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.86. Yes, indeed, I inquired of the law in that case before I would meddle or make. Lady Wish. 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! 87—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. (Exit.)

Mrs. Fain. Poor Foible, what's the matter? Foib. O madam, my lady's gone for a constable. I shall be had to a justice, and put to Bridewell to beat hemp. Poor Waitwell's gone to prison already. Mrs. Fain. Have a good heart, Foible;

Mirabell's gone to give security for him. This is all Marwood's and my husband's doing.

Foib. Yes, yes; I know it, madam: she was in my lady's closet, and overheard all that you said to me before dinner. She sent the letter to my lady; and that missing effect, Mr. Fainall laid this plot to arrest Waitwell, when he pretended to go for the papers; and in the meantime Mrs. Marwood declared all to my lady. Mrs. Fain. Was there no mention made of me in the letter? My mother does not suspect my being in the confederacy? I fancy Marwood has not told her, though she has told my husband.

Foib. Yes, madam; but my lady did not see that part; we stifled the letter before she read so far.-Has that mischievous

devil told Mr. Fainall of your ladyship, then?

Mrs. Fain. Ay, all's out-my affair with Mirabell-everything discovered. This is the last day of our living together, that's my comfort.

Foib. Indeed, madam; and so 't is a comfort if you knew all; he has been even with your ladyship, which I could have told you long enough since, but I love to keep peace and quietness by my goodwill. I had rather bring friends together, than set 'em at distance: but Mrs. Marwood and he are nearer related than ever their parents thought for. Mrs. Fain. Sayest thou So, Foible? Canst thou prove this?

Foib. I can take my oath of it, madam; SO can Mrs. Mincing. We have had many a fair word from Madam Marwood, to conceal something that passed in our chamber one evening when you were at Hyde Park; and we were thought to have gone a-walking, but we went up unawares; though we were sworn to secrecy, too. Madam Marwood took a book and swore us upon it, but it was but a book of verses and poems. So long as it was not a bible-oath, we may break it with a safe conscience.

Mrs. Fain. This discovery is the most opportune thing I could wish.-Now, Mincing!

(Enter Mincing.)

Min. 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 He says, mem, how that he 'll have my lady's fortune made over to him, or he'll be divorced.

VOW.

Mrs. Fain. Does your lady and Mirabell know that?

Min. 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.

87 Maids and valets.

Foib. Yes, yes, madam. Min. Oh, yes, mem, I'll vouch anything for your ladyship's service, be what it will.

(Exeunt Mincing and Foible.) (Enter Lady Wishfort, and Mrs. Marwood.)

Lady Wish. Oh, my dear friend, how can I enumerate the benefits that I have received from your goodness! To you I owe the timely discovery of the false vows of Mirabell; to you the detection of the impostor Sir Rowland. And now you are become an intercessor with my son-in-law, to save the honor of my house, and compound for the frailties of my daughter. Well, friend, you are enough to reconcile me to the bad world, or else I would retire to deserts and solitudes, and feed harmless sheep by groves and purling streams. Dear Marwood, let us leave the world, and retire by ourselves and be shepherdesses.

Mrs. Mar. Let us first dispatch the affair in hand, madam. We shall have leisure to think of retirement afterwards. Here is one who is concerned in the treaty. Lady Wish. Oh, daughter, daughter! is it possible thou shouldst be my child, bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh, and, as I may say, another me, and yet transgress the most minute particle of severe virtue? Is it possible you should lean aside to iniquity, who have been cast in the direct mould of virtue? I have not only been a mould but a pattern for you, and a model for you, after you were brought into the world.

Mrs. Fain. I don't understand your ladyship.

Lady Wish. Not understand! Why, have you not been naught? 88 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 enoughMrs. Fain. I am wronged and abused, and so are you. 'Tis a false accusation, as false as hell, as false as your friend there, ay, or your friend's friend, my false husband.

Mrs. Mar. My friend, Mrs. Fainall! your husband my friend! what do you mean? Mrs. Fain. I know what I mean, madam, and so do you; and so shall the world at a time convenient.

ss Frail, no better than you should be.

Mrs. Mar. I am sorry to see you so passionate, madam. More temper 89 would look more like innocence. But I have done. I am sorry my zeal to serve your ladyship and family should admit of misconstruction, or make me liable to affronts. You will pardon me, madam, if I meddle no more with an affair in which I am not personally concerned. Lady Wish. O dear friend, I am so ashamed that you should meet with such returns! (To Mrs. Fainall.) You ought to ask pardon on your knees, ungrateful creature! she deserves more from you than all your life can accomplish.—(To Mrs. Marwood.) 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 sha'not 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.

(Exit.)

Lady Wish. Why, if she should be innocent, if she should be wronged after all. ha? I don't know what to think;-and I promise you her education has been unexceptionable-I may say it; for I chiefly made it my own care to initiate her very infancy in the rudiments of virtue, and to impress upon her tender years a young odium and aversion to the very sight of men: ay, friend, she would ha' shrieked if she had but seen a man, till she was in her teens. As I'm a person 't is true;-she was never suffered to play with a male child, though but in coats; nay, her very babies 90 were of the feminine gender. Oh, she never looked a man in the face but her own father, or the chaplain, and him we made a shift to put upon her for a woman, by the help of his long garments, and his sleek face, till she was going in her fifteen.

Mrs. Mar. 'T was much she should be deceived so long.

Lady Wish. I warrant you, or she would

never have borne to have been catechized 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 O Yez 91 of scandal; and have your case opened by an old fumbling lecher in a quoif 2 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; 93 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 94 off and on his cushion as if he had swallowed cantharides, or sat upon cow-itch!

Lady Wish. Oh, 't is very hard! Mrs. Mar. And then to have my young revellers of the Temple take notes, like 'prentices at a conventiele; and after talk it over again in commons, or before drawers in an eating-house. Lady Wish. Worse and worse! Mrs. Mar. Nay, this is nothing; if it

would end here 't were well. But it must, after this, be consigned by the shorthand writers to the public press; and from thence be transferred to the hands, nay into the throats and lungs of hawkers, with voices more licentious than the loud flounder-man's or the woman that cries grey-pease; and this you must hear till you are stunned; nay, you must hear nothing else for some days. Lady Wish. Oh, 't is 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 in

conveniences 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.

(Enter Fainall.)

Lady Wish. Ay, ay, I do not doubt it, dear Marwood; no, no, I do not doubt it. Fain. Well, madam; I have suffered myself to be overcome by the importunity of this lady your friend; and am content you shall enjoy your own proper estate during life, on condition you oblige yourself never to marry, under such penalty as I think convenient.

Lady Wish. Never to marry! Fain. No more Sir Rowlands; the next imposture may not be so timely detected. Mrs. Mar. That condition, I dare answer, my lady will consent to without difficulty; she has already but too much experienced the perfidiousness of men.Besides, madam, when we retire to our pastoral solitude we shall bid adieu to all other thoughts.

Lady Wish. Ay, that's true; but in case of necessity, as of health, or some such emergency

Fain. Oh, if you are prescribed marriage, you shall be considered; I will only reserve to myself the power to choose for you. If your physic be wholesome, it matters not who is your apothecary. Next, my wife shall settle on me the remainder of her fortune, not made over already; and for her maintenance depend entirely on my discretion.

Lady Wish. This is most inhumanly savage; exceeding the barbarity of a Muscovite husband.

Fain. I learned it from his Czarish majesty's retinue, in a winter evening's conference over brandy and pepper, amongst other secrets of matrimony and policy, as they are at present practised in the northern hemisphere. But this must be agreed unto, and that positively. Lastly, I will be endowed, in right of my wife, with that six thousand pound, which is the moiety of Mrs. Millamant's fortune in your possession; and which she has forfeited (as will appear by the last will and testament of your deceased husband, Sir Jonathan Wish fort) by her disobedi

ence in contracting herself against your consent or knowledge; and by refusing the offered match with Sir Wilfull Witwoud, which you, like a careful aunt, had provided for her.

Lady Wish. My nephew was non compos,95 and could not make his addresses. Fain. I come to make demands-I'll hear no objections.

Lady Wish. You will grant me time to consider?

Fain. Yes, while the instrument is draw

ing, 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.

(Exit.)

Lady Wish. This insolence is beyond all precedent, all parallel: must I be subject to this merciless villain? Mrs. Mar.

'Tis severe indeed, madam, that you should smart for your daughter's wantonness.

Lady Wish. 'T was 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.

(Enter Millamant and Sir Wilfull.)

Sir Wil. Aunt, your servant. Lady Wish. Out, caterpillar, call not me aunt! I know thee not!

Sir Wil. I confess I have been a little in disguise, as they say.-S'heart! and I'm sorry for 't. What would you have? I hope I committed no offence, aunt—and if I did I am willing to make satisfaction; and what can a man say fairer? If I have broke anything I'll pay for 't, an it cost a pound. And so let that content for what's past, and make no more words. For what's to come, to pleasure you I'm willing to marry my cousin. So pray let's all be friends; she and I are agreed upon the matter before a witness. Lady Wish. How's this, dear niece? Have I any comfort? Can this be true?

95 Not himself (not sober).

Mrs. Mil. I am content to be a sacrifice to your repose, madam; and to convince you that I had no hand in the plot, as you were misinformed, I have laid my commands on Mirabell to come in person, and be a witness that I give my hand to this flower of knighthood: and for the contract that passed between Mirabell and me, I have obliged him to make a resignation of it in your ladyship's presence; he is without, and waits your leave for admittance.

Lady Wish. Well, I'll swear I am something revived at this testimony of your obedience: but I cannot admit that traitor. I fear I cannot fortify myself to support his appearance. He is as terrible to me as a gorgon; if I see him I fear I shall turn to stone, and petrify incessantly.

Mrs. Mil. If you disoblige him, he may resent your refusal, and insist upon the contract still. Then 't is the last time he will be offensive to you.

Lady Wish. Are you sure it will be the last time?-If I were sure of that-shall I never see him again?

Mrs. Mil. Sir Wilfull, you and he are to travel together, are you not?

Sir. Wil. S'heart, 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 over-seas once already; and with proviso that I marry my cousin, will cross 'em once again, only to bear me company.— S'heart, I'll call him in,-an I set on 't once, he shall come in; and see who'll hinder him.