The Puritan Widow

by Shakespeare

ACT II.

SCENE I. A room in the widow’s house.

[Enter Moll youngest Daughter to the Widdow: alone.]

MOLL. Not Marry? forswear Marriage? why, all women know ’tis as honorable a thing as to lie with a man; and I to spite my Sisters vow the more, have entertained a suitor already, a fine gallant Knight of the last Feather: he says he will Coach me too, and well appoint me, allow me money to Dice with-all, and many such pleasing protestations he sticks upon my lips; indeed, his short-winded Father ith’ Country is wondrous wealthy, a most abominable Farmer, and therefore he may doote in time: troth, I’ll venture upon him. Women are not without ways enow to help them-selves: if he prove wise and good as his word, why, I shall love him, and use him kindly: and if he prove an Ass, why, in a quarter of an hour’s warning I can transform him into an Ox;—there comes in my Relief again.

[Enter Frailty.]

FRAILTY.
O, Mistress Moll, Mistress Moll.

MOLL.
How now? what’s the news?

FRAILTY.
The Knight your suitor, sir John Penny-Dub—

MOLL.
Sir John Penny-Dub? where? where?

FRAILTY.
He’s walking in the Gallery.

MOLL.
Has my Mother seen him yet?

FRAILTY.
O no, she’s—spitting in the Kitchen.

MOLL.
Direct him hither softly, good Frailty,—
I’ll meet him half way.

FRAILTY. That’s just like running a Tilt; but I hope he’ll break nothing this time.

[Exit.]

[Enter Sir John Penny-Dub.]

MOLL.
’Tis happiness my Mother saw him not:
O welcome, good Sir John.

PENNY-DUB. I thank you, faith.—Nay, you must stand me, till I kiss you: ’tis the fashion every where, I-faith, and I came from Court enow.

MOLL.
Nay, the Fates forfend that I should anger the fashion!

PENNY-DUB. Then, not forgetting the sweet of new ceremonies, I first fall back, then recovering my self, make my honour to your lip thus: and then accost it.

MOLL.
Trust me, very pretty, and moving; y’are worthy on’t, sir.

[Kissing: Enter Widdow and Sir Godfrey.]

O, my Mother, my Mother! now she’s here, we’ll steal into the Gallery.

[Exeunt.]

SIR GODFREY. Nay, Sister, let Reason rule you, do not play the fool; stand not in your own light. You have wealthy offers, large tendrings; do not with-stand your good fortune: who comes a wooing to you, I pray? no small fool; a rich Knight ath City, Sir Oliver Muck-Hill—no small fool I can tell you: and Furthermore, as I heard late by your Maid-servants, (as your Maid-servants will say to me any thing, I thank ’em) both your Daughters are not without Suitors, aye, and worthy ones too! one a Brisk Courtier, Sir Andrew Tip-Staff, suitor a far off to your eldest Daughter, and the third a huge-wealthy Farmer’s son, a fine young Country Knight, they call him Sir John Penny-Dub: a good name, marry; he may have it coined when he lacks money. What blessings are these, Sister!

WIDDOW.
Tempt me not, Satan.

SIR GODFREY. Satan? do I look like Satan? I hope the Devil’s not so old as I, I tro.

WIDDOW.
You wound my senses, Brother, when you name
A suitor to me:—oh, I cannot abide it,
I take in poison, when I hear one nam’d.

[Enter Simon.]

How now, Simon? where’s my son Edmund?

SIMON.
Verily Madame, he is at vain Exercise, dripping in the
Tennis-court.

WIDDOW. At Tennis-court? oh, now his father’s gone, I shall have no rule with him; oh, wicked Edmond, I might well compare this with the Prophecy in the Chronicle, tho far inferior: as Harry of Monmouth won all, and Harry of Windsor lost all; so Edmund of Bristow, that was the Father, got all, and Edmond of London, that’s his son now, will spend all.

SIR GODFREY. Peace, Sister, we’ll have him reformed, there’s hope on him yet, tho it be but a little.

[Enter Frailty.]

FRAILTY. Forsooth, Madam, there are two or three Archers at door would very gladly speak with your Ladyship.

WIDDOW.
Archers?

SIR GODFREY.
Your husband’s Fletcher, I warrant.

WIDDOW.
Oh!
Let them come near, they bring home things of his.
Troth, I should ha forgot ’em. How now, Villain?
Which be those Archers?

[Enter the suitors Sir Andrew Tip-staff, Sir Oliver Muck-hill, and Penny-dub.]

FRAILTY. Why, do you not see ’em before you? are not these Archers? what do you call ’em? Shooters: Shooters and Archers are all one, I hope.

WIDDOW.
Out, ignorant slave.

MUCK-HILL.
Nay, pray be patient, Lady,
We come in way of honorable love.

TIP-STAFF.
We do.

PENNY-DUB.
We do.

MUCK-HILL.
To you.

TIP-STAFF.
And to your Daughters.

PENNY-DUB.
And to your Daughters.

WIDDOW. O, why will you offer me this Gentlemen? indeed I will not look upon you—when the Tears are scarce out of mine Eyes, not yet washt off from my Cheeks, and my deer husband’s body scarce so cold as the Coffin, what reason have you to offer it? I am not like some of your Widdows that will bury one in the Evening, and be sure to another ere morning. Pray, away; pray, take your answers, good Knights, and you be sweet Knights. I have vow’d never to marry;—and so have my daughters too!

PENNY-DUB.
Aye, two of you have, but the third’s a good wench!

MUCK-HILL. Lady, a shrewd answer, marry; the best is, tis but the first, and he’s a blunt wooer, that will leave for one sharp answer.

TIP-STAFF. Where be your daughters, Lady? I hope they’ll give us better encouragements.

WIDDOW. Indeed, they’ll answer you so; tak’t a my word, they’ll give you the very same answer Verbatim, truly la.

PENNY-DUB.
Mum: Moll’s a good wench still, I know what she’ll do.

MUCK-HILL. Well, Lady, for this time we’ll take our leaves, hoping for better comfort.

WIDDOW. O never, never! and I live these thousand years! and you be good Knights, do not hope; twill be all Vain, Vain,—look you, put off all your suits, and you come to me again.

[Exeunt Sir John and Sir Andrew.]

FRAILTY. Put off all their suits, quatha? Aye, that’s the best wooing of a Widdow, indeed, when a man’s Nonsuited; that is, when he’s a bed with her.

[Going out, Muck-hill and Sir Godfrey.]

MUCK-HILL. Sir Godfrey, here’s twenty Angels more: work hard for me; there’s life int yet.

[Exit Muck-hill.]

SIR GODFREY. Fear not, Sir Oliver Muck-hill, I’ll stick close for you; leave all with me.

[Enter George Pye-board, the scholar.]

PYE.
By your leave, Lady Widdow.

WIDDOW.
What, another suitor now?

PYE.
A suitor! no, I protest, Lady, if you’d give me your self,
I’d not be troubled with you.

WIDDOW.
Say you so, Sir? then you’re the better welcome, sir.

PYE. Nay, Heaven bless me from a Widdow, unless I were sure to bury her speedily!

WIDDOW.
Good bluntness: well, your business, sir?

PYE.
Very needful; if you were in private once.

WIDDOW.
Needful? brother, pray leave us; and you, sir.

FRAILTY. I should laugh now, if this blunt fellow should put ’em all by side the stirrup, and vault into the saddle himself. I have seen as mad a trick.

[Exit Frailty.]

[Enter Daughters.]

WIDDOW.
Now Sir?—here’s none but we—Daughters, forbear.

PYE. O no, pray, let ’em stay, for what I have to speak importeth equally to them as to you.

WIDDOW.
Then you may stay.

PYE.
I pray bestow on me a serious ear,
For what I speak is full of weight and fear.

WIDDOW.
Fear?

PYE. Aye, ift pass unregarded, and uneffected; Else peace and joy:—I pray, Attention. Widdow, I have been a mere stranger for these parts that you live in, nor did I ever know the Husband of you, and Father of them, but I truly know by certain spiritual Intelligence, that he is in Purgatory.

WIDDOW. Purgatory? tuh; that word deserves to be spit upon. I wonder that a man of sober tongue, as you seem to be, should have the folly to believe there’s such a place.

PYE. Well, Lady, in cold blood I speak it; I assure you that there is a Purgatory, in which place I know your husband to reside, and wherein he is like to remain, till the dissolution of the world, till the last general Bon-fire, when all the earth shall melt into nothing and the Seas scald their finny labourers; so long is his abidance, unless you alter the property of your purpose, together with each of your Daughters theirs; that is, the purpose of single life in your self and your eldest Daughter, and the speedy determination of marriage in your youngest.

MOLL.
How knows he that? what, has some Devil told him?

WIDDOW. Strange he should know our thoughts:—Why, but, Daughter, have you purposed speedy Marriage?

PYE. You see she tells you aye, for she says nothing. Nay, give me credit as you please. I am a stranger to you, and yet you see I know your determinations, which must come to me Metaphysically, and by a super-natural intelligence.

WIDDOW.
This puts Amazement on me.

FRANCES.
Know our secrets!

MOLL.
I’d thought to steal a marriage: would his tongue
Had dropt out when be blabbed it!

WIDDOW. But, sir, my husband was too honest a dealing man to be now in any purgatories—

PYE.
O, Do not load your conscience with untruths;
Tis but mere folly now to gild him o’er,
That has past but for Copper. Praises here
Cannot unbind him there: confess but truth.
I know he got his wealth with a hard grip:
Oh hardly, hardly.

WIDDOW.
This is most strange of all: how knows he that?

PYE.
He would eat fools and ignorant heirs clean up;
And had his drink from many a poor man’s brow,
E’en as their labour brewed it.
He would scrape riches to him most unjustly;
The very dirt between his nails was Ill-got,
And not his own,—oh, I groan to speak on’t,
The thought makes me shudder—shudder!

WIDDOW. It quakes me too, now I think on’t.—Sir, I am much grieved, that you, a stranger, should so deeply wrong my dead husband!

PYE.
Oh!

WIDDOW. A man that would keep Church so duly; rise early, before his servants, and e’en for Religious hast, go ungartered, unbuttoned, nay, sir Reverence, untrust, to Morning Prayer.

PYE.
Oh, uff.

WIDDOW. Dine quickly upon high-days, and when I had great guests, would e’en shame me and rise from the Table, to get a good seat at an after-noon Sermon.

PYE. There’s the devil, there’s the devil! true, he thought it Sactity enough, if he had killed a man, so tad been done in a Pew, or undone his Neighbour, so ta’d been near enough to th’ Preacher. Oh,—a Sermon’s a fine short cloak of an hour long, and will hide the upper-part of a dissembler.—Church! Aye, he seemed all Church, and his conscience was as hard as the Pulpit!

WIDDOW.
I can no more endure this.

PYE.
Nor I, widdow, endure to flatter.

WIDDOW.
Is this all your business with me?

PYE. No, Lady, tis but the induction too’te. You may believe my strains, I strike all true, And if your conscience would leap up to your tongue, your self would affirm it: and that you shall perceive I know of things to come as well as I do of what is present, a Brother of your husband’s shall shortly have a loss.

WIDDOW.
A loss; marry, heaven for-fend! Sir Godfrey, my brother?

PYE. Nay, keep in your wonders, will I have told you the fortunes of you all; which are more fearful, if not happily prevented: —for your part and your daughters, if there be not once this day some blood-shed before your door, whereof the human creature dies, two of you—the elder—shall run mad.

MOTHER AND FRANCES.
Oh!

MOLL.
That’s not I yet!

PYE. And with most impudent prostitution show your naked bodies to the view of all beholders.

WIDDOW.
Our naked bodies? fie, for shame!

PYE.
Attend me: and your younger daughter be strocken dumb.

MOLL. Dumb? out, alas: tis the worst pain of all for a Woman. I’d rather be mad, or run naked, or any thing: dumb?

PYE. Give ear: ere the evening fall upon Hill, Bog, and Meadow, this my speech shall have past probation, and then shall I be believed accordingly.

WIDDOW.
If this be true, we are all shamed, all undone.

MOLL. Dumb? I’ll speak as much as ever I can possible before evening!

PYE. But if it so come to pass (as for your fair sakes I wish it may) that this presage of your strange fortunes be prevented by that accident of death and blood-shedding which I before told you of: take heed upon your lives that two of you, which have vow’d never to marry, seek you out husbands with all present speed, and you, the third, that have such a desire to out-strip chastity, look you meddle not with a husband.

MOLL.
A double torment.

PYE. The breach of this keeps your father in Purgatory, and the punishments that shall follow you in this world would with horror kill the Ear should hear ’em related.

WIDDOW.
Marry? why I vowed never to marry.

FRANCES.
And so did I.

MOLL. And I vowed never to be such an Ass, but to marry: what a cross Fortune’s this!

PYE. Ladies, tho I be a Fortune-teller, I cannot better Fortunes; you have ’em from me as they are revealed to me: I would they were to your tempers, and fellows with your bloods, that’s all the bitterness I would you.

WIDDOW.
Oh, ’tis a just vengeance for my husband’s hard purchases.

PYE.
I wish you to be-think your selves, and leave ’em.

WIDDOW. I’ll to Sir Godfrey, my Brother, and acquaint him with these fearful presages.

FRANCES.
For, Mother, they portend losses to him.

WIDDOW.
Oh, aye, they do, they do.
If any happy issue crown thy words,
I will reward thy cunning.

PYE.
’Tis enough Lady; I wish no higher.

[Exit Widdow and Frances.]

MOLL.
Dumb! and not marry, worse!
Neither to speak, nor kiss, a double curse.

[Exit.]

PYE. So all this comes well about yet. I play the Fortune-teller as well as if I had had a Witch to my Grannam: for by good happiness, being in my Hostesses’ Garden, which neighbours the Orchard o the Widdow, I laid the hole of mine ear to a hole in the wall, and heard ’em make these vows, and speak those words upon which I wrought these advantages; and to encourage my forgery the more, I may now perceive in ’em a natural simplicity which will easily swallow an abuse, if any covering be over it: and to confirm my former presage to the Widdow, I have advised old Peter Skirmish, the Soldier, to hurt Corporal Oath upon the Leg; and in that hurry I’ll rush amongst ’em, and in stead of giving the Corporal some Cordial to comfort him, I’ll power into his mouth a potion of a sleepy Nature, to make him seem as dead; for the which the old soldier being apprehended, and ready to be born to execution, I’ll step in, and take upon me the cure of the dead man, upon pain of dying the condemned’s death: the Corporal will wake at his minute, when the sleepy force has wrought it self, and so shall I get my self into a most admired opinion, and under the pretext of that cunning, beguile as I see occasion: and if that foolish Nicholas Saint Tantlings keep true time with the chain, my plot will be sound, the Captain delivered, and my wits applauded among scholars and soldiers for ever.

[Exit Pye-board.]