Complete Works of William Congreve

by William Congreve

  FAIN. Now I remember, I wonder not they were weary of you; last night was one of their cabal-nights: they have ’em three times a week and meet by turns at one another’s apartments, where they come together like the coroner’s inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week. You and I are excluded, and it was once proposed that all the male sex should be excepted; but somebody moved that to avoid scandal there might be one man of the community, upon which motion Witwoud and Petulant were enrolled members.

  MIRA. And who may have been the foundress of this sect? My Lady Wishfort, I warrant, who publishes her detestation of mankind, and full of the vigour of fifty-five, declares for a friend and ratafia; and let posterity shift for itself, she’ll breed no more.

  FAIN. The discovery of your sham addresses to her, to conceal your love to her niece, has provoked this separation. Had you dissembled better, things might have continued in the state of nature.

  MIRA. I did as much as man could, with any reasonable conscience; I proceeded to the very last act of flattery with her, and was guilty of a song in her commendation. Nay, I got a friend to put her into a lampoon, and compliment her with the imputation of an affair with a young fellow, which I carried so far, that I told her the malicious town took notice that she was grown fat of a sudden; and when she lay in of a dropsy, persuaded her she was reported to be in labour. The devil’s in’t, if an old woman is to be flattered further, unless a man should endeavour downright personally to debauch her: and that my virtue forbade me. But for the discovery of this amour, I am indebted to your friend, or your wife’s friend, Mrs. Marwood.

  FAIN. What should provoke her to be your enemy, unless she has made you advances which you have slighted? Women do not easily forgive omissions of that nature.

  MIRA. She was always civil to me, till of late. I confess I am not one of those coxcombs who are apt to interpret a woman’s good manners to her prejudice, and think that she who does not refuse ’em everything can refuse ’em nothing.

  FAIN. You are a gallant man, Mirabell; and though you may have cruelty enough not to satisfy a lady’s longing, you have too much generosity not to be tender of her honour. Yet you speak with an indifference which seems to be affected, and confesses you are conscious of a negligence.

  MIRA. You pursue the argument with a distrust that seems to be unaffected, and confesses you are conscious of a concern for which the lady is more indebted to you than is your wife.

  FAIN. Fie, fie, friend, if you grow censorious I must leave you: — I’ll look upon the gamesters in the next room.

  MIRA. Who are they?

  FAIN. Petulant and Witwoud. — Bring me some chocolate.

  MIRA. Betty, what says your clock?

  BET. Turned of the last canonical hour, sir.

  MIRA. How pertinently the jade answers me! Ha! almost one a’ clock! [Looking on his watch.] Oh, y’are come!

  SCENE II.

  Mirabell and Footman.

  MIRA. Well, is the grand affair over? You have been something tedious.

  SERV. Sir, there’s such coupling at Pancras that they stand behind one another, as ‘twere in a country-dance. Ours was the last couple to lead up; and no hopes appearing of dispatch, besides, the parson growing hoarse, we were afraid his lungs would have failed before it came to our turn; so we drove round to Duke’s Place, and there they were riveted in a trice.

  MIRA. So, so; you are sure they are married?

  SERV. Married and bedded, sir; I am witness.

  MIRA. Have you the certificate?

  SERV. Here it is, sir.

  MIRA. Has the tailor brought Waitwell’s clothes home, and the new liveries?

  SERV. Yes, sir.

  MIRA. That’s well. Do you go home again, d’ye hear, and adjourn the consummation till farther order; bid Waitwell shake his ears, and Dame Partlet rustle up her feathers, and meet me at one a’ clock by Rosamond’s pond, that I may see her before she returns to her lady. And, as you tender your ears, be secret.

  SCENE III.

  Mirabell, Fainall, Betty.

  FAIN. Joy of your success, Mirabell; you look pleased.

  MIRA. Ay; I have been engaged in a matter of some sort of mirth, which is not yet ripe for discovery. I am glad this is not a cabal-night. I wonder, Fainall, that you who are married, and of consequence should be discreet, will suffer your wife to be of such a party.

  FAIN. Faith, I am not jealous. Besides, most who are engaged are women and relations; and for the men, they are of a kind too contemptible to give scandal.

  MIRA. I am of another opinion: the greater the coxcomb, always the more the scandal; for a woman who is not a fool can have but one reason for associating with a man who is one.

  FAIN. Are you jealous as often as you see Witwoud entertained by Millamant?

  MIRA. Of her understanding I am, if not of her person.

  FAIN. You do her wrong; for, to give her her due, she has wit.

  MIRA. She has beauty enough to make any man think so, and complaisance enough not to contradict him who shall tell her so.

  FAIN. For a passionate lover methinks you are a man somewhat too discerning in the failings of your mistress.

  MIRA. And for a discerning man somewhat too passionate a lover, for I like her with all her faults; nay, like her for her faults. Her follies are so natural, or so artful, that they become her, and those affectations which in another woman would be odious serve but to make her more agreeable. I’ll tell thee, Fainall, she once used me with that insolence that in revenge I took her to pieces, sifted her, and separated her failings: I studied ’em and got ’em by rote. The catalogue was so large that I was not without hopes, one day or other, to hate her heartily. To which end I so used myself to think of ’em, that at length, contrary to my design and expectation, they gave me every hour less and less disturbance, till in a few days it became habitual to me to remember ’em without being displeased. They are now grown as familiar to me as my own frailties, and in all probability in a little time longer I shall like ’em as well.

  FAIN. Marry her, marry her; be half as well acquainted with her charms as you are with her defects, and, my life on’t, you are your own man again.

  MIRA. Say you so?

  FAIN. Ay, ay; I have experience. I have a wife, and so forth.

  SCENE IV.

  [To them] Messenger.

  MESS. Is one Squire Witwoud here?

  BET. Yes; what’s your business?

  MESS. I have a letter for him, from his brother Sir Wilfull, which I am charged to deliver into his own hands.

  BET. He’s in the next room, friend. That way.

  SCENE V.

  Mirabell, Fainall, Betty.

  MIRA. What, is the chief of that noble family in town, Sir Wilfull Witwoud?

  FAIN. He is expected to-day. Do you know him?

  MIRA. I have seen him; he promises to be an extraordinary person. I think you have the honour to be related to him.

  FAIN. Yes; he is half-brother to this Witwoud by a former wife, who was sister to my Lady Wishfort, my wife’s mother. If you marry Millamant, you must call cousins too.

  MIRA. I had rather be his relation than his acquaintance.

  FAIN. He comes to town in order to equip himself for travel.

  MIRA. For travel! Why the man that I mean is above forty.

  FAIN. No matter for that; ’tis for the honour of England that all Europe should know we have blockheads of all ages.

  MIRA. I wonder there is not an act of parliament to save the credit of the nation and prohibit the exportation of fools.

  FAIN. By no means, ’tis better as ’tis; ’tis better to trade with a little loss, than to be quite eaten up with being overstocked.

  MIRA. Pray, are the follies of this knight-errant and those of the squire, his brother, anything related?

  FAIN. Not at all: Witwoud grows by the knight like a medlar grafted on a crab. One will melt in your mouth and t’other set your teeth on edge; one is all pulp and the other all core.
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  MIRA. So one will be rotten before he be ripe, and the other will be rotten without ever being ripe at all.

  FAIN. Sir Wilfull is an odd mixture of bashfulness and obstinacy. But when he’s drunk, he’s as loving as the monster in The Tempest, and much after the same manner. To give bother his due, he has something of good-nature, and does not always want wit.

  MIRA. Not always: but as often as his memory fails him and his commonplace of comparisons. He is a fool with a good memory and some few scraps of other folks’ wit. He is one whose conversation can never be approved, yet it is now and then to be endured. He has indeed one good quality: he is not exceptious, for he so passionately affects the reputation of understanding raillery that he will construe an affront into a jest, and call downright rudeness and ill language satire and fire.

  FAIN. If you have a mind to finish his picture, you have an opportunity to do it at full length. Behold the original.

  SCENE VI.

  [To them] Witwoud.

  WIT. Afford me your compassion, my dears; pity me, Fainall, Mirabell, pity me.

  MIRA. I do from my soul.

  FAIN. Why, what’s the matter?

  WIT. No letters for me, Betty?

  BET. Did not a messenger bring you one but now, sir?

  WIT. Ay; but no other?

  BET. No, sir.

  WIT. That’s hard, that’s very hard. A messenger, a mule, a beast of burden, he has brought me a letter from the fool my brother, as heavy as a panegyric in a funeral sermon, or a copy of commendatory verses from one poet to another. And what’s worse, ’tis as sure a forerunner of the author as an epistle dedicatory.

  MIRA. A fool, and your brother, Witwoud?

  WIT. Ay, ay, my half-brother. My half-brother he is, no nearer, upon honour.

  MIRA. Then ’tis possible he may be but half a fool.

  WIT. Good, good, Mirabell, le drôle! Good, good, hang him, don’t let’s talk of him. — Fainall, how does your lady? Gad, I say anything in the world to get this fellow out of my head. I beg pardon that I should ask a man of pleasure and the town a question at once so foreign and domestic. But I talk like an old maid at a marriage, I don’t know what I say: but she’s the best woman in the world.

  FAIN. ’Tis well you don’t know what you say, or else your commendation would go near to make me either vain or jealous.

  WIT. No man in town lives well with a wife but Fainall. Your judgment, Mirabell?

  MIRA. You had better step and ask his wife, if you would be credibly informed.

  WIT. Mirabell!

  MIRA. Ay.

  WIT. My dear, I ask ten thousand pardons. Gad, I have forgot what I was going to say to you.

  MIRA. I thank you heartily, heartily.

  WIT. No, but prithee excuse me: — my memory is such a memory.

  MIRA. Have a care of such apologies, Witwoud; for I never knew a fool but he affected to complain either of the spleen or his memory.

  FAIN. What have you done with Petulant?

  WIT. He’s reckoning his money; my money it was: I have no luck to-day.

  FAIN. You may allow him to win of you at play, for you are sure to be too hard for him at repartee: since you monopolise the wit that is between you, the fortune must be his of course.

  MIRA. I don’t find that Petulant confesses the superiority of wit to be your talent, Witwoud.

  WIT. Come, come, you are malicious now, and would breed debates. Petulant’s my friend, and a very honest fellow, and a very pretty fellow, and has a smattering — faith and troth, a pretty deal of an odd sort of a small wit: nay, I’ll do him justice. I’m his friend, I won’t wrong him. And if he had any judgment in the world, he would not be altogether contemptible. Come, come, don’t detract from the merits of my friend.

  FAIN. You don’t take your friend to be over-nicely bred?

  WIT. No, no, hang him, the rogue has no manners at all, that I must own; no more breeding than a bum-baily, that I grant you:— ’tis pity; the fellow has fire and life.

  MIRA. What, courage?

  WIT. Hum, faith, I don’t know as to that, I can’t say as to that. Yes, faith, in a controversy he’ll contradict anybody.

  MIRA. Though ‘twere a man whom he feared or a woman whom he loved.

  WIT. Well, well, he does not always think before he speaks. We have all our failings; you are too hard upon him, you are, faith. Let me excuse him, — I can defend most of his faults, except one or two; one he has, that’s the truth on’t, — if he were my brother I could not acquit him — that indeed I could wish were otherwise.

  MIRA. Ay, marry, what’s that, Witwoud?

  WIT. Oh, pardon me. Expose the infirmities of my friend? No, my dear, excuse me there.

  FAIN. What, I warrant he’s unsincere, or ’tis some such trifle.

  WIT. No, no; what if he be? ’Tis no matter for that, his wit will excuse that. A wit should no more be sincere than a woman constant: one argues a decay of parts, as t’other of beauty.

  MIRA. Maybe you think him too positive?

  WIT. No, no; his being positive is an incentive to argument, and keeps up conversation.

  FAIN. Too illiterate?

  WIT. That? That’s his happiness. His want of learning gives him the more opportunities to show his natural parts.

  MIRA. He wants words?

  WIT. Ay; but I like him for that now: for his want of words gives me the pleasure very often to explain his meaning.

  FAIN. He’s impudent?

  WIT. No that’s not it.

  MIRA. Vain?

  WIT. No.

  MIRA. What, he speaks unseasonable truths sometimes, because he has not wit enough to invent an evasion?

  WIT. Truths? Ha, ha, ha! No, no, since you will have it, I mean he never speaks truth at all, that’s all. He will lie like a chambermaid, or a woman of quality’s porter. Now that is a fault.

  SCENE VII.

  [To them] Coachman.

  COACH. Is Master Petulant here, mistress?

  BET. Yes.

  COACH. Three gentlewomen in a coach would speak with him.

  FAIN. O brave Petulant! Three!

  BET. I’ll tell him.

  COACH. You must bring two dishes of chocolate and a glass of cinnamon water.

  SCENE VIII.

  Mirabell, Fainall, Witwoud.

  WIT. That should be for two fasting strumpets, and a bawd troubled with wind. Now you may know what the three are.

  MIRA. You are very free with your friend’s acquaintance.

  WIT. Ay, ay; friendship without freedom is as dull as love without enjoyment or wine without toasting: but to tell you a secret, these are trulls whom he allows coach-hire, and something more by the week, to call on him once a day at public places.

  MIRA. How!

  WIT. You shall see he won’t go to ’em because there’s no more company here to take notice of him. Why, this is nothing to what he used to do: — before he found out this way, I have known him call for himself —

  FAIN. Call for himself? What dost thou mean?

  WIT. Mean? Why he would slip you out of this chocolate-house, just when you had been talking to him. As soon as your back was turned — whip he was gone; then trip to his lodging, clap on a hood and scarf and a mask, slap into a hackney-coach, and drive hither to the door again in a trice; where he would send in for himself; that I mean, call for himself, wait for himself, nay, and what’s more, not finding himself, sometimes leave a letter for himself.

  MIRA. I confess this is something extraordinary. I believe he waits for himself now, he is so long a coming; oh, I ask his pardon.

  SCENE IX.

  Petulant, Mirabell, Fainall, Witwoud, Betty.

  BET. Sir, the coach stays.

  PET. Well, well, I come. ‘Sbud, a man had as good be a professed midwife as a professed whoremaster, at this rate; to be knocked up and raised at all hours, and in all places. Pox on ’em, I won’t come. D’ye hear, tell ’em I won’t come. Let ’em snivel and cry their hearts out.


  FAIN. You are very cruel, Petulant.

  PET. All’s one, let it pass. I have a humour to be cruel.

  MIRA. I hope they are not persons of condition that you use at this rate.

  PET. Condition? Condition’s a dried fig, if I am not in humour. By this hand, if they were your — a — a — your what-d’ee-call-’ems themselves, they must wait or rub off, if I want appetite.