Provoked Husband (The), a comedy by Cibber and Vanbrugh. The “provoked husband” is Lord Townly, justly annoyed at the conduct of his young wife, who wholly neglects her husband and her home duties for a life of gambling and dissipation. The husband seeing no hope of amendment, resolves on a separate maintenance; but then the lady’s eyes are opened—she promises amendment, and is forgiven
*** This comedy was Vanbrugh’s Journey to London, left unfinished at his death. Cibber took it, completed it, and brought it out under the title of The Provoked Husband (1728).
Provoked Wife (The), Lady Brute, the wife of Sir John Brute, is, by his ill manners, brutality, and neglect, “provoked” to intrigue with one Constant. The intrigue is not of a very serious nature, since it is always interrupted before it makes head. At the conclusion, Sir John says:
Surly, I may be stubborn, I am not,
For I have both forgiven and forgot.
Sir J. Vanbrugh (1697).
Provost of Bruges (The), a tragedy based on “The Serf,” in Leitch Ritchie’s Romance of History. Published anonymously in 1836; the author is S. Knowles. The plot is this: Charles “the Good,” earl of Flanders, made a law that a serf is always a serf till manumitted, and whoever marries a serf, becomes thereby a serf. Thus, if a prince married the daughter of a serf, the prince becomes a serf himself, and all his children were serfs. Bertulphe, the richest, wisest, and bravest man in Flanders, was provost of Bruges. His beautiful daughter, Constance, married Sir Bouchard, a knight of noble descent; but Bertulphe’s father had been Thancmar’s serf, and, according to the new law, Bertulphe, the provost, his daughter, Constance, and the knightly son-in-law were all the serfs of Thancmar. The provost killed the earl, and stabbed himself; Bouchard and Thancmar killed each other in fight; and Constance died demented.
Prowler (Hugh), any vagrant or highwayman.
For fear of Hugh Prowler, get home with the rest.
T. Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, xxxiii. 25 (1557).
Prudence (Mistress), the lady attendant on Violet, ward of Lady Arundel. When Norman, “the sea-captain,” made love to Violet, Mistress Prudence remonstrated, “What will the countess say if I allow myself to see a stranger speaking to her ward?” Norman clapped a guinea on her left eye, and asked, “What see you now?” “Why, nothing with my left eye,” she answered, “but the right has still a morbid sensibility.” “Poor thing!” said Norman; “this golden ointment soon will cure it. What see you now, my Prudence?” “Not a soul,” she said.—Lord Lytton, The Sea-Captain (1839).
Prudhomme (Joseph), “pupil of Brard and Saint-Omer,” caligraphist and sworn expert in the courts of law. Joseph Prudhomme is the synthesis of bourgeois imbecility; radiant, serene, and self-satisfied; letting fall from his fat lips “one weak, washy, everlasting flood” of puerile aphorisms and inane circumlocutions. He says, “The car of the state floats on a precipice.” “This sword is the proudest day of my life.”—Henri Monnier, Grandeur et Décadence de Joseph Prudhomme (1852).
Pruddoterie (Madame de la). Character in comedy of George Dandin, by Molière.