The Way of the World

Act V

Scene I

A room in Lady Wishfort’s house.

	Lady Wishfort and Foible.
Lady Wishfort	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 birdcage.⁠—Go, go! starve again, do, do!
Foible	Dear madam, I’ll beg pardon on my knees.
Lady Wishfort	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 ballad-monger.89 Go, hang out an old Frisoneer gorget,90 with a yard of yellow colberteen again, do; an old gnawed mask, two rows of pins, and a child’s fiddle; a glass necklace with the beads broken, and a quilted nightcap with one ear. Go, go, drive a trade!⁠—These were your commodities, you treacherous trull! this was the merchandise you dealt in, when I took you into my house, placed you next myself, and made you governant of my whole family! You have forgot this, have you, now you have feathered your nest?
Foible	No, no, dear madam. Do but hear me, have but a moment’s patience, I’ll confess all. Mr. Mirabell seduced me; I am not the first that he has wheedled with his dissembling tongue. Your ladyship’s own wisdom has been deluded by him; then how should I, a poor ignorant, defend myself? O madam, if you knew but what he promised me, and how he assured me your ladyship should come to no damage, or else the wealth of the Indies should not have bribed me to conspire against so good, so sweet, so kind a lady as you have been to me.
Lady Wishfort	No damage! What, to betray me, to marry me to a cast servingman;91 to make me a receptacle, an hospital for a decayed pimp! No damage! O thou frontless impudence, more than a big-bellied actress!
Foible	Pray do but hear me, madam; he could not marry your ladyship, madam.⁠—No indeed, his marriage was to have been void in law; for he was married to me first, to secure your ladyship. He could not have bedded your ladyship, for if he had consummated with your ladyship, he must have run the risk of the law, and been put upon his clergy.92⁠—Yes indeed, I enquired of the law in that case before I would meddle or make.93
Lady Wishfort	What, then I have been your property, have I? I have been convenient to you, it seems!⁠—While you were catering for Mirabell; I have been broker for you? What, have you made a passive bawd of me?⁠—This exceeds all precedent. I am brought to fine uses, to become a botcher of secondhand marriages between Abigails and Andrews!94⁠—I’ll couple you!⁠—Yes, I’ll baste you together, you and your Philander.95 I’ll Duke’s-place you,96 as I’m a person. Your turtle is in custody already: you shall coo in the same cage, if there be constable or warrant in the parish.
	Exit.
Foible	Oh, that ever I was born! Oh, that I was ever married!⁠—A bride!⁠—aye, I shall be a Bridewell-bride.97⁠—Oh!
	Enter Mrs. Fainall.
Mrs. Fainall	Poor Foible, what’s the matter?
Foible	O madam, my lady’s gone for a constable. I shall be had to a justice, and put to Bridewell to beat hemp. Poor Waitwell’s gone to prison already.
Mrs. Fainall	Have a good heart, Foible; Mirabell’s gone to give security for him. This is all Marwood’s and my husband’s doing.
Foible	Yes, yes; I know it, madam: she was in my lady’s closet, and overheard all that you said to me before dinner. She sent the letter to my lady, and that missing effect, Mr. Fainall laid this plot to arrest Waitwell, when he pretended to go for the papers; and in the meantime Mrs. Marwood declared all to my lady.
Mrs. Fainall	Was there no mention made of me in the letter? My mother does not suspect my being in the confederacy? I fancy Marwood has not told her, though she has told my husband.
Foible	Yes, madam; but my lady did not see that part. We stifled the letter before she read so far.⁠—Has that mischievous devil told Mr. Fainall of your ladyship then?
Mrs. Fainall	Aye, all’s out⁠—my affair with Mirabell⁠—everything discovered. This is the last day of our living together, that’s my comfort.
Foible	Indeed, madam, and so ’tis a comfort, if you knew all⁠—he has been even with your ladyship; which I could have told you long enough since, but I love to keep peace and quietness by my good will. I had rather bring friends together than set ’em at distance. But Mrs. Marwood and he are nearer related than ever their parents thought for.
Mrs. Fainall	Say’st thou so, Foible? Canst thou prove this?
Foible	I can take my oath of it, madam; so can Mrs. Mincing. We have had many a fair word from Madam Marwood to conceal something that passed in our chamber one evening when you were at Hyde Park, and we were thought to have gone a-walking. But we went up unawares; though we were sworn to secrecy too. Madam Marwood took a book and swore us upon it, but it was but a book of poems. So long as it was not a bible oath, we may break it with a safe conscience.
Mrs. Fainall	This discovery is the most opportune thing I could wish.https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/thornton-w-burgess/green-forest-storiesNow, Mincing!
	Enter Mincing.
Mincing	My lady would speak with Mrs. Foible, mem. Mr. Mirabell is with her; he has set your spouse at liberty, Mrs. Foible, and would have you hide yourself in my lady’s closet till my old lady’s anger is abated. Oh, my old lady is in a perilous passion at something Mr. Fainall has said; he swears, and my old lady cries. There’s a fearful hurricane, I vow. He says, mem, how that he’ll have my lady’s fortune made over to him, or he’ll be divorced.
Mrs. Fainall	Does your lady or Mirabell know that?
Mincing	Yes mem; they have sent me to see if Sir Wilfull be sober, and to bring him to them. My lady is resolved to have him, I think, rather than lose such a vast sum as six thousand pound.⁠—Oh, come, Mrs. Foible, I hear my old lady.
Mrs. Fainall	Foible, you must tell Mincing that she must prepare to vouch when I call her.
Foible	Yes, yes, madam.
Mincing	Oh, yes mem, I’ll vouch anything for your ladyship’s service, be what it will.
	Exeunt.

Scene II

Another room in Lady Wishfort’s house.

	Mrs. Fainall, Lady Wishfort, and Mrs. Marwood.
Lady Wishfort	O my dear friend, how can I enumerate the benefits that I have received from your goodness! To you I owe the timely discovery of the false vows of Mirabell; to you I owe the detection of the impostor Sir Rowland. And now you are become an intercessor with my son-in-law, to save the honour of my house and compound for the frailties of my daughter. Well, friend, you are enough to reconcile me to the bad world, or else I would retire to deserts and solitudes, and feed harmless sheep by groves and purling streams. Dear Marwood, let us leave the world, and retire by ourselves and be shepherdesses.
Mrs. Marwood	Let us first dispatch the affair in hand, madam. We shall have leisure to think of retirement afterwards. Here is one who is concerned in the treaty.
Lady Wishfort	O daughter, daughter! is it possible thou shouldst be my child, bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh, and as I may say, another me, and yet transgress the most minute particle of severe virtue? Is it possible you should lean aside to iniquity, who have been cast in the direct mould of virtue? I have not only been a mould but a pattern for you, and a model for you, after you were brought into the world.
Mrs. Fainall	I don’t understand your ladyship.
Lady Wishfort	Not understand! Why, have you not been naught? Have you not been sophisticated? Not understand! Here I am ruined to compound for your caprices and your cuckoldoms. I must pawn my plate and my jewels, and ruin my niece, and all little enough⁠—
Mrs. Fainall	I am wronged and abused, and so are you. ’Tis a false accusation, as false as hell, as false as your friend there; aye, or your friend’s friend, my false husband.
Mrs. Marwood	My friend, Mrs. Fainall! Your husband my friend! what do you mean?
Mrs. Fainall	I know what I mean, madam, and so do you; and so shall the world at a time convenient.
Mrs. Marwood	I am sorry to see you so passionate, madam. More temper would look more like innocence. But I have done. I am sorry my zeal to serve your ladyship and family should admit of misconstruction, or make me liable to affronts. You will pardon me, madam, if I meddle no more with an affair in which I am not personally concerned.
Lady Wishfort	O dear friend, I am so ashamed that you should meet with such returns!⁠—To Mrs. Fainall. You ought to ask pardon on your knees, ungrateful creature! she deserves more from you than all your life can accomplish.⁠—To Mrs. Marwood. Oh, don’t leave me destitute in this perplexity!⁠—no, stick to me, my good genius.
Mrs. Fainall	I tell you, madam, you’re abused.⁠—Stick to you? Aye, like a leech, to suck your best blood⁠—she’ll drop off when she’s full. Madam, you shan’t pawn a bodkin, nor part with a brass counter,98 in composition for me. I defy ’em all. Let ’em prove their aspersions: I know my own innocence, and dare stand a trial.
	Exit.
Lady Wishfort	Why, if she should be innocent, if she should be wronged after all, ha?⁠—I don’t know what to think⁠—and I promise you, her education has been unexceptionable⁠—I may say it, for I chiefly made it my own care to initiate her very infancy in the rudiments of virtue, and to impress upon her tender years a young odium and aversion to the very sight of men; aye, friend, she would ha’ shrieked if she had but seen a man till she was in her teens. As I’m a person, ’tis true⁠—she was never suffered to play with a male child, though but in coats. Nay, her very babies were of the feminine gender. Oh, she never looked a man in the face but her own father or the chaplain, and him we made a shift to put upon her for a woman, by the help of his long garments, and his sleek face, till she was going in her fifteen.
Mrs. Marwood	’Twas much she should be deceived so long.
Lady Wishfort	I warrant you, or she would never have borne to have been catechised by him, and have heard his long lectures against singing and dancing and such debaucheries, and going to filthy plays, and profane music meetings, where the lewd trebles squeak nothing but bawdy, and the basses roar blasphemy. Oh, she would have swooned at the sight or name of an obscene playbook!⁠—and can I think after all this that my daughter can be naught? What, a whore? And thought it excommunication to set her foot within the door of a playhouse. O dear friend, I can’t believe it. No, no; as she says, let him prove it, let him prove it.
Mrs. Marwood	Prove it, madam! What, and have your name prostituted in a public court! Yours and your daughter’s reputation worried at the bar by a pack of bawling lawyers! To be ushered in with an Oh yes of scandal; and have your case opened by an old fumbling leacher in a quoif like a man-midwife;99 to bring your daughter’s infamy to light; to be a theme for legal punsters and quibblers by the statute; and become a jest, against a rule of court, where there is no precedent for a jest in any record, not even in Doomsday Book.100 To discompose the gravity of the bench, and provoke naughty interrogatories in more naughty law Latin; while the good judge, tickled with the proceeding, simpers under a grey beard, and fidges off and on his cushion as if he had swallowed cantharides,101 or sat upon cowage!⁠—
Lady Wishfort	Oh, ’tis very hard!
Mrs. Marwood	And then to have my young revellers of the Temple102 take notes, like prentices at a conventicle; and after talk it over again in commons, or before drawers in an eating-house.
Lady Wishfort	Worse and worse!
Mrs. Marwood	Nay, this is nothing; if it would end here ’twere well. But it must after this be consigned by the shorthand writers to the public press; and from thence be transferred to the hands, nay, into the throats and lungs, of hawkers, with voices more licentious than the loud flounder-man’s. And this you must hear till you are stunned; nay, you must hear nothing else for some days.
Lady Wishfort	Oh ’tis insupportable. No, no, dear friend, make it up, make it up; aye, aye, I’ll compound. I’ll give up all, myself and my all, my niece and her all⁠—anything, everything, for composition.
Mrs. Marwood	Nay, madam, I advise nothing, I only lay before you, as a friend, the inconveniences which perhaps you have overseen. Here comes Mr. Fainall; if he will be satisfied to huddle up all in silence, I shall be glad. You must think I would rather congratulate than condole with you.
	Enter Fainall.
Lady Wishfort	Aye, aye, I do not doubt it, dear Marwood. No, no, I do not doubt it.
Fainall	Well, madam, I have suffered myself to be overcome by the importunity of this lady, your friend; and am content you shall enjoy your own proper estate during life, on condition you oblige yourself never to marry, under such penalty as I think convenient.
Lady Wishfort	Never to marry!
Fainall	No more Sir Rowlands; the next imposture may not be so timely detected.
Mrs. Marwood	That condition, I dare answer, my lady will consent to, without difficulty; she has already but too much experienced the perfidiousness of men.⁠—Besides, madam, when we retire to our pastoral solitude, we shall bid adieu to all other thoughts.
Lady Wishfort	Aye, that’s true; but in case of necessity, as of health, or some such emergency⁠—
Fainall	Oh, if you are prescribed marriage, you shall be considered; I will only reserve to myself the power to choose for you. If your physic be wholesome, it matters not who is your apothecary. Next, my wife shall settle on me the remainder of her fortune, not made over already; and for her maintenance depend entirely on my discretion.
Lady Wishfort	This is most inhumanly savage: exceeding the barbarity of a Muscovite husband.103
Fainall	I learned it from his Czarish majesty’s retinue,104 in a winter evening’s conference over brandy and pepper, amongst other secrets of matrimony and policy, as they are at present practised in the northern hemisphere. But this must be agreed unto, and that positively. Lastly, I will be endowed, in right of my wife, with that six thousand pound, which is the moiety of Mrs. Millamant’s fortune in your possession, and which she has forfeited (as will appear by the last will and testament of your deceased husband, Sir Jonathan Wishfort) by her disobedience in contracting herself against your consent or knowledge, and by refusing the offered match with Sir Wilfull Witwoud, which you, like a careful aunt, had provided for her.
Lady Wishfort	My nephew was non compos, and could not make his addresses.
Fainall	I come to make demands⁠—I’ll hear no objections.
Lady Wishfort	You will grant me time to consider?
Fainall	Yes, while the instrument is drawing,105 to which you must set your hand till more sufficient deeds can be perfected: which I will take care shall be done with all possible speed. In the meanwhile I will go for the said instrument, and till my return you may balance this matter in your own discretion.
	Exit.
Lady Wishfort	This insolence is beyond all precedent, all parallel. Must I be subject to this merciless villain?
Mrs. Marwood	’Tis severe indeed, madam, that you should smart for your daughter’s wantonness.
Lady Wishfort	’Twas against my consent that she married this barbarian, but she would have him, though her year was not out.⁠—Ah! her first husband, my son Languish, would not have carried it thus. Well, that was my choice, this is hers; she is matched now with a witness⁠—I shall be mad!⁠—Dear friend; is there no comfort for me? Must I live to be confiscated at this rebel-rate?⁠—Here come two more of my Egyptian plagues too.
	Enter Mrs. Millamant* and Sir Wilfull Witwoud.*
Sir Wilful	Aunt, your servant.
Lady Wishfort	Out, caterpillar, call not me aunt; I know thee not.
Sir Wilful	I confess I have been a little in disguise, as they say.⁠—S’heart! and I’m sorry for’t. What would you have? I hope I committed no offence, aunt⁠—and if I did I am willing to make satisfaction; and what can a man say fairer? If I have broke anything I’ll pay for’t, an it cost a pound. And so let that content for what’s past, and make no more words. For what’s to come, to pleasure you I’m willing to marry my cousin. So, pray, let’s all be friends, she and I are agreed upon the matter before a witness.
Lady Wishfort	How’s this, dear niece? Have I any comfort? Can this be true?
Mrs. Millamant	I am content to be a sacrifice to your repose, madam, and to convince you that I had no hand in the plot, as you were misinformed. I have laid my commands on Mirabell to come in person, and be a witness that I give my hand to this flower of knighthood; and for the contract that passed between Mirabell and me, I have obliged him to make a resignation of it in your ladyship’s presence. He is without and waits your leave for admittance.
Lady Wishfort	Well, I’ll swear I am something revived at this testimony of your obedience; but I cannot admit that traitor⁠—I fear I cannot fortify myself to support his appearance. He is as terrible to me as a gorgon: if I see him I swear I shall turn to stone, petrify incessantly.
Mrs. Millamant	If you disoblige him he may resent your refusal, and insist upon the contract still. Then ’tis the last time he will be offensive to you.
Lady Wishfort	Are you sure it will be the last time?⁠—If I were sure of that⁠—shall I never see him again?
Mrs. Millamant	Sir Wilfull, you and he are to travel together, are you not?
Sir Wilful	S’heart, the gentleman’s a civil gentleman, aunt, let him come in; why, we are sworn brothers and fellow-travellers.⁠—We are to be Pylades and Orestes, he and I.⁠—He is to be my interpreter in foreign parts. He has been overseas once already; and with proviso that I marry my cousin, will cross ’em once again, only to bear me company.⁠—S’heart, I’ll call him in⁠—an I set on’t once, he shall come in; and see who’ll hinder him. Goes to the door and hems.
Mrs. Marwood	This is precious fooling, if it would pass; but I’ll know the bottom of it.
Lady Wishfort	O dear Marwood, you are not going?
Mrs. Marwood	Not far, madam; I’ll return immediately.
	Exit.
	Enter Mirabell.
Sir Wilful	Look up, man, I’ll stand by you; ’sbud, an she do frown, she can’t kill you. Besides⁠—hark’ee, she dare not frown desperately, because her face is none of her own. S’heart, an she should, her forehead would wrinkle like the coat of a cream cheese; but mum for that, fellow-traveller.
Mirabell	If a deep sense of the many injuries I have offered to so good a lady, with a sincere remorse and a hearty contrition, can but obtain the least glance of compassion. I am too happy.⁠—Ah, madam, there was a time⁠—but let it be forgotten⁠—I confess I have deservedly forfeited the high place I once held, of sighing at your feet; nay, kill me not by turning from me in disdain⁠—I come not to plead for favour. Nay, not for pardon: I am a suppliant only for pity⁠—I am going where I never shall behold you more⁠—
Sir Wilful	How, fellow-traveller! You shall go by yourself then.
Mirabell	Let me be pitied first, and afterwards forgotten. I ask no more.
Sir Wilful	By’r Lady,106 a very reasonable request, and will cost you nothing, aunt! Come, come, forgive and forget, aunt. Why you must an you are a Christian.
Mirabell	Consider, madam; in reality you could not receive much prejudice: it was an innocent device, though I confess it had a face of guiltiness⁠—it was at most an artifice which love contrived; and errors which love produces have ever been accounted venial. At least think it is punishment enough that I have lost what in my heart I hold most dear, that to your cruel indignation I have offered up this beauty, and with her my peace and quiet; nay, all my hopes of future comfort.
Sir Wilful	An he does not move me, would I may never be o’ the quorum.107⁠—an it were not as good a deed as to drink, to give her to him again, I would I might never take shipping!⁠—Aunt, if you don’t forgive quickly, I shall melt, I can tell you that. My contract went no farther than a little mouth-glue, and that’s hardly dry⁠—one doleful sigh more from my fellow-traveller and ’tis dissolved.
Lady Wishfort	Well, nephew, upon your account⁠—Ah, he has a false insinuating tongue!⁠—Well, sir, I will stifle my just resentment at my nephew’s request.⁠—I will endeavour what I can to forget, but on proviso that you resign the contract with my niece immediately.
Mirabell	It is in writing and with papers of concern; but I have sent my servant for it, and will deliver it to you, with all acknowledgments for your transcendent goodness.
Lady Wishfort	Aside. Oh, he has witchcraft in his eyes and tongue!⁠—When I did not see him I could have bribed a villain to his assassination; but his appearance rakes the embers which have so long lain smothered in my breast.

Scene III

The same.

	Lady Wishfort, Mrs. Millamant, Sir Wilfull, Mirabell, Fainall, and Mrs. Marwood.
Fainall	Your date of deliberation, madam, is expired. Here is the instrument; are you prepared to sign?
Lady Wishfort	If I were prepared, I am not impowered. My niece exerts a lawful claim, having matched herself by my direction to Sir Wilfull.
Fainall	That sham is too gross to pass on me⁠—though ’tis imposed on you, madam.
Mrs. Millamant	Sir, I have given my consent.
Mirabell	And, sir, I have resigned my pretensions.
Sir Wilful	And, sir, I assert my right; and will maintain it in defiance of you, sir, and of your instrument. S’heart, an you talk of an instrument sir, I have an old fox108 by my thigh shall hack your instrument of ram vellum to shreds, sir. It shall not be sufficient for a mittimus109 or a tailor’s measure; therefore withdraw your instrument, sir, or, by’r Lady, I shall draw mine.
Lady Wishfort	Hold, nephew, hold!
Mrs. Millamant	Good Sir Wilfull, respite your valour.
Fainall	Indeed? Are you provided of your guard, with your single beef-eater there? But I’m prepared for you, and insist upon my first proposal. You shall submit your own estate to my management, and absolutely make over my wife’s to my sole use, as pursuant to the purport and tenor of this other covenant. I suppose, madam, your consent is not requisite in this case; nor, Mr. Mirabell, your resignation; nor, Sir Wilfull, your right. You may draw your fox if you please, sir, and make a bear-garden flourish110 somewhere else; for here it will not avail. This, my Lady Wishfort, must be subscribed, or your darling daughter’s turned adrift, like a leaky hulk to sink or swim, as she and the current of this lewd town can agree.
Lady Wishfort	Is there no means, no remedy, to stop my ruin? Ungrateful wretch! Dost thou not owe thy being, thy subsistance, to my daughter’s fortune?
Fainall	I’ll answer you when I have the rest of it in my possession.
Mirabell	But that you would not accept of a remedy from my hands⁠—I own I have not deserved you should owe any obligation to me; or else, perhaps, I could devise⁠—
Lady Wishfort	Oh, what? what? To save me and my child from ruin, from want, I’ll forgive all that’s past; nay, I’ll consent to anything to come, to be delivered from this tyranny.
Mirabell	Aye, madam; but that is too late, my reward is intercepted. You have disposed of her who only could have made me a compensation for all my services. But be it as it may, I am resolved I’ll serve you; you shall not be wronged in this savage manner.
Lady Wishfort	How! dear Mr. Mirabell, can you be so generous at last! But it is not possible. Harkee, I’ll break my nephew’s match; you shall have my niece yet, and all her fortune, if you can but save me from this imminent danger.
Mirabell	Will you? I take you at your word. I ask no more. I must have leave for two criminals to appear.
Lady Wishfort	Aye, aye, anybody, anybody!
Mirabell	Foible is one, and a penitent.
	Enter Mrs. Fainall, Foible, and Mincing.
Mrs. Marwood	Oh, my shame! Mirabell and Lady Wishfort go to Mrs. Fainall and Foible. These corrupt things are brought hither to expose me. To Fainall.
Fainall	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.
Foible	Yes, indeed, madam; I’ll take my bible-oath of it.
Mincing	And so will I, mem.
Lady Wishfort	O Marwood, Marwood, art thou false? My friend deceive me! Hast thou been a wicked accomplice with that profligate man?
Mrs. Marwood	Have you so much ingratitude and injustice to give credit, against your friend, to the aspersions of two such mercenary trulls?
Mincing	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.111 Mercenary! No, if we would have been mercenary, we should have held our tongues; you would have bribed us sufficiently.
Fainall	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. Fainall	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!
Fainall	Not while you are worth a groat, indeed, my dear.⁠—Madam, I’ll be fooled no longer.
Lady Wishfort	Ah, Mr. Mirabell, this is small comfort, the detection of this affair.
Mirabell	Oh, in good time⁠—your leave for the other offender and penitent to appear, madam.
	Enter Waitwell* with a box of writings.*
Lady Wishfort	O Sir Rowland!⁠—Well, rascal?
Waitwell	What your ladyship pleases. I have brought the black box at last, madam.
Mirabell	Give it me.⁠—Madam, you remember your promise.
Lady Wishfort	Aye, dear sir.
Mirabell	Where are the gentlemen?
Waitwell	At hand, sir, rubbing their eyes⁠—just risen from sleep.
Fainall	’Sdeath, what’s this to me? I’ll not wait your private concerns.
	Enter Petulant* and Witwoud.*
Petulant	How now? What’s the matter? Whose hand’s out?
Witwoud	Heyday! What, are you all got together, like players at the end of the last act?
Mirabell	You may remember, gentlemen, I once requested your hands as witnesses to a certain parchment.
Witwoud	Aye, I do, my hand I remember⁠—Petulant set his mark.
Mirabell	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.
Witwoud	No.
Petulant	Not I; I writ, I read nothing.
Mirabell	Very well, now you shall know.⁠—Madam, your promise.
Lady Wishfort	Aye, aye, sir, upon my honour.
Mirabell	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—
Fainall	Sir! Pretended?
Mirabell	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.
Fainall	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!
Mirabell	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.
Fainall	Perfidious fiend! Then thus I’ll be revenged. Offers to run at Mrs. Fainall.
Sir Wilful	Hold, sir; now you may make your bear-garden flourish somewhere else, sir.
Fainall	Mirabell, you shall hear of this, sir; be sure you shall.⁠—Let me pass, oaf!
	Exit.
Mrs. Fainall	Madam, you seem to stifle your resentment. You had better give it vent.
Mrs. Marwood	Yes, it shall have vent⁠—and to your confusion; or I’ll perish in the attempt.
	Exit.
Lady Wishfort	O daughter, daughter! ’Tis plain thou hast inherited thy mother’s prudence.
Mrs. Fainall	Thank Mr. Mirabell, a cautious friend, to whose advice all is owing.
Lady Wishfort	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—
Mirabell	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 Wilful	S’heart, 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.
Petulant	For my part, I say little⁠—I think things are best off or on.
Witwoud	I’gad, I understand nothing of the matter: I’m in a maze yet, like a dog in a dancing school.
Lady Wishfort	Well, sir, take her, and with her all the joy I can give you.
Mrs. Millamant	Why does not the man take me? Would you have me give myself to you over again?
Mirabell	Aye, and over and over again; Kisses her hand. I would have you as often as possibly I can. Well, Heaven grant I love you not too well, that’s all my fear.
Sir Wilful	S’heart, 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.
Mirabell	With all my heart, dear Sir Wilfull. What shall we do for music?
Foible	Oh, sir, some that were provided for Sir Rowland’s entertainment are yet within call. A dance.
Lady Wishfort	As I am a person, I can hold out no longer: I have wasted my spirits so today 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.
Mirabell	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.112
	Exeunt omnes.