SCENE II.

_Enter_ MISTRESS PLEASANT, WIDOW WILD, _her aunt, and_ SECRET, _her woman, above in the music-room, as dressing her: a glass, a table, and she in her night-clothes_.

PLEA. Secret, give me the glass, and see who knocks.

WID. Niece, what, shut the door? as I live, this music was meant to you: I know my nephew's voice.

PLEA. Yes, but you think his friend's has more music in't.

WID. No, faith, I can laugh with him, or so, but he comes no nearer than my lace.

PLEA. You do well to keep your smock betwixt.

WID. Faith, wench, so wilt thou, and thou be'st wise, from him and all of them; and, be ruled by me, we'll abuse all the sex, till they put a true value upon us.

PLEA. But dare you forbid the travelled gentlemen, and abuse them and your servant, and swear, with me, not to marry in a twelvemonth, though a lord bait the hook, and hang out the sign of a court Cupid, whipped by a country widow? then I believe we may have mirth cheaper than at the price of ourselves, and some sport with the wits that went to lose themselves in France.

WID. Come, no dissembling, lest I tell your servant, when he returns, how much you're taken with the last new fashion.

SEC. Madam, 'tis almost noon; will you not dress yourself to-day?

WID. She speaks as if we were boarders; prythee, wench, is not the dinner our own I sure, my cook shall lay by my own roast till my stomach be up!

PLEA. But there may be company, and they will say we take too long time to trim. Secret, give me the flowers my servant sent me: he sware 'twas the first the wench made of the kind.

WID. But when he shall hear you had music sent you to-day, 'twill make him appear in his old clothes.

PLEA. Marry, I would he would take exception, he should not want ill-usage to rid me of his trouble. As I live, custom has made me so acquainted with him, that I now begin to think him not so displeasing as at first; and if he fall out with me, I must with him, to secure myself. Sure, aunt, he must find sense and reason absent; for when a question knocks at his head, the answer tells that there is nobody at home. I asked him th' other day if he did not find a blemish in his understanding, and he sware a great oath, not he. I told him 'twas very strange, for fool was so visible an eyesore, that neither birth nor fortune could reconcile to me.

WID. Faith, methinks his humour is good, and his purse will buy good company; and I can laugh, and be merry with him sometimes.

PLEA. Why, pray, aunt, take him to yourself, and see how merry we will be. I can laugh at anybody's fool but mine own.

WID. By my troth, but that I have married one fool already, you should not have him. Consider, he asks no portion, and yet will make a great jointure. A fool with these conveniences, a kind, loving fool, and one that you may govern, makes no ill husband, niece. There are other arguments, too, to bid a fool welcome, which you will find without teaching. Think of it, niece: you may lay out your affection to purchase some dear wit or judgment of the city, and repent at leisure a good bargain in this fool.

PLEA. Faith, aunt, fools are cheap in the butchery and dear in the kitchen; they are such unsavoury, insipid things, that there goes more charge to the sauce than the fool is worth, ere a woman can confidently serve him, either to her bed or board. Then, if he be a loving fool, he troubles all the world a-days, and me all night.

SEC. Friendship-love, madam, has a remedy for that.

PLEA. See if the air of this place has not inclined Secret to be a bawd already! No, Secret, you get no gowns that way, upon my word. If I marry, it shall be a gentleman that has wit and honour, though he has nothing but a sword by his side: such a one naked is better than a fool with all his trappings, bells, and baubles.

WID. Why, as I live, he's a handsome fellow, and merry: mine is such a sad soul, and tells me stories of lovers that died in despair, and of the lamentable end of their mistresses (according to the ballad), and thinks to win me by example.

PLEA. Faith, mine talks of nothing but how long he has loved me; and those that know me not think I am old, and still finds new causes (as he calls them) for his love. I asked him the other day, if I changed so fast, or no.

WID. But what think'st thou, Secret? my nephew dances well, and has a handsome house in the Piazza.

PLEA. Your nephew! not I, as I live; he looks as if he would be wooed. I'll warrant you, he'll never begin with a woman, till he has lost the opinion of himself; but since you are so courteous, I'll speak to his friend, and let him know how you suffer for him.

WID. Him! marry, God bless all good women from him. Why, he talks as if the dairymaid and all her cows could not serve his turn. Then they wear such bawdy breeches, 'twould startle an honest woman to come in their company, for fear they should break, and put her to count from the fall of them; for I'll warrant the year of the Lord would sooner out of her head than such a sight.

PLEA. I am not such an enemy now to his humour as to your nephew's. He rails against our sex, and thinks, by beating down the price of a woman, to make us despair of merchants; but if I had his heartstrings tied on a true-lover's knot, I would so firk him, till he found physic in a rope.

SEC. He's a scurvy-tongued fellow, I am sure of that; and if I could have got a staff, I had marked him.

WID. What did he do to thee, Secret?

PLEA. Why, he swore he had a better opinion of her than to think she had her maidenhead; but if she were that fool, and had preserved the toy, he swore he would not take the pains of fetching it, to have it. I confess, I would fain be revenged on them, because they are so blown up with opinion of their wit.

WID. As I live, my nephew travels still: the sober, honest Ned Wild will not be at home this month.

PLEA. What say you? will you abuse them and all the rest, and stand to my first proposition?

WID. Yes, faith, if it be but to bury my servant Sad; for he cannot last above another fall. And how, think you, will your servant take it?

PLEA. Mine! O, God help me, mine's a healthy fool. I would he were subject to pine, and take things unkindly: there were some hope to be rid of him; for I'll undertake to use him as ill as anybody.

WID. As I live, I am easily resolved: for if I would marry, I know neither who nor what humour to choose.

SEC. By my troth, madam, you are hard to please, else the courtier might have served turn.

WID. Serve turn! Prythee, what haste, Secret, that I should put myself to bed with one I might make a shift with? When I marry, thou shalt cry, _Ay marry, madam, this is a husband!_ without blushing, wench, and none of your so-so husbands. Yet he might have[203] overcome my aversion, I confess.

PLEA. Overcome! I think so: he might have won a city his way; for when he saw you were resolved he should not eat with you, he would set himself down as if he meant to besiege us, and had vowed never to rise till he had taken us in; and because our sex forbad force, he meant to do it by famine. Yet you may stay, and miss a better market; for, hang me, I am of Secret's opinion, he had but two faults--a handsome fellow, and too soon denied.

WID. 'Tis true, he was a handsome fellow, and a civil, that I shall report him; for as soon as it was given him to understand I desired he would come no more, I never saw him since, but by chance.

PLEA. Why did you forbid him?

WID. There were divers exceptions; but that which angered me then was, he came with the king's letters patents, as if he had been to take up a wife for his majesty's use.

PLEA. Alas! was that all? Why, 'tis their way at court, a common course among them. And was it not one the king had a great care of? When my mother was alive, I had such a packet from the court: directed unto me: I bid them pay the post, and make the fellow drink; which he took as ill as I could wish, and has been ever since such a friendly enemy----

WID. Nay, as I live, she was for the captain too: his scarf and feather won her heart.

SEC. Truly, madam, never flatter yourself; for the gentleman did not like you so well as to put you to the trouble of saying no.

PLEA. Lord, how I hated and dreaded that scarf and buff-coat!

SEC. Why, Mistress Pleasant, a captain is an honourable charge.

WID. Prythee, Secret, name them no more. Colonel and captain, commissioner, free-quarters, ordnance and contribution. When Buff utters these words, I tremble and dread the sound: it frights me still when I do but think on them. Cud's body, they're twigs of the old rod, wench, that whipped us so lately.

PLEA. Ay, ay, and they were happy days, wench, when the captain was a lean poor humble thing, and the soldier tame, and durst not come within the city for fear of a constable and a whipping-post. They know the penal statutes give no quarter. Then Buff was out of countenance, and skulked from alehouse to alehouse, and the city had no militia but the sheriff's men. In those merry days, a bailiff trod the streets with terror, when all the chains in the city were rusty but Master Sheriff's; when the people knew no evil but the constable and his watch. Now every committee has as much power and as little manners, and examines with as much ignorance, impertinence, and authority, as a constable in the king's key.

[_People talking without._

WID. See who's that so loud?

SEC. The men you talked of, newly come to town.

[_Exeunt omnes._