ’tis like you may, sir: if you are not satisfied with the
information of my boots, sir, if you will step to the stable, you may
enquire further of my horse, sir.
PET. Your horse, sir! Your horse is an ass, sir!
SIR WIL. Do you speak by way of offence, sir?
MRS. MAR. The gentleman’s merry, that’s all, sir. ’Slife, we shall have
a quarrel betwixt an horse and an ass, before they find one another
out.—You must not take anything amiss from your friends, sir. You are
among your friends here, though it—may be you don’t know it. If I am not
mistaken, you are Sir Wilfull Witwoud?
SIR WIL. Right, lady; I am Sir Wilfull Witwoud, so I write myself; no
offence to anybody, I hope? and nephew to the Lady Wishfort of this
mansion.
MRS. MAR. Don’t you know this gentleman, sir?
SIR WIL. Hum! What, sure ’tis not—yea by’r lady but ’tis—’sheart, I
know not whether ’tis or no. Yea, but ’tis, by the Wrekin. Brother
Antony! What, Tony, i’faith! What, dost thou not know me? By’r lady,
nor I thee, thou art so becravated and so beperiwigged. ’Sheart, why
dost not speak? Art thou o’erjoyed?
WIT. Odso, brother, is it you? Your servant, brother.
SIR WIL. Your servant? Why, yours, sir. Your servant again—’sheart,
and your friend and servant to that—and a—[_puff_] and a flap-dragon for
your service, sir, and a hare’s foot and a hare’s scut for your service,
sir, an you be so cold and so courtly!
WIT. No offence, I hope, brother?
SIR WIL. ’Sheart, sir, but there is, and much offence. A pox, is this
your inns o’ court breeding, not to know your friends and your relations,
your elders, and your betters?
WIT. Why, brother Wilfull of Salop, you may be as short as a Shrewsbury
cake, if you please. But I tell you ’tis not modish to know relations in
town. You think you’re in the country, where great lubberly brothers
slabber and kiss one another when they meet, like a call of sergeants.
’Tis not the fashion here; ’tis not, indeed, dear brother.
SIR WIL. The fashion’s a fool and you’re a fop, dear brother. ’Sheart,
I’ve suspected this—by’r lady I conjectured you were a fop, since you
began to change the style of your letters, and write in a scrap of paper
gilt round the edges, no bigger than a subpoena. I might expect this
when you left off ‘Honoured brother,’ and ‘Hoping you are in good
health,’ and so forth, to begin with a ‘Rat me, knight, I’m so sick of a
last night’s debauch.’ Ods heart, and then tell a familiar tale of a
cock and a bull, and a whore and a bottle, and so conclude. You could
write news before you were out of your time, when you lived with honest
Pumple-Nose, the attorney of Furnival’s Inn. You could intreat to be
remembered then to your friends round the Wrekin. We could have Gazettes
then, and Dawks’s Letter, and the Weekly Bill, till of late days.
PET. ’Slife, Witwoud, were you ever an attorney’s clerk? Of the family
of the Furnivals? Ha, ha, ha!
WIT. Ay, ay, but that was but for a while. Not long, not long; pshaw, I
was not in my own power then. An orphan, and this fellow was my
guardian; ay, ay, I was glad to consent to that man to come to London.
He had the disposal of me then. If I had not agreed to that, I might
have been bound prentice to a feltmaker in Shrewsbury: this fellow would
have bound me to a maker of felts.
SIR WIL. ’Sheart, and better than to be bound to a maker of fops, where,
I suppose, you have served your time, and now you may set up for
yourself.
MRS. MAR. You intend to travel, sir, as I’m informed?
SIR WIL. Belike I may, madam. I may chance to sail upon the salt seas,
if my mind hold.
PET. And the wind serve.
SIR WIL. Serve or not serve, I shan’t ask license of you, sir, nor the
weathercock your companion. I direct my discourse to the lady, sir.
’Tis like my aunt may have told you, madam? Yes, I have settled my
concerns, I may say now, and am minded to see foreign parts. If an how
that the peace holds, whereby, that is, taxes abate.
MRS. MAR. I thought you had designed for France at all adventures.
SIR WIL. I can’t tell that; ’tis like I may, and ’tis like I may not. I
am somewhat dainty in making a resolution, because when I make it I keep
it. I don’t stand shill I, shall I, then; if I say’t, I’ll do’t. But I
have thoughts to tarry a small matter in town, to learn somewhat of your
lingo first, before I cross the seas. I’d gladly have a spice of your
French as they say, whereby to hold discourse in foreign countries.
MRS. MAR. Here’s an academy in town for that use.
SIR WIL. There is? ’Tis like there may.
MRS. MAR. No doubt you will return very much improved.
WIT. Yes, refined like a Dutch skipper from a whale-fishing.
SCENE XVI.
[_To them_] LADY WISHFORT _and_ FAINALL.
LADY. Nephew, you are welcome.
SIR WIL. Aunt, your servant.
FAIN. Sir Wilfull, your most faithful servant.
SIR WIL. Cousin Fainall, give me your hand.
LADY. Cousin Witwoud, your servant; Mr. Petulant, your servant. Nephew,
you are welcome again. Will you drink anything after your journey,
nephew, before you eat? Dinner’s almost ready.
SIR WIL. I’m very well, I thank you, aunt. However, I thank you for
your courteous offer. ’Sheart, I was afraid you would have been in the
fashion too, and have remembered to have forgot your relations. Here’s
your cousin Tony, belike, I mayn’t call him brother for fear of offence.
LADY. Oh, he’s a rallier, nephew. My cousin’s a wit: and your great
wits always rally their best friends to choose. When you have been
abroad, nephew, you’ll understand raillery better. [FAINALL _and_ MRS.
MARWOOD _talk apart_.]
SIR WIL. Why, then, let him hold his tongue in the meantime, and rail
when that day comes.
SCENE XVII.
[_To them_] MINCING.
MINC. Mem, I come to acquaint your laship that dinner is impatient.
SIR WIL. Impatient? Why, then, belike it won’t stay till I pull off my
boots. Sweetheart, can you help me to a pair of slippers? My man’s with
his horses, I warrant.
LADY. Fie, fie, nephew, you would not pull off your boots here? Go down
into the hall:—dinner shall stay for you. My nephew’s a little unbred:
you’ll pardon him, madam. Gentlemen, will you walk? Marwood?
MRS. MAR. I’ll follow you, madam,—before Sir Wilfull is ready.
SCENE XVIII.
MRS. MARWOOD, FAINALL.
FAIN. Why, then, Foible’s a bawd, an errant, rank match-making bawd.
And I, it seems, am a husband, a rank husband, and my wife a very errant,
rank wife,—all in the way of the world. ’Sdeath, to be a cuckold by
anticipation, a cuckold in embryo! Sure I was born with budding antlers
like a young satyr, or a citizen’s child, ’sdeath, to be out-witted, to
be out-jilted, out-matrimonied. If I had kept my speed like a stag,
’twere somewhat, but to crawl after, with my horns like a snail, and be
outstripped by my wife—’tis scurvy wedlock.
MRS. MAR. Then shake it off: you have often wished for an opportunity to
part, and now you have it. But first prevent their plot:—the half of
Millamant’s fortune is too considerable to be parted with to a foe, to
Mirabell.
FAIN. Damn him, that had been mine—had you not made that fond discovery.
That had been forfeited, had they been married. My wife had added lustre
to my horns by that increase of fortune: I could have worn ’em tipt with
gold, though my forehead had been furnished like a deputy-lieutenant’s
hall.
MRS. MAR. They may prove a cap of maintenance to you still, if you can
away with your wife. And she’s no worse than when you had her:—I dare
swear she had given up her game before she was married.
FAIN. Hum! That may be—
MRS. MAR. You married her to keep you; and if you can contrive to have
her keep you better than you expected, why should you not keep her longer
than you intended?
FAIN. The means, the means?
MRS. MAR. Discover to my lady your wife’s conduct; threaten to part with
her. My lady loves her, and will come to any composition to save her
reputation. Take the opportunity of breaking it just upon the discovery
of this imposture. My lady will be enraged beyond bounds, and sacrifice
niece, and fortune and all at that conjuncture. And let me alone to keep
her warm: if she should flag in her part, I will not fail to prompt her.
FAIN. Faith, this has an appearance.
MRS. MAR. I’m sorry I hinted to my lady to endeavour a match between
Millamant and Sir Wilfull; that may be an obstacle.
FAIN. Oh, for that matter, leave me to manage him; I’ll disable him for
that, he will drink like a Dane. After dinner I’ll set his hand in.
MRS. MAR. Well, how do you stand affected towards your lady?
FAIN. Why, faith, I’m thinking of it. Let me see. I am married
already; so that’s over. My wife has played the jade with me; well,
that’s over too. I never loved her, or if I had, why that would have
been over too by this time. Jealous of her I cannot be, for I am
certain; so there’s an end of jealousy. Weary of her I am and shall be.
No, there’s no end of that; no, no, that were too much to hope. Thus far
concerning my repose. Now for my reputation: as to my own, I married not
for it; so that’s out of the question. And as to my part in my
wife’s—why, she had parted with hers before; so, bringing none to me, she
can take none from me: ’tis against all rule of play that I should lose
to one who has not wherewithal to stake.
MRS. MAR. Besides you forget, marriage is honourable.
FAIN. Hum! Faith, and that’s well thought on: marriage is honourable,
as you say; and if so, wherefore should cuckoldom be a discredit, being
derived from so honourable a root?
MRS. MAR. Nay, I know not; if the root be honourable, why not the
branches?
FAIN. So, so; why this point’s clear. Well, how do we proceed?
MRS. MAR. I will contrive a letter which shall be delivered to my lady
at the time when that rascal who is to act Sir Rowland is with her. It
shall come as from an unknown hand—for the less I appear to know of the
truth the better I can play the incendiary. Besides, I would not have
Foible provoked if I could help it, because, you know, she knows some
passages. Nay, I expect all will come out. But let the mine be sprung
first, and then I care not if I am discovered.
FAIN. If the worst come to the worst, I’ll turn my wife to grass. I
have already a deed of settlement of the best part of her estate, which I
wheedled out of her, and that you shall partake at least.
MRS. MAR. I hope you are convinced that I hate Mirabell now? You’ll be
no more jealous?
FAIN. Jealous? No, by this kiss. Let husbands be jealous, but let the
lover still believe: or if he doubt, let it be only to endear his
pleasure, and prepare the joy that follows, when he proves his mistress
true. But let husbands’ doubts convert to endless jealousy; or if they
have belief, let it corrupt to superstition and blind credulity. I am
single and will herd no more with ’em. True, I wear the badge, but I’ll
disown the order. And since I take my leave of ’em, I care not if I
leave ’em a common motto to their common crest.
All husbands must or pain or shame endure;
The wise too jealous are, fools too secure.
ACT IV.—SCENE I.
_Scene Continues_.
LADY WISHFORT _and_ FOIBLE.
LADY. Is Sir Rowland coming, say’st thou, Foible? And are things in
order?
FOIB. Yes, madam. I have put wax-lights in the sconces, and placed the
footmen in a row in the hall, in their best liveries, with the coachman
and postillion to fill up the equipage.
LADY. Have you pulvilled the coachman and postillion, that they may not
stink of the stable when Sir Rowland comes by?
FOIB. Yes, madam.
LADY. And are the dancers and the music ready, that he may be
entertained in all points with correspondence to his passion?
FOIB. All is ready, madam.
LADY. And—well—and how do I look, Foible?
FOIB. Most killing well, madam.
LADY. Well, and how shall I receive him? In what figure shall I give
his heart the first impression? There is a great deal in the first
impression. Shall I sit? No, I won’t sit, I’ll walk,—ay, I’ll walk from
the door upon his entrance, and then turn full upon him. No, that will
be too sudden. I’ll lie,—ay, I’ll lie down. I’ll receive him in my
little dressing-room; there’s a couch—yes, yes, I’ll give the first
impression on a couch. I won’t lie neither, but loll and lean upon one
elbow, with one foot a little dangling off, jogging in a thoughtful way.
Yes; and then as soon as he appears, start, ay, start and be surprised,
and rise to meet him in a pretty disorder. Yes; oh, nothing is more
alluring than a levee from a couch in some confusion. It shows the foot
to advantage, and furnishes with blushes and re-composing airs beyond
comparison. Hark! There’s a coach.
FOIB. ’Tis he, madam.
LADY. Oh dear, has my nephew made his addresses to Millamant? I ordered
him.
FOIB. Sir Wilfull is set in to drinking, madam, in the parlour.
LADY. Ods my life, I’ll send him to her. Call her down, Foible; bring
her hither. I’ll send him as I go. When they are together, then come to
me, Foible, that I may not be too long alone with Sir Rowland.
SCENE II.
MRS. MILLAMANT, MRS. FAINALL, FOIBLE.
FOIB. Madam, I stayed here to tell your ladyship that Mr. Mirabell has
waited this half hour for an opportunity to talk with you; though my
lady’s orders were to leave you and Sir Wilfull together. Shall I tell
Mr. Mirabell that you are at leisure?
MILLA. No. What would the dear man have? I am thoughtful and would
amuse myself; bid him come another time.
There never yet was woman made,
Nor shall, but to be cursed.
[_Repeating and walking about_.]
That’s hard!
MRS. FAIN. You are very fond of Sir John Suckling to-day, Millamant, and
the poets.
MILLA. He? Ay, and filthy verses. So I am.
FOIB. Sir Wilfull is coming, madam. Shall I send Mr. Mirabell away?
MILLA. Ay, if you please, Foible, send him away, or send him hither,
just as you will, dear Foible. I think I’ll see him. Shall I? Ay, let
the wretch come.
Thyrsis, a youth of the inspired train.
[_Repeating_]
Dear Fainall, entertain Sir Wilfull:—thou hast philosophy to undergo a
fool; thou art married and hast patience. I would confer with my own
thoughts.
MRS. FAIN. I am obliged to you that you would make me your proxy in this
affair, but I have business of my own.
SCENE III.
[_To them_] SIR WILFULL.
MRS. FAIN. O Sir Wilfull, you are come at the critical instant. There’s
your mistress up to the ears in love and contemplation; pursue your
point, now or never.
SIR WIL. Yes, my aunt will have it so. I would gladly have been
encouraged with a bottle or two, because I’m somewhat wary at first,
before I am acquainted. [_This while_ MILLAMANT _walks about repeating
to herself_.] But I hope, after a time, I shall break my mind—that is,
upon further acquaintance.—So for the present, cousin, I’ll take my
leave. If so be you’ll be so kind to make my excuse, I’ll return to my
company—
MRS. FAIN. Oh, fie, Sir Wilfull! What, you must not be daunted.
SIR WIL. Daunted? No, that’s not it; it is not so much for that—for if
so be that I set on’t I’ll do’t. But only for the present, ’tis
sufficient till further acquaintance, that’s all—your servant.
MRS. FAIN. Nay, I’ll swear you shall never lose so favourable an
opportunity, if I can help it. I’ll leave you together and lock the
door.
SCENE IV.
SIR WILFULL, MILLAMANT.
SIR WIL. Nay, nay, cousin. I have forgot my gloves. What d’ye do?
’Sheart, a has locked the door indeed, I think.—Nay, cousin Fainall, open
the door. Pshaw, what a vixen trick is this? Nay, now a has seen me
too.—Cousin, I made bold to pass through as it were—I think this door’s
enchanted.
MILLA. [_repeating_]:—
I prithee spare me, gentle boy,
Press me no more for that slight toy.
SIR WIL. Anan? Cousin, your servant.
MILLA. That foolish trifle of a heart—
Sir Wilfull!
SIR WIL. Yes—your servant. No offence, I hope, cousin?
MILLA. [_repeating_]:—
I swear it will not do its part,
Though thou dost thine, employ’st thy power and art.
Natural, easy Suckling!
SIR WIL. Anan? Suckling? No such suckling neither, cousin, nor
stripling: I thank heaven I’m no minor.
MILLA. Ah, rustic, ruder than Gothic.
SIR WIL. Well, well, I shall understand your lingo one of these days,
cousin; in the meanwhile I must answer in plain English.
MILLA. Have you any business with me, Sir Wilfull?
SIR WIL. Not at present, cousin. Yes, I made bold to see, to come and
know if that how you were disposed to fetch a walk this evening; if so be
that I might not be troublesome, I would have sought a walk with you.
MILLA. A walk? What then?
SIR WIL. Nay, nothing. Only for the walk’s sake, that’s all.
MILLA. I nauseate walking: ’tis a country diversion; I loathe the
country and everything that relates to it.
SIR WIL. Indeed! Hah! Look ye, look ye, you do? Nay, ’tis like you
may. Here are choice of pastimes here in town, as plays and the like,
that must be confessed indeed—
MILLA. Ah, _l’étourdi_! I hate the town too.
SIR WIL. Dear heart, that’s much. Hah! that you should hate ’em both!
Hah! ’tis like you may! There are some can’t relish the town, and others
can’t away with the country, ’tis like you may be one of those, cousin.
MILLA. Ha, ha, ha! Yes, ’tis like I may. You have nothing further to
say to me?
SIR WIL. Not at present, cousin. ’Tis like when I have an opportunity
to be more private—I may break my mind in some measure—I conjecture you
partly guess. However, that’s as time shall try. But spare to speak and
spare to speed, as they say.
MILLA. If it is of no great importance, Sir Wilfull, you will oblige me
to leave me: I have just now a little business.
SIR WIL. Enough, enough, cousin. Yes, yes, all a case. When you’re
disposed, when you’re disposed. Now’s as well as another time; and
another time as well as now. All’s one for that. Yes, yes; if your
concerns call you, there’s no haste: it will keep cold as they say.
Cousin, your servant. I think this door’s locked.
MILLA. You may go this way, sir.
SIR WIL. Your servant; then with your leave I’ll return to my company.
MILLA. Ay, ay; ha, ha, ha!
Like Phœbus sung the no less am’rous boy.
SCENE V.
MRS. MILLAMANT, MIRABELL.
MIRA. Like Daphne she, as lovely and as coy.
Do you lock yourself up from me, to make my search more curious? Or is
this pretty artifice contrived, to signify that here the chase must end,
and my pursuit be crowned, for you can fly no further?
MILLA. Vanity! No—I’ll fly and be followed to the last moment; though I
am upon the very verge of matrimony, I expect you should solicit me as
much as if I were wavering at the grate of a monastery, with one foot
over the threshold. I’ll be solicited to the very last; nay, and
afterwards.
MIRA. What, after the last?
MILLA. Oh, I should think I was poor and had nothing to bestow if I were
reduced to an inglorious ease, and freed from the agreeable fatigues of
solicitation.
MIRA. But do not you know that when favours are conferred upon instant
and tedious solicitation, that they diminish in their value, and that
both the giver loses the grace, and the receiver lessens his pleasure?
MILLA. It may be in things of common application, but never, sure, in
love. Oh, I hate a lover that can dare to think he draws a moment’s air
independent on the bounty of his mistress. There is not so impudent a
thing in nature as the saucy look of an assured man confident of success:
the pedantic arrogance of a very husband has not so pragmatical an air.
Ah, I’ll never marry, unless I am first made sure of my will and
pleasure.
MIRA. Would you have ’em both before marriage? Or will you be contented
with the first now, and stay for the other till after grace?
MILLA. Ah, don’t be impertinent. My dear liberty, shall I leave thee?
My faithful solitude, my darling contemplation, must I bid you then
adieu? Ay-h, adieu. My morning thoughts, agreeable wakings, indolent
slumbers, all ye _douceurs_, ye _sommeils du matin_, adieu. I can’t
do’t, ’tis more than impossible—positively, Mirabell, I’ll lie a-bed in a
morning as long as I please.
MI RA. Then I’ll get up in a morning as early as I please.
MILLA. Ah! Idle creature, get up when you will. And d’ye hear, I won’t
be called names after I’m married; positively I won’t be called names.
MIRA. Names?
MILLA. Ay, as wife, spouse, my dear, joy, jewel, love, sweetheart, and
the rest of that nauseous cant, in which men and their wives are so
fulsomely familiar—I shall never bear that. Good Mirabell, don’t let us
be familiar or fond, nor kiss before folks, like my Lady Fadler and Sir
Francis; nor go to Hyde Park together the first Sunday in a new chariot,
to provoke eyes and whispers, and then never be seen there together
again, as if we were proud of one another the first week, and ashamed of
one another ever after. Let us never visit together, nor go to a play
together, but let us be very strange and well-bred. Let us be as strange
as if we had been married a great while, and as well-bred as if we were
not married at all.
MIRA. Have you any more conditions to offer? Hitherto your demands are
pretty reasonable.
MILLA. Trifles; as liberty to pay and receive visits to and from whom I
please; to write and receive letters, without interrogatories or wry
faces on your part; to wear what I please, and choose conversation with
regard only to my own taste; to have no obligation upon me to converse
with wits that I don’t like, because they are your acquaintance, or to be
intimate with fools, because they may be your relations. Come to dinner
when I please, dine in my dressing-room when I’m out of humour, without
giving a reason. To have my closet inviolate; to be sole empress of my
tea-table, which you must never presume to approach without first asking
leave. And lastly, wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door
before you come in. These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure
you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife.
MIRA. Your bill of fare is something advanced in this latter account.
Well, have I liberty to offer conditions:—that when you are dwindled into
a wife, I may not be beyond measure enlarged into a husband?
MILLA. You have free leave: propose your utmost, speak and spare not.
MIRA. I thank you. _Imprimis_, then, I covenant that your acquaintance
be general; that you admit no sworn confidant or intimate of your own
sex; no she friend to screen her affairs under your countenance, and
tempt you to make trial of a mutual secrecy. No decoy-duck to wheedle
you a _fop-scrambling_ to the play in a mask, then bring you home in a
pretended fright, when you think you shall be found out, and rail at me
for missing the play, and disappointing the frolic which you had to pick
me up and prove my constancy.
MILLA. Detestable _imprimis_! I go to the play in a mask!
MIRA. _Item_, I article, that you continue to like your own face as long
as I shall, and while it passes current with me, that you endeavour not
to new coin it. To which end, together with all vizards for the day, I
prohibit all masks for the night, made of oiled skins and I know not
what—hog’s bones, hare’s gall, pig water, and the marrow of a roasted
cat. In short, I forbid all commerce with the gentlewomen in
what-d’ye-call-it court. _Item_, I shut my doors against all bawds with
baskets, and pennyworths of muslin, china, fans, atlases, etc. _Item_,
when you shall be breeding—
MILLA. Ah, name it not!
MIRA. Which may be presumed, with a blessing on our endeavours—
MILLA. Odious endeavours!
MIRA. I denounce against all strait lacing, squeezing for a shape, till
you mould my boy’s head like a sugar-loaf, and instead of a man-child,
make me father to a crooked billet. Lastly, to the dominion of the
tea-table I submit; but with proviso, that you exceed not in your
province, but restrain yourself to native and simple tea-table drinks, as
tea, chocolate, and coffee. As likewise to genuine and authorised
tea-table talk, such as mending of fashions, spoiling reputations,
railing at absent friends, and so forth. But that on no account you
encroach upon the men’s prerogative, and presume to drink healths, or
toast fellows; for prevention of which, I banish all foreign forces, all
auxiliaries to the tea-table, as orange-brandy, all aniseed, cinnamon,
citron, and Barbadoes waters, together with ratafia and the most noble
spirit of clary. But for cowslip-wine, poppy-water, and all dormitives,
those I allow. These provisos admitted, in other things I may prove a
tractable and complying husband.
MILLA. Oh, horrid provisos! Filthy strong waters! I toast fellows,
odious men! I hate your odious provisos.
MIRA. Then we’re agreed. Shall I kiss your hand upon the contract? And
here comes one to be a witness to the sealing of the deed.
SCENE VI.
[_To them_] MRS. FAINALL.
MILLA. Fainall, what shall I do? Shall I have him? I think I must have
him.
MRS. FAIN. Ay, ay, take him, take him, what should you do?
MILLA. Well then—I’ll take my death I’m in a horrid fright—Fainall, I
shall never say it. Well—I think—I’ll endure you.
MRS. FAIN. Fie, fie, have him, and tell him so in plain terms: for I am
sure you have a mind to him.
MILLA. Are you? I think I have; and the horrid man looks as if he
thought so too. Well, you ridiculous thing you, I’ll have you. I won’t
be kissed, nor I won’t be thanked.—Here, kiss my hand though, so hold
your tongue now; don’t say a word.
MRS. FAIN. Mirabell, there’s a necessity for your obedience: you have
neither time to talk nor stay. My mother is coming; and in my conscience
if she should see you, would fall into fits, and maybe not recover time
enough to return to Sir Rowland, who, as Foible tells me, is in a fair
way to succeed. Therefore spare your ecstasies for another occasion, and
slip down the back stairs, where Foible waits to consult you.
MILLA. Ay, go, go. In the meantime I suppose you have said something to
please me.
MIRA. I am all obedience.
SCENE VII.
MRS. MILLAMANT, MRS. FAINALL.
MRS. FAIN. Yonder Sir Wilfull’s drunk, and so noisy that my mother has
been forced to leave Sir Rowland to appease him; but he answers her only
with singing and drinking. What they may have done by this time I know
not, but Petulant and he were upon quarrelling as I came by.
MILLA. Well, if Mirabell should not make a good husband, I am a lost
thing: for I find I love him violently.
MRS. FAIN. So it seems; for you mind not what’s said to you. If you
doubt him, you had best take up with Sir Wilfull.
MILLA. How can you name that superannuated lubber? foh!
SCENE VIII.
[_To them_] WITWOUD _from drinking_.
MRS. FAIN. So, is the fray made up that you have left ’em?
WIT. Left ’em? I could stay no longer. I have laughed like ten
Christ’nings. I am tipsy with laughing—if I had stayed any longer I
should have burst,—I must have been let out and pieced in the sides like
an unsized camlet. Yes, yes, the fray is composed; my lady came in like
a _noli prosequi_, and stopt the proceedings.
MILLA. What was the dispute?
WIT. That’s the jest: there was no dispute. They could neither of ’em
speak for rage; and so fell a sputt’ring at one another like two roasting
apples.
SCENE IX.
[_To them_] PETULANT _drunk_.
WIT. Now, Petulant? All’s over, all’s well? Gad, my head begins to
whim it about. Why dost thou not speak? Thou art both as drunk and as
mute as a fish.
PET. Look you, Mrs. Millamant, if you can love me, dear Nymph, say it,
and that’s the conclusion—pass on, or pass off—that’s all.
WIT. Thou hast uttered volumes, folios, in less than decimo sexto, my
dear Lacedemonian. Sirrah, Petulant, thou art an epitomiser of words.
PET. Witwoud,—you are an annihilator of sense.
WIT. Thou art a retailer of phrases, and dost deal in remnants of
remnants, like a maker of pincushions; thou art in truth (metaphorically
speaking) a speaker of shorthand.
PET. Thou art (without a figure) just one half of an ass, and Baldwin
yonder, thy half-brother, is the rest. A Gemini of asses split would
make just four of you.
WIT. Thou dost bite, my dear mustard-seed; kiss me for that.
PET. Stand off—I’ll kiss no more males—I have kissed your Twin yonder in
a humour of reconciliation till he [_hiccup_] rises upon my stomach like
a radish.
MILLA. Eh! filthy creature; what was the quarrel?
PET. There was no quarrel; there might have been a quarrel.
WIT. If there had been words enow between ’em to have expressed
provocation, they had gone together by the ears like a pair of castanets.
PET. You were the quarrel.
MILLA. Me?
PET. If I have a humour to quarrel, I can make less matters conclude
premises. If you are not handsome, what then? If I have a humour to
prove it? If I shall have my reward, say so; if not, fight for your face
the next time yourself—I’ll go sleep.
WIT. Do, wrap thyself up like a woodlouse, and dream revenge. And, hear
me, if thou canst learn to write by to-morrow morning, pen me a
challenge. I’ll carry it for thee.
PET. Carry your mistress’s monkey a spider; go flea dogs and read
romances. I’ll go to bed to my maid.
MRS. FAIN. He’s horridly drunk—how came you all in this pickle?
WIT. A plot, a plot, to get rid of the knight—your husband’s advice; but
he sneaked off.
SCENE X.
SIR WILFULL, _drunk_, LADY WISHFORT, WITWOUD, MRS. MILLAMANT, MRS.
FAINALL.
LADY. Out upon’t, out upon’t, at years of discretion, and comport
yourself at this rantipole rate!
SIR WIL. No offence, aunt.
LADY. Offence? As I’m a person, I’m ashamed of you. Fogh! How you
stink of wine! D’ye think my niece will ever endure such a Borachio?
You’re an absolute Borachio.
SIR WIL. Borachio?
LADY. At a time when you should commence an amour, and put your best
foot foremost—
SIR WIL. ’Sheart, an you grutch me your liquor, make a bill.—Give me
more drink, and take my purse. [_Sings_]:—
Prithee fill me the glass,
Till it laugh in my face,
With ale that is potent and mellow;
He that whines for a lass
Is an ignorant ass,
For a bumper has not its fellow.
But if you would have me marry my cousin, say the word, and I’ll do’t.
Wilfull will do’t, that’s the word. Wilfull will do’t, that’s my
crest,—my motto I have forgot.
LADY. My nephew’s a little overtaken, cousin, but ’tis drinking your
health. O’ my word, you are obliged to him—
SIR WIL. _In vino veritas_, aunt. If I drunk your health to-day,
cousin,—I am a Borachio.—But if you have a mind to be married, say the
word and send for the piper; Wilfull will do’t. If not, dust it away,
and let’s have t’other round. Tony—ods-heart, where’s Tony?—Tony’s an
honest fellow, but he spits after a bumper, and that’s a fault.
We’ll drink and we’ll never ha’ done, boys,
Put the glass then around with the sun, boys,
Let Apollo’s example invite us;
For he’s drunk every night,
And that makes him so bright,
That he’s able next morning to light us.
The sun’s a good pimple, an honest soaker, he has a cellar at your
antipodes. If I travel, aunt, I touch at your antipodes—your antipodes
are a good rascally sort of topsy-turvy fellows. If I had a bumper I’d
stand upon my head and drink a health to ’em. A match or no match,
cousin with the hard name; aunt, Wilfull will do’t. If she has her
maidenhead let her look to ’t; if she has not, let her keep her own
counsel in the meantime, and cry out at the nine months’ end.
MILLA. Your pardon, madam, I can stay no longer. Sir Wilfull grows very
powerful. Egh! how he smells! I shall be overcome if I stay. Come,
cousin.
SCENE XI.
LADY WISHFORT, SIR WILFULL WITWOUD, MR. WITWOUD, FOIBLE.
LADY. Smells? He would poison a tallow-chandler and his family.
Beastly creature, I know not what to do with him. Travel, quotha; ay,
travel, travel, get thee gone, get thee but far enough, to the Saracens,
or the Tartars, or the Turks—for thou art not fit to live in a Christian
commonwealth, thou beastly pagan.
SIR WIL. Turks? No; no Turks, aunt. Your Turks are infidels, and
believe not in the grape. Your Mahometan, your Mussulman is a dry
stinkard. No offence, aunt. My map says that your Turk is not so honest
a man as your Christian—I cannot find by the map that your Mufti is
orthodox, whereby it is a plain case that orthodox is a hard word, aunt,
and [_hiccup_] Greek for claret. [_Sings_]:—
To drink is a Christian diversion,
Unknown to the Turk or the Persian.
Let Mahometan fools
Live by heathenish rules,
And be damned over tea-cups and coffee.
But let British lads sing,
Crown a health to the King,
And a fig for your Sultan and Sophy.
Ah, Tony! [FOIBLE _whispers_ LADY W.]
LADY. Sir Rowland impatient? Good lack! what shall I do with this
beastly tumbril? Go lie down and sleep, you sot, or as I’m a person,
I’ll have you bastinadoed with broomsticks. Call up the wenches with
broomsticks.
SIR WIL. Ahey! Wenches? Where are the wenches?
LADY. Dear Cousin Witwoud, get him away, and you will bind me to you
inviolably. I have an affair of moment that invades me with some
precipitation.—You will oblige me to all futurity.
WIT. Come, knight. Pox on him, I don’t know what to say to him. Will
you go to a cock-match?
SIR WIL. With a wench, Tony? Is she a shake-bag, sirrah? Let me bite
your cheek for that.
WIT. Horrible! He has a breath like a bagpipe. Ay, ay; come, will you
march, my Salopian?
SIR WIL. Lead on, little Tony. I’ll follow thee, my Anthony, my
Tantony. Sirrah, thou shalt be my Tantony, and I’ll be thy pig.
And a fig for your Sultan and Sophy.
LADY. This will never do. It will never make a match,—at least before
he has been abroad.
SCENE XII.
LADY WISHFORT, WAITWELL _disguised as for_ SIR ROWLAND.
LADY. Dear Sir Rowland, I am confounded with confusion at the
retrospection of my own rudeness,—I have more pardons to ask than the
pope distributes in the year of jubilee. But I hope where there is
likely to be so near an alliance, we may unbend the severity of decorum,
and dispense with a little ceremony.
WAIT. My impatience, madam, is the effect of my transport; and till I
have the possession of your adorable person, I am tantalised on the rack,
and do but hang, madam, on the tenter of expectation.
LADY. You have excess of gallantry, Sir Rowland, and press things to a
conclusion with a most prevailing vehemence. But a day or two for
decency of marriage—
WAIT. For decency of funeral, madam! The delay will break my heart—or
if that should fail, I shall be poisoned. My nephew will get an inkling
of my designs and poison me—and I would willingly starve him before I
die—I would gladly go out of the world with that satisfaction. That
would be some comfort to me, if I could but live so long as to be
revenged on that unnatural viper.
LADY. Is he so unnatural, say you? Truly I would contribute much both
to the saving of your life and the accomplishment of your revenge. Not
that I respect myself; though he has been a perfidious wretch to me.
WAIT. Perfidious to you?
LADY. O Sir Rowland, the hours that he has died away at my feet, the
tears that he has shed, the oaths that he has sworn, the palpitations
that he has felt, the trances and the tremblings, the ardours and the
ecstasies, the kneelings and the risings, the heart-heavings and the
hand-gripings, the pangs and the pathetic regards of his protesting
eyes!—Oh, no memory can register.
WAIT. What, my rival? Is the rebel my rival? A dies.
LADY. No, don’t kill him at once, Sir Rowland: starve him gradually,
inch by inch.
WAIT. I’ll do’t. In three weeks he shall be barefoot; in a month out at
knees with begging an alms; he shall starve upward and upward, ’till he
has nothing living but his head, and then go out in a stink like a
candle’s end upon a save-all.
LADY. Well, Sir Rowland, you have the way,—you are no novice in the
labyrinth of love,—you have the clue. But as I am a person, Sir Rowland,
you must not attribute my yielding to any sinister appetite or
indigestion of widowhood; nor impute my complacency to any lethargy of
continence. I hope you do not think me prone to any iteration of
nuptials?
WAIT. Far be it from me—
LADY. If you do, I protest I must recede, or think that I have made a
prostitution of decorums, but in the vehemence of compassion, and to save
the life of a person of so much importance—
WAIT. I esteem it so—
LADY. Or else you wrong my condescension—
WAIT. I do not, I do not—
LADY. Indeed you do.
WAIT. I do not, fair shrine of virtue.
LADY. If you think the least scruple of causality was an ingredient—
WAIT. Dear madam, no. You are all camphire and frankincense, all
chastity and odour.
LADY. Or that—
SCENE XIII.
[_To them_] FOIBLE.
FOIB. Madam, the dancers are ready, and there’s one with a letter, who
must deliver it into your own hands.
LADY. Sir Rowland, will you give me leave? Think favourably, judge
candidly, and conclude you have found a person who would suffer racks in
honour’s cause, dear Sir Rowland, and will wait on you incessantly.
SCENE XIV.
WAITWELL, FOIBLE.
WAIT. Fie, fie! What a slavery have I undergone; spouse, hast thou any
cordial? I want spirits.
FOIB. What a washy rogue art thou, to pant thus for a quarter of an
hour’s lying and swearing to a fine lady?
WAIT. Oh, she is the antidote to desire. Spouse, thou wilt fare the
worse for’t. I shall have no appetite to iteration of nuptials—this
eight-and-forty hours. By this hand I’d rather be a chairman in the
dog-days than act Sir Rowland till this time to-morrow.
SCENE XV.
[_To them_] LADY _with a letter_.
LADY. Call in the dancers; Sir Rowland, we’ll sit, if you please, and
see the entertainment. [_Dance_.] Now, with your permission, Sir
Rowland, I will peruse my letter. I would open it in your presence,
because I would not make you uneasy. If it should make you uneasy, I
would burn it—speak if it does—but you may see, the superscription is
like a woman’s hand.
FOIB. By heaven! Mrs. Marwood’s, I know it,—my heart aches—get it from
her! [_To him_.]
WAIT. A woman’s hand? No madam, that’s no woman’s hand: I see that
already. That’s somebody whose throat must be cut.
LADY. Nay, Sir Rowland, since you give me a proof of your passion by
your jealousy, I promise you I’ll make a return by a frank communication.
You shall see it—we’ll open it together. Look you here. [_Reads_.]
_Madam_, _though unknown to you_ (look you there, ’tis from nobody that I
know.) _I have that honour for your character_, _that I think myself
obliged to let you know you are abused_. _He who pretends to be Sir
Rowland is a cheat and a rascal_. O heavens! what’s this?
FOIB. Unfortunate; all’s ruined.
WAIT. How, how, let me see, let me see. [_Reading_.] _A rascal_, _and
disguised and suborned for that imposture_—O villainy! O villainy!—_by
the contrivance of_—
LADY. I shall faint, I shall die. Oh!
FOIB. Say ’tis your nephew’s hand. Quickly, his plot, swear, swear it!
[_To him_.]
WAIT. Here’s a villain! Madam, don’t you perceive it? Don’t you see
it?
LADY. Too well, too well. I have seen too much.
WAIT. I told you at first I knew the hand. A woman’s hand? The rascal
writes a sort of a large hand: your Roman hand.—I saw there was a throat
to be cut presently. If he were my son, as he is my nephew, I’d pistol
him.
FOIB. O treachery! But are you sure, Sir Rowland, it is his writing?
WAIT. Sure? Am I here? Do I live? Do I love this pearl of India? I
have twenty letters in my pocket from him in the same character.
LADY. How?
FOIB. Oh, what luck it is, Sir Rowland, that you were present at this
juncture! This was the business that brought Mr. Mirabell disguised to
Madam Millamant this afternoon. I thought something was contriving, when
he stole by me and would have hid his face.
LADY. How, how? I heard the villain was in the house indeed; and now I
remember, my niece went away abruptly when Sir Wilfull was to have made
his addresses.
FOIB. Then, then, madam, Mr. Mirabell waited for her in her chamber; but
I would not tell your ladyship to discompose you when you were to receive
Sir Rowland.
WAIT. Enough, his date is short.
FOIB. No, good Sir Rowland, don’t incur the law.
WAIT. Law? I care not for law. I can but die, and ’tis in a good
cause. My lady shall be satisfied of my truth and innocence, though it
cost me my life.
LADY. No, dear Sir Rowland, don’t fight: if you should be killed I must
never show my face; or hanged,—oh, consider my reputation, Sir Rowland.
No, you shan’t fight: I’ll go in and examine my niece; I’ll make her
confess. I conjure you, Sir Rowland, by all your love not to fight.
WAIT. I am charmed, madam; I obey. But some proof you must let me give
you: I’ll go for a black box, which contains the writings of my whole
estate, and deliver that into your hands.
LADY. Ay, dear Sir Rowland, that will be some comfort; bring the black
box.
WAIT. And may I presume to bring a contract to be signed this night?
May I hope so far?
LADY. Bring what you will; but come alive, pray come alive. Oh, this is
a happy discovery.
WAIT. Dead or alive I’ll come—and married we will be in spite of
treachery; ay, and get an heir that shall defeat the last remaining
glimpse of hope in my abandoned nephew. Come, my buxom widow:
E’er long you shall substantial proof receive
That I’m an arrant knight—
FOIB. Or arrant knave.
ACT V.—SCENE I.
_Scene continues_.
LADY WISHFORT _and_ FOIBLE.
LADY. Out of my house, out of my house, thou viper, thou serpent that I
have fostered, thou bosom traitress that I raised from nothing! Begone,
begone, begone, go, go; that I took from washing of old gauze and weaving
of dead hair, with a bleak blue nose, over a chafing-dish of starved
embers, and dining behind a traver’s rag, in a shop no bigger than a
bird-cage. Go, go, starve again, do, do!
FOIB. Dear madam, I’ll beg pardon on my knees.
LADY. Away, out, out, go set up for yourself again, do; drive a trade,
do, with your threepennyworth of small ware, flaunting upon a packthread,
under a brandy-seller’s bulk, or against a dead wall by a balladmonger.
Go, hang out an old frisoneer-gorget, with a yard of yellow colberteen
again, do; an old gnawed mask, two rows of pins, and a child’s fiddle; a
glass necklace with the beads broken, and a quilted night-cap with one
ear. Go, go, drive a trade. These were your commodities, you
treacherous trull; this was the merchandise you dealt in, when I took you
into my house, placed you next myself, and made you governant of my whole
family. You have forgot this, have you, now you have feathered your
nest?
FOIB. No, no, dear madam. Do but hear me, have but a moment’s
patience—I’ll confess all. Mr. Mirabell seduced me; I am not the first
that he has wheedled with his dissembling tongue. Your ladyship’s own
wisdom has been deluded by him; then how should I, a poor ignorant,
defend myself? O madam, if you knew but what he promised me, and how he
assured me your ladyship should come to no damage, or else the wealth of
the Indies should not have bribed me to conspire against so good, so
sweet, so kind a lady as you have been to me.
LADY. No damage? What, to betray me, to marry me to a cast serving-man;
to make me a receptacle, an hospital for a decayed pimp? No damage? O
thou frontless impudence, more than a big-bellied actress!
FOIB. Pray do but hear me, madam; he could not marry your ladyship,
madam. No indeed, his marriage was to have been void in law; for he was
married to me first, to secure your ladyship. He could not have bedded
your ladyship, for if he had consummated with your ladyship, he must have
run the risk of the law, and been put upon his clergy. Yes indeed, I
enquired of the law in that case before I would meddle or make.
LADY. What? Then I have been your property, have I? I have been
convenient to you, it seems, while you were catering for Mirabell; I have
been broker for you? What, have you made a passive bawd of me? This
exceeds all precedent. I am brought to fine uses, to become a botcher of
second-hand marriages between Abigails and Andrews! I’ll couple you.
Yes, I’ll baste you together, you and your Philander. I’ll Duke’s Place
you, as I’m a person. Your turtle is in custody already. You shall coo
in the same cage, if there be constable or warrant in the parish.
FOIB. Oh, that ever I was born! Oh, that I was ever married! A bride?
Ay, I shall be a Bridewell bride. Oh!
SCENE II.
MRS. FAINALL, FOIBLE.
MRS. FAIN. Poor Foible, what’s the matter?
FOIB. O madam, my lady’s gone for a constable; I shall be had to a
justice, and put to Bridewell to beat hemp. Poor Waitwell’s gone to
prison already.
MRS. FAIN. Have a good heart, Foible: Mirabell’s gone to give security
for him. This is all Marwood’s and my husband’s doing.
FOIB. Yes, yes; I know it, madam: she was in my lady’s closet, and
overheard all that you said to me before dinner. She sent the letter to
my lady, and that missing effect, Mr. Fainall laid this plot to arrest
Waitwell, when he pretended to go for the papers; and in the meantime
Mrs. Marwood declared all to my lady.
MRS. FAIN. Was there no mention made of me in the letter? My mother
does not suspect my being in the confederacy? I fancy Marwood has not
told her, though she has told my husband.
FOIB. Yes, madam; but my lady did not see that part. We stifled the
letter before she read so far. Has that mischievous devil told Mr.
Fainall of your ladyship then?
MRS. FAIN. Ay, all’s out: my affair with Mirabell, everything
discovered. This is the last day of our living together; that’s my
comfort.
FOIB. Indeed, madam, and so ’tis a comfort, if you knew all. He has
been even with your ladyship; which I could have told you long enough
since, but I love to keep peace and quietness by my good will. I had
rather bring friends together than set ’em at distance. But Mrs. Marwood
and he are nearer related than ever their parents thought for.
MRS. FAIN. Say’st thou so, Foible? Canst thou prove this?
FOIB. I can take my oath of it, madam; so can Mrs. Mincing. We have had
many a fair word from Madam Marwood to conceal something that passed in
our chamber one evening when you were at Hyde Park, and we were thought
to have gone a-walking. But we went up unawares—though we were sworn to
secrecy too: Madam Marwood took a book and swore us upon it: but it was
but a book of poems. So long as it was not a bible oath, we may break it
with a safe conscience.
MRS. FAIN. This discovery is the most opportune thing I could wish.
Now, Mincing?
SCENE III.
[_To them_] MINCING.
MINC. My lady would speak with Mrs. Foible, mem. Mr. Mirabell is with
her; he has set your spouse at liberty, Mrs. Foible, and would have you
hide yourself in my lady’s closet till my old lady’s anger is abated.
Oh, my old lady is in a perilous passion at something Mr. Fainall has
said; he swears, and my old lady cries. There’s a fearful hurricane, I
vow. He says, mem, how that he’ll have my lady’s fortune made over to
him, or he’ll be divorced.
MRS. FAIN. Does your lady or Mirabell know that?
MINC. Yes mem; they have sent me to see if Sir Wilfull be sober, and to
bring him to them. My lady is resolved to have him, I think, rather than
lose such a vast sum as six thousand pound. Oh, come, Mrs. Foible, I
hear my old lady.
MRS. FAIN. Foible, you must tell Mincing that she must prepare to vouch
when I call her.
FOIB. Yes, yes, madam.
MINC. Oh, yes mem, I’ll vouch anything for your ladyship’s service, be
what it will.
SCENE IV.
MRS. FAINALL, LADY WISHFORT, MRS. MARWOOD.
LADY. O my dear friend, how can I enumerate the benefits that I have
received from your goodness? To you I owe the timely discovery of the
false vows of Mirabell; to you I owe the detection of the impostor Sir
Rowland. And now you are become an intercessor with my son-in-law, to
save the honour of my house and compound for the frailties of my
daughter. Well, friend, you are enough to reconcile me to the bad world,
or else I would retire to deserts and solitudes, and feed harmless sheep
by groves and purling streams. Dear Marwood, let us leave the world, and
retire by ourselves and be shepherdesses.
MRS. MAR. Let us first dispatch the affair in hand, madam. We shall
have leisure to think of retirement afterwards. Here is one who is
concerned in the treaty.
LADY. O daughter, daughter, is it possible thou shouldst be my child,
bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh, and as I may say, another me, and
yet transgress the most minute particle of severe virtue? Is it possible
you should lean aside to iniquity, who have been cast in the direct mould
of virtue? I have not only been a mould but a pattern for you, and a
model for you, after you were brought into the world.
MRS. FAIN. I don’t understand your ladyship.
LADY. Not understand? Why, have you not been naught? Have you not been
sophisticated? Not understand? Here I am ruined to compound for your
caprices and your cuckoldoms. I must pawn my plate and my jewels, and
ruin my niece, and all little enough—
MRS. FAIN. I am wronged and abused, and so are you. ’Tis a false
accusation, as false as hell, as false as your friend there; ay, or your
friend’s friend, my false husband.
MRS. MAR. My friend, Mrs. Fainall? Your husband my friend, what do you
mean?
MRS. FAIN. I know what I mean, madam, and so do you; and so shall the
world at a time convenient.
MRS. MAR. I am sorry to see you so passionate, madam. More temper would
look more like innocence. But I have done. I am sorry my zeal to serve
your ladyship and family should admit of misconstruction, or make me
liable to affronts. You will pardon me, madam, if I meddle no more with
an affair in which I am not personally concerned.
LADY. O dear friend, I am so ashamed that you should meet with such
returns. You ought to ask pardon on your knees, ungrateful creature; she
deserves more from you than all your life can accomplish. Oh, don’t
leave me destitute in this perplexity! No, stick to me, my good genius.
MRS. FAIN. I tell you, madam, you’re abused. Stick to you? Ay, like a
leech, to suck your best blood; she’ll drop off when she’s full. Madam,
you shan’t pawn a bodkin, nor part with a brass counter, in composition
for me. I defy ’em all. Let ’em prove their aspersions: I know my own
innocence, and dare stand a trial.
SCENE V.
LADY WISHFORT, MRS. MARWOOD.
LADY. Why, if she should be innocent, if she should be wronged after
all, ha? I don’t know what to think, and I promise you, her education
has been unexceptionable. I may say it, for I chiefly made it my own
care to initiate her very infancy in the rudiments of virtue, and to
impress upon her tender years a young odium and aversion to the very
sight of men; ay, friend, she would ha’ shrieked if she had but seen a
man till she was in her teens. As I’m a person, ’tis true. She was
never suffered to play with a male child, though but in coats. Nay, her
very babies were of the feminine gender. Oh, she never looked a man in
the face but her own father or the chaplain, and him we made a shift to
put upon her for a woman, by the help of his long garments, and his sleek
face, till she was going in her fifteen.
MRS. MAR. ’Twas much she should be deceived so long.
LADY. I warrant you, or she would never have borne to have been
catechised by him, and have heard his long lectures against singing and
dancing and such debaucheries, and going to filthy plays, and profane
music meetings, where the lewd trebles squeak nothing but bawdy, and the
basses roar blasphemy. Oh, she would have swooned at the sight or name
of an obscene play-book—and can I think after all this that my daughter
can be naught? What, a whore? And thought it excommunication to set her
foot within the door of a playhouse. O dear friend, I can’t believe it.
No, no; as she says, let him prove it, let him prove it.
MRS. MAR. Prove it, madam? What, and have your name prostituted in a
public court; yours and your daughter’s reputation worried at the bar by
a pack of bawling lawyers? To be ushered in with an _Oh yes_ of scandal,
and have your case opened by an old fumbling leacher in a quoif like a
man midwife; to bring your daughter’s infamy to light; to be a theme for
legal punsters and quibblers by the statute; and become a jest, against a
rule of court, where there is no precedent for a jest in any record, not
even in Doomsday Book. To discompose the gravity of the bench, and
provoke naughty interrogatories in more naughty law Latin; while the good
judge, tickled with the proceeding, simpers under a grey beard, and
fidges off and on his cushion as if he had swallowed cantharides, or sate
upon cow-itch.
LADY. Oh, ’tis very hard!
MRS. MAR. And then to have my young revellers of the Temple take notes,
like prentices at a conventicle; and after talk it over again in Commons,
or before drawers in an eating-house.
LADY. Worse and worse.
MRS. MAR. Nay, this is nothing; if it would end here ’twere well. But
it must after this be consigned by the shorthand writers to the public
press; and from thence be transferred to the hands, nay, into the throats
and lungs, of hawkers, with voices more licentious than the loud
flounder-man’s. And this you must hear till you are stunned; nay, you
must hear nothing else for some days.
LADY. Oh ’tis insupportable. No, no, dear friend, make it up, make it
up; ay, ay, I’ll compound. I’ll give up all, myself and my all, my niece
and her all, anything, everything, for composition.
MRS. MAR. Nay, madam, I advise nothing, I only lay before you, as a
friend, the inconveniences which perhaps you have overseen. Here comes
Mr. Fainall; if he will be satisfied to huddle up all in silence, I shall
be glad. You must think I would rather congratulate than condole with
you.
SCENE VI.
FAINALL, LADY WISHFORT, MRS. MARWOOD.
LADY. Ay, ay, I do not doubt it, dear Marwood. No, no, I do not doubt
it.
FAIN. Well, madam, I have suffered myself to be overcome by the
importunity of this lady, your friend, and am content you shall enjoy
your own proper estate during life, on condition you oblige yourself
never to marry, under such penalty as I think convenient.
LADY. Never to marry?
FAIN. No more Sir Rowlands,—the next imposture may not be so timely
detected.
MRS. MAR. That condition, I dare answer, my lady will consent to,
without difficulty; she has already but too much experienced the
perfidiousness of men. Besides, madam, when we retire to our pastoral
solitude, we shall bid adieu to all other thoughts.
LADY. Ay, that’s true; but in case of necessity, as of health, or some
such emergency—
FAIN. Oh, if you are prescribed marriage, you shall be considered; I
will only reserve to myself the power to choose for you. If your physic
be wholesome, it matters not who is your apothecary. Next, my wife shall
settle on me the remainder of her fortune, not made over already; and for
her maintenance depend entirely on my discretion.
LADY. This is most inhumanly savage: exceeding the barbarity of a
Muscovite husband.
FAIN. I learned it from his Czarish Majesty’s retinue, in a winter
evening’s conference over brandy and pepper, amongst other secrets of
matrimony and policy, as they are at present practised in the northern
hemisphere. But this must be agreed unto, and that positively. Lastly,
I will be endowed, in right of my wife, with that six thousand pound,
which is the moiety of Mrs. Millamant’s fortune in your possession, and
which she has forfeited (as will appear by the last will and testament of
your deceased husband, Sir Jonathan Wishfort) by her disobedience in
contracting herself against your consent or knowledge, and by refusing
the offered match with Sir Wilfull Witwoud, which you, like a careful
aunt, had provided for her.
LADY. My nephew was _non compos_, and could not make his addresses.
FAIN. I come to make demands—I’ll hear no objections.
LADY. You will grant me time to consider?
FAIN. Yes, while the instrument is drawing, to which you must set your
hand till more sufficient deeds can be perfected: which I will take care
shall be done with all possible speed. In the meanwhile I will go for
the said instrument, and till my return you may balance this matter in
your own discretion.
SCENE VII.
LADY WISHFORT, MRS. MARWOOD.
LADY. This insolence is beyond all precedent, all parallel. Must I be
subject to this merciless villain?
MRS. MAR. ’Tis severe indeed, madam, that you should smart for your
daughter’s wantonness.
LADY. ’Twas against my consent that she married this barbarian, but she
would have him, though her year was not out. Ah! her first husband, my
son Languish, would not have carried it thus. Well, that was my choice,
this is hers; she is matched now with a witness—I shall be mad, dear
friend; is there no comfort for me? Must I live to be confiscated at
this rebel-rate? Here come two more of my Egyptian plagues too.
SCENE VIII.
[_To them_] MRS. MILLAMANT, SIR WILFULL.
SIR WIL. Aunt, your servant.
LADY. Out, caterpillar, call not me aunt; I know thee not.
SIR WIL. I confess I have been a little in disguise, as they say.
’Sheart! and I’m sorry for’t. What would you have? I hope I committed
no offence, aunt—and if I did I am willing to make satisfaction; and what
can a man say fairer? If I have broke anything I’ll pay for’t, an it
cost a pound. And so let that content for what’s past, and make no more
words. For what’s to come, to pleasure you I’m willing to marry my
cousin. So, pray, let’s all be friends, she and I are agreed upon the
matter before a witness.
LADY. How’s this, dear niece? Have I any comfort? Can this be true?
MILLA. I am content to be a sacrifice to your repose, madam, and to
convince you that I had no hand in the plot, as you were misinformed. I
have laid my commands on Mirabell to come in person, and be a witness
that I give my hand to this flower of knighthood; and for the contract
that passed between Mirabell and me, I have obliged him to make a
resignation of it in your ladyship’s presence. He is without and waits
your leave for admittance.
LADY. Well, I’ll swear I am something revived at this testimony of your
obedience; but I cannot admit that traitor,—I fear I cannot fortify
myself to support his appearance. He is as terrible to me as a Gorgon:
if I see him I swear I shall turn to stone, petrify incessantly.
MILLA. If you disoblige him he may resent your refusal, and insist upon
the contract still. Then ’tis the last time he will be offensive to you.
LADY. Are you sure it will be the last time? If I were sure of
that—shall I never see him again?
MILLA. Sir Wilfull, you and he are to travel together, are you not?
SIR WIL. ’Sheart, the gentleman’s a civil gentleman, aunt, let him come
in; why, we are sworn brothers and fellow-travellers. We are to be
Pylades and Orestes, he and I. He is to be my interpreter in foreign
parts. He has been overseas once already; and with proviso that I marry
my cousin, will cross ’em once again, only to bear me company. ’Sheart,
I’ll call him in,—an I set on’t once, he shall come in; and see who’ll
hinder him. [_Goes to the door and hems_.]
MRS. MAR. This is precious fooling, if it would pass; but I’ll know the
bottom of it.
LADY. O dear Marwood, you are not going?
MRS. MAR. Not far, madam; I’ll return immediately.
SCENE IX.
LADY WISHFORT, MRS. MILLAMANT, SIR WILFULL, MIRABELL.
SIR WIL. Look up, man, I’ll stand by you; ’sbud, an she do frown, she
can’t kill you. Besides—harkee, she dare not frown desperately, because
her face is none of her own. ’Sheart, an she should, her forehead would
wrinkle like the coat of a cream cheese; but mum for that,
fellow-traveller.
MIRA. If a deep sense of the many injuries I have offered to so good a
lady, with a sincere remorse and a hearty contrition, can but obtain the
least glance of compassion. I am too happy. Ah, madam, there was a
time—but let it be forgotten. I confess I have deservedly forfeited the
high place I once held, of sighing at your feet; nay, kill me not by
turning from me in disdain, I come not to plead for favour. Nay, not for
pardon: I am a suppliant only for pity:—I am going where I never shall
behold you more.
SIR WIL. How, fellow-traveller? You shall go by yourself then.
MIRA. Let me be pitied first, and afterwards forgotten. I ask no more.
SIR WIL. By’r lady, a very reasonable request, and will cost you
nothing, aunt. Come, come, forgive and forget, aunt. Why you must an
you are a Christian.
MIRA. Consider, madam; in reality you could not receive much prejudice:
it was an innocent device, though I confess it had a face of
guiltiness—it was at most an artifice which love contrived—and errors
which love produces have ever been accounted venial. At least think it
is punishment enough that I have lost what in my heart I hold most dear,
that to your cruel indignation I have offered up this beauty, and with
her my peace and quiet; nay, all my hopes of future comfort.
SIR WIL. An he does not move me, would I may never be o’ the quorum. An
it were not as good a deed as to drink, to give her to him again, I would
I might never take shipping. Aunt, if you don’t forgive quickly, I shall
melt, I can tell you that. My contract went no farther than a little
mouth-glue, and that’s hardly dry; one doleful sigh more from my
fellow-traveller and ’tis dissolved.
LADY. Well, nephew, upon your account. Ah, he has a false insinuating
tongue. Well, sir, I will stifle my just resentment at my nephew’s
request. I will endeavour what I can to forget, but on proviso that you
resign the contract with my niece immediately.
MIRA. It is in writing and with papers of concern; but I have sent my
servant for it, and will deliver it to you, with all acknowledgments for
your transcendent goodness.
LADY. Oh, he has witchcraft in his eyes and tongue; when I did not see
him I could have bribed a villain to his assassination; but his
appearance rakes the embers which have so long lain smothered in my
breast. [_Aside_.]
SCENE X.
[_To them_] FAINALL, MRS. MARWOOD.
FAIN. Your date of deliberation, madam, is expired. Here is the
instrument; are you prepared to sign?
LADY. If I were prepared, I am not impowered. My niece exerts a lawful
claim, having matched herself by my direction to Sir Wilfull.
FAIN. That sham is too gross to pass on me, though ’tis imposed on you,
madam.
MILLA. Sir, I have given my consent.
MIRA. And, sir, I have resigned my pretensions.
SIR WIL. And, sir, I assert my right; and will maintain it in defiance
of you, sir, and of your instrument. ’Sheart, an you talk of an
instrument sir, I have an old fox by my thigh shall hack your instrument
of ram vellum to shreds, sir. It shall not be sufficient for a Mittimus
or a tailor’s measure; therefore withdraw your instrument, sir, or, by’r
lady, I shall draw mine.
LADY. Hold, nephew, hold.
MILLA. Good Sir Wilfull, respite your valour.
FAIN. Indeed? Are you provided of your guard, with your single
beef-eater there? But I’m prepared for you, and insist upon my first
proposal. You shall submit your own estate to my management, and
absolutely make over my wife’s to my sole use, as pursuant to the purport
and tenor of this other covenant. I suppose, madam, your consent is not
requisite in this case; nor, Mr. Mirabell, your resignation; nor, Sir
Wilfull, your right. You may draw your fox if you please, sir, and make
a bear-garden flourish somewhere else; for here it will not avail. This,
my Lady Wishfort, must be subscribed, or your darling daughter’s turned
adrift, like a leaky hulk to sink or swim, as she and the current of this
lewd town can agree.
LADY. Is there no means, no remedy, to stop my ruin? Ungrateful wretch!
Dost thou not owe thy being, thy subsistance, to my daughter’s fortune?
FAIN. I’ll answer you when I have the rest of it in my possession.
MIRA. But that you would not accept of a remedy from my hands—I own I
have not deserved you should owe any obligation to me; or else, perhaps,
I could devise—
LADY. Oh, what? what? To save me and my child from ruin, from want,
I’ll forgive all that’s past; nay, I’ll consent to anything to come, to
be delivered from this tyranny.
MIRA. Ay, madam; but that is too late, my reward is intercepted. You
have disposed of her who only could have made me a compensation for all
my services. But be it as it may, I am resolved I’ll serve you; you
shall not be wronged in this savage manner.
LADY. How? Dear Mr. Mirabell, can you be so generous at last? But it
is not possible. Harkee, I’ll break my nephew’s match; you shall have my
niece yet, and all her fortune, if you can but save me from this imminent
danger.
MIRA. Will you? I take you at your word. I ask no more. I must have
leave for two criminals to appear.
LADY. Ay, ay, anybody, anybody.
MIRA. Foible is one, and a penitent.
SCENE XI.
[_To them_] MRS. FAINALL, FOIBLE, MINCING.
MRS. MAR. O my shame! [MIRABELL _and_ LADY _go to_ MRS. FAINALL _and_
FOIBLE.] These currupt things are brought hither to expose me. [_To_
FAINALL.]
FAIN. If it must all come out, why let ’em know it, ’tis but the way of
the world. That shall not urge me to relinquish or abate one tittle of
my terms; no, I will insist the more.
FOIB. Yes, indeed, madam; I’ll take my bible-oath of it.
MINC. And so will I, mem.
LADY. O Marwood, Marwood, art thou false? My friend deceive me? Hast
thou been a wicked accomplice with that profligate man?
MRS. MAR. Have you so much ingratitude and injustice to give credit,
against your friend, to the aspersions of two such mercenary trulls?
MINC. Mercenary, mem? I scorn your words. ’Tis true we found you and
Mr. Fainall in the blue garret; by the same token, you swore us to
secrecy upon Messalinas’s poems. Mercenary? No, if we would have been
mercenary, we should have held our tongues; you would have bribed us
sufficiently.
FAIN. Go, you are an insignificant thing. Well, what are you the better
for this? Is this Mr. Mirabell’s expedient? I’ll be put off no longer.
You, thing, that was a wife, shall smart for this. I will not leave thee
wherewithal to hide thy shame: your body shall be naked as your
reputation.
MRS. FAIN. I despise you and defy your malice. You have aspersed me
wrongfully—I have proved your falsehood. Go, you and your treacherous—I
will not name it, but starve together. Perish.
FAIN. Not while you are worth a groat, indeed, my dear. Madam, I’ll be
fooled no longer.
LADY. Ah, Mr. Mirabell, this is small comfort, the detection of this
affair.
MIRA. Oh, in good time. Your leave for the other offender and penitent
to appear, madam.
SCENE XII.
[_To them_] WAITWELL _with a box of writings_.
LADY. O Sir Rowland! Well, rascal?
WAIT. What your ladyship pleases. I have brought the black box at last,
madam.
MIRA. Give it me. Madam, you remember your promise.
LADY. Ay, dear sir.
MIRA. Where are the gentlemen?
WAIT. At hand, sir, rubbing their eyes,—just risen from sleep.
FAIN. ’Sdeath, what’s this to me? I’ll not wait your private concerns.
SCENE XIII.
[_To them_] PETULANT, WITWOUD.
PET. How now? What’s the matter? Whose hand’s out?
WIT. Hey day! What, are you all got together, like players at the end
of the last act?
MIRA. You may remember, gentlemen, I once requested your hands as
witnesses to a certain parchment.
WIT. Ay, I do, my hand I remember—Petulant set his mark.
MIRA. You wrong him; his name is fairly written, as shall appear. You
do not remember, gentlemen, anything of what that parchment contained?
[_Undoing the box_.]
WIT. No.
PET. Not I. I writ; I read nothing.
MIRA. Very well, now you shall know. Madam, your promise.
LADY. Ay, ay, sir, upon my honour.
MIRA. Mr. Fainall, it is now time that you should know that your lady,
while she was at her own disposal, and before you had by your
insinuations wheedled her out of a pretended settlement of the greatest
part of her fortune—
FAIN. Sir! Pretended?
MIRA. Yes, sir. I say that this lady, while a widow, having, it seems,
received some cautions respecting your inconstancy and tyranny of temper,
which from her own partial opinion and fondness of you she could never
have suspected—she did, I say, by the wholesome advice of friends and of
sages learned in the laws of this land, deliver this same as her act and
deed to me in trust, and to the uses within mentioned. You may read if
you please [_holding out the parchment_], though perhaps what is written
on the back may serve your occasions.
FAIN. Very likely, sir. What’s here? Damnation! [_Reads_] _A Deed of
Conveyance of the whole estate real of Arabella Languish_, _widow_, _in
trust to Edward Mirabell_. Confusion!
MIRA. Even so, sir: ’tis the way of the world, sir; of the widows of the
world. I suppose this deed may bear an elder date than what you have
obtained from your lady.
FAIN. Perfidious fiend! Then thus I’ll be revenged. [_Offers to run
at_ MRS. FAINALL.]
SIR WIL. Hold, sir; now you may make your bear-garden flourish somewhere
else, sir.
FAIN. Mirabell, you shall hear of this, sir; be sure you shall. Let me
pass, oaf.
MRS. FAIN. Madam, you seem to stifle your resentment. You had better
give it vent.
MRS. MAR. Yes, it shall have vent, and to your confusion, or I’ll perish
in the attempt.
SCENE _the Last_.
LADY WISHFORT, MRS. MILLAMANT, MIRABELL, MRS. FAINALL, SIR WILFULL,
PETULANT, WITWOUD, FOIBLE, MINCING, WAITWELL.
LADY. O daughter, daughter, ’tis plain thou hast inherited thy mother’s
prudence.
MRS. FAIN. Thank Mr. Mirabell, a cautious friend, to whose advice all is
owing.
LADY. Well, Mr. Mirabell, you have kept your promise, and I must perform
mine. First, I pardon for your sake Sir Rowland there and Foible. The
next thing is to break the matter to my nephew, and how to do that—
MIRA. For that, madam, give yourself no trouble; let me have your
consent. Sir Wilfull is my friend: he has had compassion upon lovers,
and generously engaged a volunteer in this action, for our service, and
now designs to prosecute his travels.
SIR WIL. ’Sheart, aunt, I have no mind to marry. My cousin’s a fine
lady, and the gentleman loves her and she loves him, and they deserve one
another; my resolution is to see foreign parts. I have set on’t, and
when I’m set on’t I must do’t. And if these two gentlemen would travel
too, I think they may be spared.
PET. For my part, I say little. I think things are best off or on.
WIT. I’gad, I understand nothing of the matter: I’m in a maze yet, like
a dog in a dancing school.
LADY. Well, sir, take her, and with her all the joy I can give you.
MILLA. Why does not the man take me? Would you have me give myself to
you over again?
MIRA. Ay, and over and over again. [_Kisses her hand_.] I would have
you as often as possibly I can. Well, heav’n grant I love you not too
well; that’s all my fear.
SIR WIL. ’Sheart, you’ll have time enough to toy after you’re married,
or, if you will toy now, let us have a dance in the meantime; that we who
are not lovers may have some other employment besides looking on.
MIRA. With all my heart, dear Sir Wilfull. What shall we do for music?
FOIB. Oh, sir, some that were provided for Sir Rowland’s entertainment
are yet within call. [_A dance_.]
LADY. As I am a person, I can hold out no longer: I have wasted my
spirits so to-day already that I am ready to sink under the fatigue; and
I cannot but have some fears upon me yet, that my son Fainall will pursue
some desperate course.
MIRA. Madam, disquiet not yourself on that account: to my knowledge his
circumstances are such he must of force comply. For my part I will
contribute all that in me lies to a reunion. In the meantime, madam
[_to_ MRS. FAINALL], let me before these witnesses restore to you this
deed of trust: it may be a means, well managed, to make you live easily
together.
From hence let those be warned, who mean to wed,
Lest mutual falsehood stain the bridal-bed:
For each deceiver to his cost may find
That marriage frauds too oft are paid in kind.
[_Exeunt Omnes_.
EPILOGUE.
Spoken by MRS. BRACEGIRDLE.
AFTER our Epilogue this crowd dismisses,
I’m thinking how this play’ll be pulled to pieces.
But pray consider, e’er you doom its fall,
How hard a thing ’twould be to please you all.
There are some critics so with spleen diseased,
They scarcely come inclining to be pleased:
And sure he must have more than mortal skill
Who pleases anyone against his will.
Then, all bad poets we are sure are foes,
And how their number’s swelled the town well knows
In shoals, I’ve marked ’em judging in the pit;
Though they’re on no pretence for judgment fit,
But that they have been damned for want of wit.
Since when, they, by their own offences taught,
Set up for spies on plays, and finding fault.
Others there are whose malice we’d prevent:
Such, who watch plays, with scurrilous intent
To mark out who by characters are meant:
And though no perfect likeness they can trace,
Yet each pretends to know the copied face.
These, with false glosses, feed their own ill-nature,
And turn to libel what was meant a satire.
May such malicious fops this fortune find,
To think themselves alone the fools designed:
If any are so arrogantly vain,
To think they singly can support a scene,
And furnish fool enough to entertain.
For well the learned and the judicious know,
That satire scorns to stoop so meanly low,
As any one abstracted fop to show.
For, as when painters form a matchless face,
They from each fair one catch some diff’rent grace,
And shining features in one portrait blend,
To which no single beauty must pretend:
So poets oft do in one piece expose
Whole _belles assemblées_ of coquettes and beaux.
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