Scene VI The Dining-room in Mulberry-garden House
Enter Sir Simon Addleplot, Gripe, Lady Flippant, Mrs. Martha, Mrs. Joyner, Mrs. Crossbite, and Lucy.
Sir Sim. ’Tis as I told you, sir, you see.
Gripe. Oh, graceless babe! married to a wit! an idle, loitering, slandering, foul-mouthed, beggarly wit! Oh that my child should ever live to marry a wit!
Mrs. Joyn. Indeed, your worship had better seen her fairly buried, as they say.
Mrs. Cros. If my daughter there should have done so, I would not have given her a groat.
Gripe. Marry a wit!
Sir Sim. Mrs. Joyner, do not let me lose the widow too:—for if you do, (betwixt friends,) I and my small annuity are both blown up: it will follow my estate. [Aside to Mrs. Joyner.
Mrs. Joyn. I warrant you. [Aside.
L. Flip. Let us make sure of Sir Simon to-night, or—[Aside to Mrs. Joyner.
Mrs. Joyn. You need not fear it.—[Aside.] Like the lawyers, while my clients endeavour to cheat one another, I in justice cheat ’em both.
Gripe. Marry a wit!
Enter Dapperwit, Ranger, Lydia, Valentine, Christina, and Vincent. Dapperwit stops them, and they stand all behind.
Dap. What, is he here! Lucy and her mother! [Aside.
Gripe. Tell me how thou camest to marry a wit.
Mrs. Mar. Pray be not angry, sir, and I’ll give you a good reason.
Gripe. Reason for marrying a wit!
Mrs. Mar. Indeed, I found myself six months gone with child, and saw no hopes of your getting me a husband, or else I had not married a wit, sir.
Mrs. Joyn. Then you were the wit.
Gripe. Had you that reason? nay, then——[Holding up his hands.
Dap. How’s that! [Aside.
Ran. Who would have thought, Dapperwit, you would have married a wench?
Dap. [To Ranger.]—Well, thirty thousand pounds will make me amends; I have known my betters wink, and fall on for five or six.—[To Gripe and the rest.] What! you are come, sir, to give me joy? you Mrs. Lucy, you and you? well, unbid guests are doubly welcome.—Sir Simon, I made bold to invite these ladies and gentlemen.—For you must know, Mr. Ranger, this worthy Sir Simon does not only give me my wedding supper, but my mistress too; and is, as it were, my father.
Sir Sim. Then I am, as it were, a grandfather to your new wife’s Hans en kelder;49 to which you are but, as it were, a father! there’s for you again, sir—ha, ha!—
Ran. Ha! ha! ha!—[To Vincent.
Dap. Fools sometimes say unhappy things, if we would mind ’em; but—what! melancholy at your daughter’s wedding, sir?
Gripe. How deplorable is my condition!
Dap. Nay, if you will rob me of my wench, sir, can you blame me for robbing you of your daughter? I cannot be without a woman.
Gripe. My daughter, my reputation, and my money gone!—but the last is dearest to me. Yet at once I may retrieve that, and be revenged for the loss of the other: and all this by marrying Lucy here: I shall get my five hundred pounds again, and get heirs to exclude my daughter and frustrate Dapperwit; besides, ’tis agreed on all hands, ’tis cheaper keeping a wife than a wench. [Aside.
Dap. If you are so melancholy, sir, we will have the fiddles and a dance to divert you; come!
A Dance.
Gripe. Indeed, you have put me so upon a merry pin, that I resolve to marry too.
L. Flip. Nay, if my brother come to marrying once, I may too; I swore I would, when he did, little thinking—
Sir Sim. I take you at your word, madam.
L. Flip. Well, but if I had thought you would have been so quick with me—
Gripe. Where is your parson?
Dap. What! you would not revenge yourself upon the parson?
Gripe. No, I would have the parson revenge me upon you; he should marry me.
Dap. I am glad you are so frolic, sir; but who would you marry?
Gripe. That innocent lady. [Pointing to Lucy.
Dap. That innocent lady!
Gripe. Nay, I am impatient, Mrs. Joyner; pray fetch him up if he be yet in the house.
Dap. We were not married here:—but you cannot be in earnest.
Gripe. You’ll find it so; since you have robbed me of my housekeeper, I must get another.
Dap. Why, she was my wench!
Gripe. I’ll make her honest then.
Mrs. Cros. Upon my repute he never saw her before:—but will your worship marry my daughter then?
Gripe. I promise her and you, before all this good company, to-morrow I will make her my wife.
Dap. How!
Ran. Our ladies, sir, I suppose, expect the same promise from us. [To Valentine.
Val. They may be sure of us without a promise; but let us (if we can) obtain theirs, to be sure of them.
Dap. But will you marry her to-morrow?—[To Gripe.
Gripe. I will, verily.
Dap. I am undone then! ruined, let me perish!
Sir Sim. No, you may hire a little room in Covent Garden, and set up a coffee-house:—you and your wife will be sure of the wits’ custom.
Dap.
Abused by him I have abused!—
Fortune our foe we cannot overwit;
By none but thee our projects are cross-bit.
Val. Come, dear madam, what, yet angry?—jealousy sure is much more pardonable before marriage than after it; but to-morrow, by the help of the parson, you’ll put me out of all my fears.
Chris. I am afraid then you would give me my revenge, and make me jealous of you; and I had rather suspect your faith than you should mine.
Ran. Cousin Lydia, I had rather suspect your faith too, than you should mine; therefore let us e’en marry to-morrow, that I may have my turn of watching, dogging, standing under the window, at the door, behind the hanging, or—
Lyd. But if I could be desperate now and give you up my liberty, could you find in your heart to quit all other engagements, and voluntarily turn yourself over to one woman, and she a wife too? could you away with the insupportable bondage of matrimony?
Ran. You talk of matrimony as irreverently as my Lady Flippant: the bondage of matrimony! no—
The end of marriage now is liberty.
And two are bound—to set each other free.