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?