The Way of The World by Congreve, William, 1670-1729
The Way of The World by Congreve, William, 1670-1729
The Way of The World by Congreve, William, 1670-1729
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by William Congreve
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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.
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.
WILL. CONGREVE.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE.
MEN.
WOMEN.
SCENE: London.
ACT I.--SCENE I.
A Chocolate-house.
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.
MIRA. Not at all: I happen to be grave to-day, and you are gay;
that's all.
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.
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.
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.
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.
FAIN. Fie, fie, friend, if you grow censorious I must leave you:-
I'll look upon the gamesters in the next room.
MIRA. How pertinently the jade answers me! Ha! almost one a'
clock! [Looking on his watch.] Oh, y'are come!
SCENE II.
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. Has the tailor brought Waitwell's clothes home, and the new
liveries?
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.
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.
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.
SCENE IV.
MESS. I have a letter for him, from his brother Sir Wilfull, which
I am charged to deliver into his own hands.
SCENE V.
MIRA. What, is the chief of that noble family in town, Sir Wilfull
Witwoud?
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. So one will be rotten before he be ripe, and the other will
be rotten without ever being ripe at all.
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.
SCENE VI.
BET. Did not a messenger bring you one but now, sir?
WIT. Good, good, Mirabell, LE DROLE! 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
WIT. That? That's his happiness. His want of learning gives him
the more opportunities to show his natural parts.
WIT. Ay; but I like him for that now: for his want of words gives
me the pleasure very often to explain his meaning.
MIRA. Vain?
WIT. No.
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.
BET. Yes.
SCENE VIII.
WIT. That should be for two fasting strumpets, and a bawd troubled
with wind. Now you may know what the three are.
MIRA. How!
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.
SCENE IX.
MIRA. I hope they are not persons of condition that you use at this
rate.
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.
PET. Enough, let 'em trundle. Anger helps complexion, saves paint.
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
WIT. Umh--no -
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.
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.
MIRA. And this is the sum of what you could collect last night?
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.
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.
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.
ACT II.--SCENE I.
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. FAIN. Bless me, how have I been deceived! Why, you profess a
libertine.
MRS. MAR. I join with you; what I have said has been to try you.
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. 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. MAR. No; but I'd make him believe I did, and that's as bad.
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. 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. My husband. Don't you see him? He turned short upon me
unawares, and has almost overcome me.
SCENE II.
MRS. FAIN. For you, for he has brought Mirabell with him.
FAIN. My dear.
MRS. FAIN. The only man that would tell me so at least, and the
only man from whom I could hear it without mortification.
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.
FAIN. Of Mirabell.
MRS. MAR. I think she does not hate him to that degree she would be
thought.
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. 'Tis false. I challenge you to show an instance that can
confirm your groundless accusation. I hate him.
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.
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. 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. 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. Impossible. Truth and you are inconsistent.--I hate you,
and shall for ever.
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.
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. No, it is not yet too late--I have that comfort.
MRS. MAR. But not to loathe, detest, abhor mankind, myself, and the
whole treacherous world.
SCENE IV.
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. 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. Care is taken for that. She is won and worn by this time.
They were married this morning.
MIRA. Yes, upon condition that she consent to my marriage with her
niece, and surrender the moiety of her fortune in her possession.
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.
SCENE V.
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.
MILLA. Oh, I have denied myself airs to-day. I have walked as fast
through the crowd -
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. Is that the way? Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with
all your letters? I find I must keep copies.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
SCENE VI.
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. Yes, the vapours; fools are physic for it, next to
assafoetida.
MIRA. You are not in a course of fools?
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.
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.
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.
MIRA. Sirrah, Waitwell, why, sure, you think you were married for
your own recreation and not for my conveniency.
WAIT. That she did indeed, sir. It was my fault that she did not
make more.
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. Yes.
FOIB. I told her, sir, because I did not know that you might find
an opportunity; she had so much company last night.
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.
ACT III.--SCENE I.
PEG. The red ratafia, does your ladyship mean, or the cherry
brandy?
SCENE II.
LADY WISHFORT.
I'm as pale and as faint, I look like Mrs. Qualmsick, the curate's
wife, that's always breeding. Wench, come, come, wench, what art
thou doing? Sipping? Tasting? Save thee, dost thou not know the
bottle?
SCENE III.
LADY. A cup, save thee, and what a cup hast thou brought! Dost
thou take me for a fairy, to drink out of an acorn? Why didst thou
not bring thy thimble? Hast thou ne'er a brass thimble clinking in
thy pocket with a bit of nutmeg? I warrant thee. Come, fill, fill.
So, again. See who that is. [One knocks.] Set down the bottle
first. Here, here, under the table:- what, wouldst thou go with the
bottle in thy hand like a tapster? As I'm a person, this wench has
lived in an inn upon the road, before she came to me, like
Maritornes the Asturian in Don Quixote. No Foible yet?
LADY. Oh, Marwood: let her come in. Come in, good Marwood.
SCENE IV.
MRS. MAR. I saw her but now, as I came masked through the park, in
conference with Mirabell.
SCENE V.
LADY. O Foible, where hast thou been? What hast thou been doing?
FOIB. Nay, 'tis your ladyship has done, and are to do; I have only
promised. But a man so enamoured--so transported! Well, if
worshipping of pictures be a sin--poor Sir Rowland, I say.
LADY. The miniature has been counted like. But hast thou not
betrayed me, Foible? Hast thou not detected me to that faithless
Mirabell? What hast thou to do with him in the park? Answer me,
has he got nothing out of thee?
FOIB. So, the devil has been beforehand with me; what shall I say?-
-Alas, madam, could I help it, if I met that confident thing? Was I
in fault? If you had heard how he used me, and all upon your
ladyship's account, I'm sure you would not suspect my fidelity.
Nay, if that had been the worst I could have borne: but he had a
fling at your ladyship too, and then I could not hold; but, i'faith
I gave him his own.
FOIB. O madam, 'tis a shame to say what he said, with his taunts
and his fleers, tossing up his nose. Humh, says he, what, you are
a-hatching some plot, says he, you are so early abroad, or catering,
says he, ferreting for some disbanded officer, I warrant. Half pay
is but thin subsistence, says he. Well, what pension does your lady
propose? Let me see, says he, what, she must come down pretty deep
now, she's superannuated, says he, and -
LADY. Ods my life, I'll have him--I'll have him murdered. I'll
have him poisoned. Where does he eat? I'll marry a drawer to have
him poisoned in his wine. I'll send for Robin from Locket's--
immediately.
FOIB. Poison him? Poisoning's too good for him. Starve him,
madam, starve him; marry Sir Rowland, and get him disinherited. Oh,
you would bless yourself to hear what he said.
FOIB. Humh, says he, I hear you are laying designs against me too,
says he, and Mrs. Millamant is to marry my uncle (he does not
suspect a word of your ladyship); but, says he, I'll fit you for
that, I warrant you, says he, I'll hamper you for that, says he, you
and your old frippery too, says he, I'll handle you -
FOIB. He? I hope to see him lodge in Ludgate first, and angle into
Blackfriars for brass farthings with an old mitten.
LADY. Ay, dear Foible; thank thee for that, dear Foible. He has
put me out of all patience. I shall never recompose my features to
receive Sir Rowland with any economy of face. This wretch has
fretted me that I am absolutely decayed. Look, Foible.
FOIB. Your ladyship has frowned a little too rashly, indeed, madam.
There are some cracks discernible in the white vernish.
FOIB. I warrant you, madam: a little art once made your picture
like you, and now a little of the same art must make you like your
picture. Your picture must sit for you, madam.
LADY. But art thou sure Sir Rowland will not fail to come? Or will
a not fail when he does come? Will he be importunate, Foible, and
push? For if he should not be importunate I shall never break
decorums. I shall die with confusion if I am forced to advance--oh
no, I can never advance; I shall swoon if he should expect advances.
No, I hope Sir Rowland is better bred than to put a lady to the
necessity of breaking her forms. I won't be too coy neither--I
won't give him despair. But a little disdain is not amiss; a little
scorn is alluring.
SCENE VI.
MRS. FAIN. Nay, nay, put not on that strange face. I am privy to
the whole design, and know that Waitwell, to whom thou wert this
morning married, is to personate Mirabell's uncle, and, as such
winning my lady, to involve her in those difficulties from which
Mirabell only must release her, by his making his conditions to have
my cousin and her fortune left to her own disposal.
MRS. FAIN. I'll go with you up the back stairs, lest I should meet
her.
SCENE VII.
MRS. MAR. Indeed, Mrs. Engine, is it thus with you? Are you become
a go-between of this importance? Yes, I shall watch you. Why this
wench is the PASSE-PARTOUT, a very master-key to everybody's strong
box. My friend Fainall, have you carried it so swimmingly? I
thought there was something in it; but it seems it's over with you.
Your loathing is not from a want of appetite then, but from a
surfeit. Else you could never be so cool to fall from a principal
to be an assistant, to procure for him! A pattern of generosity,
that I confess. Well, Mr. Fainall, you have met with your match.--O
man, man! Woman, woman! The devil's an ass: if I were a painter,
I would draw him like an idiot, a driveller with a bib and bells.
Man should have his head and horns, and woman the rest of him.
Poor, simple fiend! 'Madam Marwood has a month's mind, but he can't
abide her.' 'Twere better for him you had not been his confessor in
that affair, without you could have kept his counsel closer. I
shall not prove another pattern of generosity; he has not obliged me
to that with those excesses of himself, and now I'll have none of
him. Here comes the good lady, panting ripe, with a heart full of
hope, and a head full of care, like any chymist upon the day of
projection.
SCENE VIII.
MRS. MAR. Methinks Sir Wilfull should rather think of marrying than
travelling at his years. I hear he is turned of forty.
MRS. MAR. Methinks Mrs. Millamant and he would make a very fit
match. He may travel afterwards. 'Tis a thing very usual with
young gentlemen.
SCENE IX.
FOIB. Mr. Witwoud and Mr. Petulant are come to dine with your
ladyship.
SCENE X.
MILLA. Nay, he has done nothing; he has only talked. Nay, he has
said nothing neither; but he has contradicted everything that has
been said. For my part, I thought Witwoud and he would have
quarrelled.
MILLA. Well, 'tis a lamentable thing, I swear, that one has not the
liberty of choosing one's acquaintance as one does one's clothes.
MILLA. I could consent to wear 'em, if they would wear alike; but
fools never wear out. They are such DRAP DE BERRI things! Without
one could give 'em to one's chambermaid after a day or two.
MILLA. I'll take my death, Marwood, you are more censorious than a
decayed beauty, or a discarded toast:- Mincing, tell the men they
may come up. My aunt is not dressing here; their folly is less
provoking than your malice.
SCENE XI.
MILLA. The town has found it? What has it found? That Mirabell
loves me is no more a secret than it is a secret that you discovered
it to my aunt, or than the reason why you discovered it is a secret.
MRS. MAR. Indeed, my dear, you'll tear another fan, if you don't
mitigate those violent airs.
MRS. MAR. What pity 'tis so much fine raillery, and delivered with
so significant gesture, should be so unhappily directed to miscarry.
MILLA. Heh? Dear creature, I ask your pardon. I swear I did not
mind you.
MRS. MAR. Mr. Mirabell and you both may think it a thing
impossible, when I shall tell him by telling you -
MILLA. Oh dear, what? For it is the same thing, if I hear it. Ha,
ha, ha!
MILLA. O madam, why, so do I. And yet the creature loves me, ha,
ha, ha! How can one forbear laughing to think of it? I am a sibyl
if I am not amazed to think what he can see in me. I'll take my
death, I think you are handsomer, and within a year or two as young.
If you could but stay for me, I should overtake you--but that cannot
be. Well, that thought makes me melancholic.--Now I'll be sad.
MRS. MAR. Your merry note may be changed sooner than you think.
MILLA. D'ye say so? Then I'm resolved I'll have a song to keep up
my spirits.
SCENE XII.
MINC. The gentlemen stay but to comb, madam, and will wait on you.
SONG.
III
SCENE XIII.
WIT. Ay, upon proof positive it must; but upon proof presumptive it
only may. That's a logical distinction now, madam.
PET. Why should a man be any further from being married, though he
can't read, than he is from being hanged? The ordinary's paid for
setting the psalm, and the parish priest for reading the ceremony.
And for the rest which is to follow in both cases, a man may do it
without book. So all's one for that.
MILLA. D'ye hear the creature? Lord, here's company; I'll begone.
SCENE XIV.
WIT. In the name of Bartlemew and his Fair, what have we here?
MRS. MAR. 'Tis your brother, I fancy. Don't you know him?
WIT. Not I:- yes, I think it is he. I've almost forgot him; I have
not seen him since the revolution.
SIR WIL. Dressing! What, it's but morning here, I warrant, with
you in London; we should count it towards afternoon in our parts
down in Shropshire:- why, then, belike my aunt han't dined yet. Ha,
friend?
SIR WIL. My aunt, sir? Yes my aunt, sir, and your lady, sir; your
lady is my aunt, sir. Why, what dost thou not know me, friend?
Why, then, send somebody hither that does. How long hast thou lived
with thy lady, fellow, ha?
SIR WIL. Why, then, belike thou dost not know thy lady, if thou
seest her. Ha, friend?
SIR WIL. Well, prithee try what thou canst do; if thou canst not
guess, enquire her out, dost hear, fellow? And tell her her nephew,
Sir Wilfull Witwoud, is in the house.
SIR WIL. Hold ye, hear me, friend, a word with you in your ear:
prithee who are these gallants?
FOOT. Really, sir, I can't tell; here come so many here, 'tis hard
to know 'em all.
SCENE XV.
SIR WIL. Oons, this fellow knows less than a starling: I don't
think a knows his own name.
WIT. I hope so. The devil take him that remembers first, I say.
MRS. MAR. For shame, Mr. Witwoud; why won't you speak to him?--And
you, sir.
WIT. This is a vile dog, I see that already. No offence? Ha, ha,
ha. To him, to him, Petulant, smoke him.
WIT. Smoke the boots, the boots, Petulant, the boots; ha, ha, ha!
SIR WIL. Why, 'tis like you may, sir: if you are not satisfied
with the information of my boots, sir, if you will step to the
stable, you may enquire further of my horse, sir.
MRS. MAR. The gentleman's merry, that's all, sir. 'Slife, we shall
have a quarrel betwixt an horse and an ass, before they find one
another out.--You must not take anything amiss from your friends,
sir. You are among your friends here, though it--may be you don't
know it. If I am not mistaken, you are Sir Wilfull Witwoud?
SIR WIL. Hum! What, sure 'tis not--yea by'r lady but 'tis--
'sheart, I know not whether 'tis or no. Yea, but 'tis, by the
Wrekin. Brother Antony! What, Tony, i'faith! What, dost thou not
know me? By'r lady, nor I thee, thou art so becravated and so
beperiwigged. 'Sheart, why dost not speak? Art thou o'erjoyed?
SIR WIL. Your servant? Why, yours, sir. Your servant again--
'sheart, and your friend and servant to that--and a--[puff] and a
flap-dragon for your service, sir, and a hare's foot and a hare's
scut for your service, sir, an you be so cold and so courtly!
SIR WIL. 'Sheart, sir, but there is, and much offence. A pox, is
this your inns o' court breeding, not to know your friends and your
relations, your elders, and your betters?
SIR WIL. The fashion's a fool and you're a fop, dear brother.
'Sheart, I've suspected this--by'r lady I conjectured you were a
fop, since you began to change the style of your letters, and write
in a scrap of paper gilt round the edges, no bigger than a subpoena.
I might expect this when you left off 'Honoured brother,' and
'Hoping you are in good health,' and so forth, to begin with a 'Rat
me, knight, I'm so sick of a last night's debauch.' Ods heart, and
then tell a familiar tale of a cock and a bull, and a whore and a
bottle, and so conclude. You could write news before you were out
of your time, when you lived with honest Pumple-Nose, the attorney
of Furnival's Inn. You could intreat to be remembered then to your
friends round the Wrekin. We could have Gazettes then, and Dawks's
Letter, and the Weekly Bill, till of late days.
SIR WIL. Belike I may, madam. I may chance to sail upon the salt
seas, if my mind hold.
SIR WIL. Serve or not serve, I shan't ask license of you, sir, nor
the weathercock your companion. I direct my discourse to the lady,
sir. 'Tis like my aunt may have told you, madam? Yes, I have
settled my concerns, I may say now, and am minded to see foreign
parts. If an how that the peace holds, whereby, that is, taxes
abate.
MRS. MAR. I thought you had designed for France at all adventures.
SIR WIL. I can't tell that; 'tis like I may, and 'tis like I may
not. I am somewhat dainty in making a resolution, because when I
make it I keep it. I don't stand shill I, shall I, then; if I
say't, I'll do't. But I have thoughts to tarry a small matter in
town, to learn somewhat of your lingo first, before I cross the
seas. I'd gladly have a spice of your French as they say, whereby
to hold discourse in foreign countries.
SCENE XVI.
SIR WIL. I'm very well, I thank you, aunt. However, I thank you
for your courteous offer. 'Sheart, I was afraid you would have been
in the fashion too, and have remembered to have forgot your
relations. Here's your cousin Tony, belike, I mayn't call him
brother for fear of offence.
SIR WIL. Why, then, let him hold his tongue in the meantime, and
rail when that day comes.
SCENE XVII.
SIR WIL. Impatient? Why, then, belike it won't stay till I pull
off my boots. Sweetheart, can you help me to a pair of slippers?
My man's with his horses, I warrant.
LADY. Fie, fie, nephew, you would not pull off your boots here? Go
down into the hall:- dinner shall stay for you. My nephew's a
little unbred: you'll pardon him, madam. Gentlemen, will you walk?
Marwood?
SCENE XVIII.
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.
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. 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?
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?
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.
ACT IV.--SCENE I.
Scene Continues.
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?
LADY. And are the dancers and the music ready, that he may be
entertained in all points with correspondence to his passion?
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.
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.
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.
That's hard!
MRS. FAIN. You are very fond of Sir John Suckling to-day,
Millamant, and the poets.
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.
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.
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 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]:-
MILLA. [repeating]:-
SIR WIL. Well, well, I shall understand your lingo one of these
days, cousin; in the meanwhile I must answer in plain English.
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.
SIR WIL. Nay, nothing. Only for the walk's sake, that's all.
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 -
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.
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.
SIR WIL. Your servant; then with your leave I'll return to my
company.
SCENE V.
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?
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! 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?
MIRA. Have you any more conditions to offer? Hitherto your demands
are pretty reasonable.
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
-
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?
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.
MILLA. Ay, go, go. In the meantime I suppose you have said
something to please me.
SCENE VII.
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.
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.
SCENE VIII.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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?
SCENE X.
LADY. At a time when you should commence an amour, and put your
best foot foremost -
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.
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.
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]:-
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.
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?
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.
LADY. This will never do. It will never make a match,--at least
before he has been abroad.
SCENE XII.
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 -
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.
LADY. No, don't kill him at once, Sir Rowland: starve him
gradually, inch by inch.
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?
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 -
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.
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.
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. 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?
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.
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. 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.
LADY. Bring what you will; but come alive, pray come alive. Oh,
this is a happy discovery.
ACT V.--SCENE I.
Scene continues.
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.
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.
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.
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.
MRS. FAIN. Say'st thou so, Foible? Canst thou prove this?
MRS. FAIN. This discovery is the most opportune thing I could wish.
Now, Mincing?
SCENE III.
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.
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.
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. 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. FAIN. I know what I mean, madam, and so do you; and so shall
the world at a time convenient.
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. 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.
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. 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.
LADY. Ay, ay, I do not doubt it, dear Marwood. No, no, I do not
doubt it.
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. My nephew was NON COMPOS, and could not make his addresses.
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.
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.
LADY. How's this, dear niece? Have I any comfort? Can this be
true?
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.
SCENE IX.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
SCENE XI.
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.
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.
MIRA. Oh, in good time. Your leave for the other offender and
penitent to appear, madam.
SCENE XII.
WAIT. What your ladyship pleases. I have brought the black box at
last, madam.
FAIN. 'Sdeath, what's this to me? I'll not wait your private
concerns.
SCENE XIII.
WIT. Hey day! What, are you all got together, like players at the
end of the last act?
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.
MIRA. Very well, now you shall know. Madam, your promise.
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 -
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.]
[Exeunt Omnes.]
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Way of the World by William Congreve