The young ladies make sport of Lady Knowell. Lucretia does not approve of her learning. "Methinks," she says, "to be read in the Arts, as they call 'em, is the peculiar Province of the other Sex." Isabella is of much the same opinion, yet she feels that women might easily surpass most University men: "Indeed the Men ... boast their Learning and Languages; but if they can find any one of our Sex fuller of Words, and to so little Purpose as some of their Gownmen, I'll be content to change my Petticoats for Pantaloons and go to a Grammar-school."
In Shadwell's Sullen Lovers (1669) is a Lady Vaine who calls herself a "Virtuosa" and is learned in medicaments. She boasts of her serviceableness with her "Flos Unguentorum, Paracelsian, and Green-salve," and praises the Album Grecum as a salve of her own concoction.
Of much more interest is Shadwell's Bury-Fair (1689). The chief characters are Lady Fantast, Mrs. Fantast, and Lady Fantast's stepdaughter, Gertrude Oldwit, and their attendant cavaliers. The central action, the joke played on the Fantast ladies in imposing on them a barber dressed up to impersonate a French count, is taken from Les Précieuses. But Lady Fantast and her daughter have their direct ancestry in Philaminte and Armande in Les Femmes Savantes. Wildish who had at first loved Mrs. Fantast, but, on finding her a précieuse, had transferred his affections to Gertrude, is Molière's Clitandre, while Gertrude herself and Mr. Oldwit are the Henriette and Chrysale of the French play. The common sense of the play is embodied in Wildish, Gertrude, and Mr. Oldwit. Lady Fantast is not herself especially learned, but all her ambitions in that line have been concentrated on her daughter. "I have bred my daughter a linguist," she proudly exclaims when the young lady quotes Latin. The two ladies converse as follows:
Mrs. Fan. To all that, which the World calls Wit and Breeding, I have always had a natural Tendency, a penchen, deriv'd, as the Learned say, Ex traduce, from your Ladyship: Besides the great Prevalence of your Ladyship's most shining Example has perpetually Stimulated me, to the Sacrificing all my Endeavours towards the attaining of those inestimable Jewels; than which, nothing in the Universe can be so much a mon gre, as the French say. And for Beauty, Madam, the Stock I am enrich'd with, comes by emanation from your Ladyship; who has been long held a Paragon of Perfection; Most Charmant, most Tuant.
L. Fan. Ah, my dear Child: I! Alas, Alas! Time has been, and yet I am not quite gone; but thou hast those Attractions, which I bewail the want of: Poetry, Latin, and the French tongue.
Mrs. Fan. I must confess, I have ever had a Tendress for the Muses, and have a due Reverence for Helicon, and Parnassus, and the Graces: But Heroick Numbers upon Love and Honour are most Ravissant, most Suprenant; and a Tragedy is so Touchant! I dye at a Tragedy; I'll swear, I do.
Lady Fantast has an adoration of French equal to that of Melantha. "No Conversation," she says, "can be refin'd and well-drest without French to lard it." The false count wins his way with the ladies when he professes to believe them French:
Count. Me vil gage a hundred Pistol, dat dat fine Ladeè and her ver pretty Sister, are de French Ladeè.
L. Fan. We have often bewailed the not having had the honour to be born French.