THE WITCH OF EDMONTON.
ACT THE FIRST.
SCENE I.—The neighbourhood of Edmonton. A Room in the House of Sir Arthur Clarington.
Enter Frank Thorney and Winnifred, who is with child.
Frank. Come, wench; why, here’s a business soon dispatched:
Thy heart I know is now at ease; thou need’st not
Fear what the tattling gossips in their cups
Can speak against thy fame; thy child shall know
Whom to call dad now.
Win. You have here discharged
The true part of an honest man; I cannot
Request a fuller satisfaction
Than you have freely granted: yet methinks
’Tis an hard case, being lawful man and wife,
We should not live together.
Frank. Had I failed
In promise of my truth to thee, we must
Have then been ever sundered; now the longest
Of our forbearing either’s company
Is only but to gain a little time
For our continuing thrift; that so hereafter
The heir that shall be born may not have cause
To curse his hour of birth, which made him feel
The misery of beggary and want,—
Two devils that are occasions to enforce
A shameful end. My plots aim but to keep
My father’s love.
Win. And that will be as difficult
To be preserved, when he shall understand
How you are married, as it will be now,
Should you confess it to him.
Frank. Fathers are
Won by degrees, not bluntly, as our masters
Or wrongèd friends are; and besides I’ll use
Such dutiful and ready means, that ere
He can have notice of what’s past, th’ inheritance
To which I am born heir shall be assured;
That done, why, let him know it: if he like it not,
Yet he shall have no power in him left
To cross the thriving of it.