The Way of the World
FOIBLE.] These currupt things are brought hither to expose me. [_To_
FAINALL.]
FAIN. If it must all come out, why let ’em know it, ’tis but the way of
the world. That shall not urge me to relinquish or abate one tittle of
my terms; no, I will insist the more.
FOIB. Yes, indeed, madam; I’ll take my bible-oath of it.
MINC. And so will I, mem.
LADY. O Marwood, Marwood, art thou false? My friend deceive me? Hast
thou been a wicked accomplice with that profligate man?
MRS. MAR. Have you so much ingratitude and injustice to give credit,
against your friend, to the aspersions of two such mercenary trulls?
MINC. Mercenary, mem? I scorn your words. ’Tis true we found you and
Mr. Fainall in the blue garret; by the same token, you swore us to
secrecy upon Messalinas’s poems. Mercenary? No, if we would have been
mercenary, we should have held our tongues; you would have bribed us
sufficiently.
FAIN. Go, you are an insignificant thing. Well, what are you the better
for this? Is this Mr. Mirabell’s expedient? I’ll be put off no longer.
You, thing, that was a wife, shall smart for this. I will not leave thee
wherewithal to hide thy shame: your body shall be naked as your
reputation.
MRS. FAIN. I despise you and defy your malice. You have aspersed me
wrongfully—I have proved your falsehood. Go, you and your treacherous—I
will not name it, but starve together. Perish.
FAIN. Not while you are worth a groat, indeed, my dear. Madam, I’ll be
fooled no longer.
LADY. Ah, Mr. Mirabell, this is small comfort, the detection of this
affair.
MIRA. Oh, in good time. Your leave for the other offender and penitent
to appear, madam.
SCENE XII.
[_To them_] WAITWELL _with a box of writings_.
LADY. O Sir Rowland! Well, rascal?
WAIT. What your ladyship pleases. I have brought the black box at last,
madam.
MIRA. Give it me. Madam, you remember your promise.
LADY. Ay, dear sir.
MIRA. Where are the gentlemen?
WAIT. At hand, sir, rubbing their eyes,—just risen from sleep.
FAIN. ’Sdeath, what’s this to me? I’ll not wait your private concerns.
SCENE XIII.
[_To them_] PETULANT, WITWOUD.
PET. How now? What’s the matter? Whose hand’s out?
WIT. Hey day! What, are you all got together, like players at the end
of the last act?
MIRA. You may remember, gentlemen, I once requested your hands as
witnesses to a certain parchment.
WIT. Ay, I do, my hand I remember—Petulant set his mark.
MIRA. You wrong him; his name is fairly written, as shall appear. You
do not remember, gentlemen, anything of what that parchment contained?
[_Undoing the box_.]
WIT. No.
PET. Not I. I writ; I read nothing.
MIRA. Very well, now you shall know. Madam, your promise.
LADY. Ay, ay, sir, upon my honour.
MIRA. Mr. Fainall, it is now time that you should know that your lady,
while she was at her own disposal, and before you had by your
insinuations wheedled her out of a pretended settlement of the greatest
part of her fortune—
FAIN. Sir! Pretended?
MIRA. Yes, sir. I say that this lady, while a widow, having, it seems,
received some cautions respecting your inconstancy and tyranny of temper,
which from her own partial opinion and fondness of you she could never
have suspected—she did, I say, by the wholesome advice of friends and of
sages learned in the laws of this land, deliver this same as her act and
deed to me in trust, and to the uses within mentioned. You may read if
you please [_holding out the parchment_], though perhaps what is written
on the back may serve your occasions.
FAIN. Very likely, sir. What’s here? Damnation! [_Reads_] _A Deed of
Conveyance of the whole estate real of Arabella Languish_, _widow_, _in
trust to Edward Mirabell_. Confusion!
MIRA. Even so, sir: ’tis the way of the world, sir; of the widows of the
world. I suppose this deed may bear an elder date than what you have
obtained from your lady.
FAIN. Perfidious fiend! Then thus I’ll be revenged. [_Offers to run
at_ MRS. FAINALL.]
SIR WIL. Hold, sir; now you may make your bear-garden flourish somewhere
else, sir.
FAIN. Mirabell, you shall hear of this, sir; be sure you shall. Let me
pass, oaf.
MRS. FAIN. Madam, you seem to stifle your resentment. You had better
give it vent.
MRS. MAR. Yes, it shall have vent, and to your confusion, or I’ll perish
in the attempt.
SCENE _the Last_.
LADY WISHFORT, MRS. MILLAMANT, MIRABELL, MRS. FAINALL, SIR WILFULL,
PETULANT, WITWOUD, FOIBLE, MINCING, WAITWELL.
LADY. O daughter, daughter, ’tis plain thou hast inherited thy mother’s
prudence.
MRS. FAIN. Thank Mr. Mirabell, a cautious friend, to whose advice all is
owing.
LADY. Well, Mr. Mirabell, you have kept your promise, and I must perform
mine. First, I pardon for your sake Sir Rowland there and Foible. The
next thing is to break the matter to my nephew, and how to do that—
MIRA. For that, madam, give yourself no trouble; let me have your
consent. Sir Wilfull is my friend: he has had compassion upon lovers,
and generously engaged a volunteer in this action, for our service, and
now designs to prosecute his travels.
SIR WIL. ’Sheart, aunt, I have no mind to marry. My cousin’s a fine
lady, and the gentleman loves her and she loves him, and they deserve one
another; my resolution is to see foreign parts. I have set on’t, and
when I’m set on’t I must do’t. And if these two gentlemen would travel
too, I think they may be spared.
PET. For my part, I say little. I think things are best off or on.
WIT. I’gad, I understand nothing of the matter: I’m in a maze yet, like
a dog in a dancing school.
LADY. Well, sir, take her, and with her all the joy I can give you.
MILLA. Why does not the man take me? Would you have me give myself to
you over again?
MIRA. Ay, and over and over again. [_Kisses her hand_.] I would have
you as often as possibly I can. Well, heav’n grant I love you not too
well; that’s all my fear.
SIR WIL. ’Sheart, you’ll have time enough to toy after you’re married,
or, if you will toy now, let us have a dance in the meantime; that we who
are not lovers may have some other employment besides looking on.
MIRA. With all my heart, dear Sir Wilfull. What shall we do for music?
FOIB. Oh, sir, some that were provided for Sir Rowland’s entertainment
are yet within call. [_A dance_.]
LADY. As I am a person, I can hold out no longer: I have wasted my
spirits so to-day already that I am ready to sink under the fatigue; and
I cannot but have some fears upon me yet, that my son Fainall will pursue
some desperate course.
MIRA. Madam, disquiet not yourself on that account: to my knowledge his
circumstances are such he must of force comply. For my part I will
contribute all that in me lies to a reunion. In the meantime, madam
[_to_ MRS. FAINALL], let me before these witnesses restore to you this
deed of trust: it may be a means, well managed, to make you live easily
together.
From hence let those be warned, who mean to wed,
Lest mutual falsehood stain the bridal-bed:
For each deceiver to his cost may find
That marriage frauds too oft are paid in kind.
[_Exeunt Omnes_.
EPILOGUE.
Spoken by MRS. BRACEGIRDLE.
AFTER our Epilogue this crowd dismisses,
I’m thinking how this play’ll be pulled to pieces.
But pray consider, e’er you doom its fall,
How hard a thing ’twould be to please you all.
There are some critics so with spleen diseased,
They scarcely come inclining to be pleased:
And sure he must have more than mortal skill
Who pleases anyone against his will.
Then, all bad poets we are sure are foes,
And how their number’s swelled the town well knows
In shoals, I’ve marked ’em judging in the pit;
Though they’re on no pretence for judgment fit,
But that they have been damned for want of wit.
Since when, they, by their own offences taught,
Set up for spies on plays, and finding fault.
Others there are whose malice we’d prevent:
Such, who watch plays, with scurrilous intent
To mark out who by characters are meant:
And though no perfect likeness they can trace,
Yet each pretends to know the copied face.
These, with false glosses, feed their own ill-nature,
And turn to libel what was meant a satire.
May such malicious fops this fortune find,
To think themselves alone the fools designed:
If any are so arrogantly vain,
To think they singly can support a scene,
And furnish fool enough to entertain.
For well the learned and the judicious know,
That satire scorns to stoop so meanly low,
As any one abstracted fop to show.
For, as when painters form a matchless face,
They from each fair one catch some diff’rent grace,
And shining features in one portrait blend,
To which no single beauty must pretend:
So poets oft do in one piece expose
Whole _belles assemblées_ of coquettes and beaux.