Epicoene; Or, The Silent Woman - LightNovelsOnl.com
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CUT: Yes, causa frigiditatis--
MOR: O, mine ears!
OTT: She may have libellum divortii against you.
CUT: Ay, divortii libellum she will sure have.
MOR: Good echoes, forbear.
OTT: If you confess it.
CUT: Which I would do, sir--
MOR: I will do any thing.
OTT: And clear myself in foro conscientiae--
CUT: Because you want indeed--
MOR: Yet more?
OTT: Exercendi potestate.
[EPICOENE RUSHES IN, FOLLOWED BY HAUGHTY, CENTAURE, MAVIS, MISTRESS OTTER, DAW, AND LA-FOOLE.]
EPI: I will not endure it any longer. Ladies, I beseech you, help me. This is such a wrong as never was offered to poor bride before: upon her marriage day, to have her husband conspire against her, and a couple of mercenary companions to be brought in for form's sake, to persuade a separation!
If you had blood or virtue in you, gentlemen, you would not suffer such ear-wigs about a husband, or scorpions to creep between man and wife.
MOR: O the variety and changes of my torment!
HAU: Let them be cudgell'd out of doors, by our grooms.
CEN: I'll lend you my foot-man.
MAV: We'll have our men blanket them in the hall.
MRS. OTT: As there was one at our house, madam, for peeping in at the door.
DAW: Content, i'faith.
TRUE: Stay, ladies and gentlemen; you'll hear, before you proceed?
MAV: I'd have the bridegroom blanketted too.
CEN: Begin with him first.
HAU: Yes, by my troth.
MOR: O mankind generation!
DAUP: Ladies, for my sake forbear.
HAU: Yes, for sir Dauphine's sake.
CEN: He shall command us.
LA-F: He is as fine a gentleman of his inches, madam, as any is about the town, and wears as good colours when he lists.
TRUE: Be brief, sir, and confess your infirmity, she'll be a-fire to be quit of you, if she but hear that named once, you shall not entreat her to stay: she'll fly you like one that had the marks upon him.
MOR: Ladies, I must crave all your pardons--
TRUE: Silence, ladies.
MOR: For a wrong I have done to your whole s.e.x, in marrying this fair, and virtuous gentlewoman--
CLER: Hear him, good ladies.
MOR: Being guilty of an infirmity, which, before I conferred with these learned men, I thought I might have concealed--
TRUE: But now being better informed in his conscience by them, he is to declare it, and give satisfaction, by asking your public forgiveness.
MOR: I am no man, ladies.
ALL: How!
MOR: Utterly unabled in nature, by reason of frigidity, to perform the duties, or any the least office of a husband.
MAV: Now out upon him, prodigious creature!
CEN: Bridegroom uncarnate!
HAU: And would you offer it to a young gentlewoman?
MRS. OTT: A lady of her longings?
EPI: Tut, a device, a device, this, it smells rankly, ladies.
A mere comment of his own.
TRUE: Why, if you suspect that, ladies, you may have him search'd--
DAW: As the custom is, by a jury of physicians.
LA-F: Yes faith, 'twill be brave.
MOR: O me, must I undergo that?
MRS. OTT: No, let women search him, madam: we can do it ourselves.
