The Way of the World
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.