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.