Scene
II
The dining room in Lady Wishfort’s house.
Sir Wilfull drunk, Lady Wishfort, Witwoud, Mrs. Millamant, and Mrs. Fainall.
Lady Wishfort
Out upon’t, out upon’t! At years of discretion, and comport yourself at this rantipole rate!
Sir Wilful
No offence, aunt.
Lady Wishfort
Offence! as I’m a person, I’m ashamed of you—foh! How you stink of wine! D’ye think my niece will ever endure such a Borachio! You’re an absolute Borachio.
Sir Wilful
Borachio?
Lady Wishfort
At a time when you should commence an amour, and put your best foot foremost—
Sir Wilful
S’heart, 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 Wishfort
My nephew’s a little overtaken, cousin—but ’tis drinking your health.—O’ my word, you are obliged to him.
Sir Wilful
In vino veritas, aunt.—If I drunk your health today, 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—Sings.
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.
Mrs. Millamant
Your pardon, madam, I can stay no longer—Sir Wilfull grows very powerful. Eh! how he smells! I shall be overcome if I stay.—Come, cousin.
Exeunt Mrs. Millamant and Mrs. Fainall.
Lady Wishfort
Smells! He would poison a tallow-chandler and his family! Beastly creature, I know not what to do with him.—Travel, quotha; aye, 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 Wilful
Turks, no; no Turks, aunt: your Turks are infidels, and believe not in the grape. Your Muhammadan, 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 Hiccups. Greek for claret.—Sings.
To drink is a Christian diversion,
Unknown to the Turk or the Persian.
Let Muhammadan fools
Live by heathenish rules,
And be damned over teacups and coffee.
But let British lads sing,
Crown a health to the King,
And a fig for your Sultan and Sophy.
Ah, Tony!
Enter Foible, who whispers to Lady Wishfort.
Lady Wishfort
Aside to Foible.—Sir Rowland impatient? Good lack! what shall I do with this beastly tumbril?—Aloud. Go lie down and sleep, you sot!—or as I’m a person, I’ll have you bastinadoed with broomsticks.—Call up the wenches.
Sir Wilful
Ahey! Wenches, where are the wenches?
Lady Wishfort
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.
Witwoud
Come, knight.—Pox on him, I don’t know what to say to him.—Will you go to a cock-match?
Sir Wilful
With a wench, Tony? Is she a shakebag, sirrah? Let me bite your cheek for that.
Witwoud
Horrible! He has a breath like a bagpipe!—Aye, aye; come, will you march, my Salopian?
Sir Wilful
Lead on, little Tony—I’ll follow thee, my Anthony, my Tantony. Sirrah, thou shalt be my Tantony, and I’ll be thy pig. Sings.
And a fig for your Sultan and Sophy.
Exeunt Sir Wilfull and Witwoud.
Lady Wishfort
This will never do. It will never make a match—at least before he has been abroad.
Enter Waitwell disguised as Sir Rowland.
Lady Wishfort
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.
Waitwell
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 Wishfort
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—
Waitwell
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 Wishfort
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.
Waitwell
Perfidious to you!
Lady Wishfort
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.
Waitwell
What, my rival? Is the rebel my rival?—a’dies.
Lady Wishfort
No, don’t kill him at once, Sir Rowland, starve him gradually, inch by inch.
Waitwell
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 Wishfort
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—
Waitwell
Far be it from me—
Lady Wishfort
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—
Waitwell
I esteem it so.
Lady Wishfort
Or else you wrong my condescension.
Waitwell
I do not, I do not!
Lady Wishfort
Indeed you do.
Waitwell
I do not, fair shrine of virtue!
Lady Wishfort
If you think the least scruple of causality was an ingredient—
Waitwell
Dear madam, no. You are all camphire and frankincense, all chastity and odour.
Lady Wishfort
Or that—
Enter Foible.
Foible
Madam, the dancers are ready, and there’s one with a letter, who must deliver it into your own hands.
Lady Wishfort
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.
Exit.
Waitwell
Fie, fie! What a slavery have I undergone! Spouse, hast thou any cordial? I want spirits.
Foible
What a washy rogue art thou, to pant thus for a quarter of an hour’s lying and swearing to a fine lady!
Waitwell
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 tomorrow.
Reenter Lady Wishfort, with a letter.
Lady Wishfort
Call in the dancers.—Sir Rowland, we’ll sit, if you please, and see the entertainment. A 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.
Foible
Aside to Waitwell. By Heaven! Mrs. Marwood’s, I know it.—My heart aches—get it from her!
Waitwell
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 Wishfort
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?
Foible
Aside. Unfortunate! All’s ruined!
Waitwell
How, how, let me see, let me see!—Reads. “A rascal, and disguised and suborned for that imposture”—O villainy! O villainy!—“by the contrivance of—”
Lady Wishfort
I shall faint, I shall die. Oh!
Foible
Aside to Waitwell. Say ’tis your nephew’s hand. Quickly, his plot, swear, swear it!
Waitwell
Here’s a villain! Madam, don’t you perceive it? Don’t you see it?
Lady Wishfort
Too well, too well. I have seen too much.
Waitwell
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!
Foible
O treachery!—But are you sure, Sir Rowland, it is his writing?
Waitwell
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 Wishfort
How!
Foible
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 Wishfort
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.
Foible
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.
Waitwell
Enough, his date is short.
Foible
No, good Sir Rowland, don’t incur the law.
Waitwell
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 Wishfort
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.
Waitwell
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 Wishfort
Aye, dear Sir Rowland, that will be some comfort; bring the black box.
Waitwell
And may I presume to bring a contract to be signed this night? May I hope so far?
Lady Wishfort
Bring what you will; but come alive, pray come alive. Oh, this is a happy discovery!
Waitwell
Dead or alive I’ll come—and married we will be in spite of treachery; aye, and get an heir that shall defeat the last remaining glimpse of hope in my abandoned nephew. Come, my buxom widow:
Ere long you shall substantial proof receive,
That I’m an arrant knight—
Foible
Aside. Or arrant knave.
Exeunt.