Book: The Way of the World

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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 Phoebus 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, sweet-heart,
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?

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