|
Act. I
Aimwell: And as much avoided for no crime upon earth but the want of money.
Archer: And that’s enough. Men must not be poor; idleness is the root of all evil; the world’s wide enough, let ’em bustle. Fortune has taken the weak under her protection, but men of sense are left to their industry.
[...]
Archer: Come, come, we are the men of intrinsic value who can strike our fortunes out of ourselves, whose worth is independent of accidents in life, or revolutions in government: we have heads to get money and hearts to spend it.
[...]
Aimwell: It has often grieved the heart of me to see how some inhuman wretches murder their kind fortunes; those that, by sacrificing all to one appetite, shall starve all the rest. You shall have some that live only in their palates, and in their sense of tasting shall drown the other four: others are only epicures in appearances, such who shall starve their nights to make a figure a days, and famish their own to feed the eyes of others: a contrary sort confine their pleasures to the dark, and contract their specious acres to the circuit of a muff-string.
[...]
Act. II
Mrs. Sullen: Well, sister, since the truth must out, it may do as well now as hereafter; I think, one way to rouse my lethargic, sottish husband, is to give him a rival: security begets negligence in all people, and men must be alarmed to make ’em alert in their duty. Women are like pictures, of no value in the hands of a fool, till he hears men of sense bid high for the purchase.
[...]
Act III
Archer: Madam, like all other fashions it wears out, and so descends to their servants; though in a great many of us, I believe, it proceeds from some melancholy particles in the blood, occasioned by the stagnation of wages.
[...]
Dorinda: But how can you shake off the yoke? your divisions don’t come within the reach of the law for a divorce.
Mrs. Sullen: Law! what law can search into the remote abyss of nature? What evidence can prove the unaccountable disaffections of wedlock? Can a jury sum up the endless aversions that are rooted in our souls, or can a bench give judgment upon antipathies?
Dorinda: They never pretended, sister; they never meddle, but in case of uncleanness.
Mrs. Sullen: Uncleanness! O sister! casual violation is a transient injury, and may possibly be repaired, but can radical hatreds be ever reconciled? No, no, sister, nature is the first lawgiver, and when she has set tempers opposite, not all the golden links of wedlock nor iron manacles of law can keep ’em fast.
Wedlock we own ordain’d by Heaven’s decree,
But such as Heaven ordain’d it first to be; ...
Concurring tempers in the man and wife
As mutual helps to draw the load of life.
View all the works of Providence above,
The stars with harmony and concord move;
View all the works of Providence below,
The fire, the water, earth and air, we know,
All in one plant agree to make it grow.
Must man, the chiefest work of art divine,
Be doom’d in endless discord to repine?
No, we should injure Heaven by that surmise,
Omnipotence is just, were man but wise. |
Act IV
Mrs. Sullen: Happy, happy sister! your angel has been watchful for your happiness, whilst mine has slept regardless of his charge. Long smiling years of circling joys for you, but not one hour for me! [Weeps.]
Dorinda: Come, my dear, we’ll talk of something else.
Mrs. Sullen: O Dorinda! I own myself a woman, full of my sex, a gentle, generous soul, easy and yielding to soft desires; a spacious heart, where love and all his train might lodge. And must the fair apartment of my breast be made a stable for a brute to lie in?
[...]
Gibbet: Look ’ee, my dear Bonny - Cherry is the Goddess I adore, as the song goes; but it is a maxim, that man and wife should never have it in their power to hang one another; for if they should, the Lord have mercy on ’em both! [Exeunt.]
[...]
Mrs. Sullen: What, sir! do you intend to be rude?
Archer: Yes, madam, if you please.
[...]
Sir Charles: You and your wife, Mr. Guts, may be one flesh, because ye are nothing else; but rational creatures have minds that must be united.
[...]
Archer: And if you go to that, how can you, after what is passed, have the confidence to deny me? Was not this blood shed in your defence, and my life exposed for your protection? Look ’ee, madam, I’m none of your romantic fools, that fight giants and monsters for nothing; my valour is downright Swiss; I’m a soldier of fortune, and must be paid.
[...]
Mrs. Sullen: Pray, spouse, what did you marry for?
Squire Sullen: To get an heir to my estate.
Sir Charles: And have you succeeded?
Squire Sullen: No.
Archer: The condition fails of his side. - Pray, madam, what did you marry for?
Mrs. Sullen: To support the weakness of my sex by the strength of his, and to enjoy the pleasures of an agreeable society.
Sir Charles: Are your expectations answered?
Mrs. Sullen: No.
Count Belair: A clear case! a clear case!
Sir Charles: What are the bars to your mutual contentment?
Mrs. Sullen: In the first place, I can’t drink ale with him.
Squire Sullen: Nor can I drink tea with her.
Mrs. Sullen: I can’t hunt with you.
Squire Sullen: Nor can I dance with you.
Mrs. Sullen: I hate cocking and racing.
Squire Sullen: And I abhor ombre and piquet.
Mrs. Sullen: Your silence is intolerable.
Squire Sullen: Your prating is worse.
Mrs. Sullen: Have we not been a perpetual offence to each other? a gnawing vulture at the heart?
Squire Sullen: A frightful goblin to the sight?
Mrs. Sullen: A porcupine to the feeling?
Squire Sullen: Perpetual wormwood to the taste?
Mrs. Sullen: Is there on earth a thing we could agree in?
Squire Sullen: Yes - to part.
Mrs. Sullen: With all my heart.
Squire Sullen: Your hand.
Mrs. Sullen: Here.
Squire Sullen: These hands joined us, these shall part us. - Away!
[...] Epilogue
[Designed to be spoken in ‘The Beaux-Stratagem’] |
If to our play your judgment can’t be kind,
Let its expiring author pity find:
Survey his mournful case with melting eyes,
Nor let the bard be damn’d before he dies.
Forbear, you fair, on his last scene to frown,
But his true exit with a plaudit crown;
Then shall the dying poet cease to fear
The dreadful knell, while your applause he hear.
At Leuctra so the conquering Theban died,
Claim’d his friends’ praises, but their tears denied:
Pleased in the pangs of death he greatly thought
Conquest with loss of life but cheaply bought.
The difference this, the Greek was one would fight
As brave, though not so gay, as Serjeant Kite;
Ye sons of Will’s, what’s that to those who write?
To Thebes alone the Grecian owed his bays,
You may the bard above the hero raise,
Since yours is greater than Athenian praise. |
|