Sganarelle’s plan:
J’entend que la mienne vive à ma fantaisie—
Que d’une serge honnête elle ait son vêtement,
Et ne porte le noir, qu’ aux bons jours seulement;
Qu’ enfermée au logis, en personne bien sage,
Elle s’applique toute aux choses du ménage,
A recoudre mon linge aux heures de loisir,
Ou bien à tricoter quelques bas par plasir;
Qu’ aux discours des muguets elle ferme l’oreille,
Et ne sorte jamais sans avoir qui la veille.
Ariste’s plan:
Leur sexe aime à jouir d’un peu de liberté;
On le retient fort mal par tant d’austérité;
Et les soins défiants les verroux et les grilles,
Ne font pas la vertu des femmes ni des filles;
C’est l’honneur qui les doit tenir dans le devoir,
Non la sévérité que nous leur faisons voir ...
Je trouve que le cœur est ce qu’il faut gagner.
Act i. 2.
School for Wives (L’école des Femmes, “training for wives”), a comedy by Molière (1662). Arnolphe has a crotchet about the proper training of girls to make good wives, and tries his scheme upon Agnes, whom he adopts from a peasant’s cottage, and designs in due time to make his wife. He sends her from early childhood to a convent, where difference of sex and the conventions of society are wholly ignored. When removed from the convent she treats men as if they were schoolgirls, kisses them, plays with them, and treats them with girlish familiarity. The consequence is, a young man named Horace falls in love with her and makes her his wife, but Arnolphe loses his pains.
Schoolmen. (For a list of the schoolmen of each of the three periods, see Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 794.)
Schoolmistress (The), a poem in Spenserian metre, by Shenstone (1758). The “schoolmistress” was Sarah Lloyd, who taught the poet himself in infancy. She lived in a thatched cottage, before which grew a birch tree, to which allusion is made in the poem.
There dwells, in lowly shed and mean attire,
A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name ...
And all in sight doth rise a birchen tree.
Stanzas 2, 3.
Schreckenwald (Ital.), steward of Count Albert.—Sir W. Scott, Anne of Geierstein (time, Edward IV.).
Schwaker (Jonas), jester of Leopold, archduke of Austria.—Sir W. Scott, The Talisman (time, Richard I.).