CLARE. You will not enforce me, I hope, sir?
SCAR. Make me this woman's husband! thou art my Clare:
Accept my heart, and prove as chaste as fair.
CLARE. O God! you are too hot in your gifts; should I accept them, we should have you plead nonage some half a year hence, sue for reversement, and say the deed was done under age.
SCAR. Prythee, do not jest.
CLARE. No (God is my record), I speak in earnest: and desire to know
Whether ye mean to marry me, yea or no?
SCAR. This hand thus takes thee as my loving wife.
CLARE. For better, for worse.
SCAR. Ay, till death us depart,[342] love.
CLARE. Why, then, I thank you, sir, and now I am like to have
That I long look'd for—a husband.
How soon from our own tongues is the word said
Captives our maiden-freedom to a head!
SCAR. Clare, you are now mine, and I must let you know,
What every wife doth to her husband owe:
To be a wife, is to be dedicate,
Not to a youthful course, wild and unsteady,
But to the soul of virtue, obedience,
Studying to please, and never to offend.
Wives have two eyes created, not like birds
To roam about at pleasure, but for[343] sentinels,
To watch their husbands' safety as their own.
Two hands; one's to feed him, the other herself:
Two feet, and one of them is their husbands'.
They have two of everything, only of one,
Their chastity, that should be his alone.
Their very thoughts they cannot term their own.[344]
Maids, being once made wives, can nothing call
Rightly their own; they are their husbands' all:
If such a wife you can prepare to be,
Clare, I am yours: and you are fit for me.