The Way of the World | Page 7

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.
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 DROLE! 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