SCENE: The Street.
BELLMOUR and VAINLOVE meeting.
BELL.Vainlove, and abroad so early! Good-morrow; I thought a contemplative lover could no more have parted with his bed in a morning than he could have slept in't.
VAIN.Bellmour, good-morrow.Why, truth on't is, these early sallies are not usual to me; but business, as you see, sir--[Showing Letters.] And business must be followed, or be lost.
BELL.Business! And so must time, my friend, be close pursued, or lost.Business is the rub of life, perverts our aim, casts off the bias, and leaves us wide and short of the intended mark.
VAIN.Pleasure, I guess you mean.
BELL.Ay; what else has meaning?
VAIN.Oh, the wise will tell you -
BELL.More than they believe--or understand.
VAIN.How, how, Ned! A wise man say more than he understands?
BELL.Ay, ay! Wisdom's nothing but a pretending to know and believe more than we really do.You read of but one wise man, and all that he knew was, that he knew nothing.Come, come, leave business to idlers and wisdom to fools; they have need of 'em.Wit be my faculty, and pleasure my occupation; and let Father Time shake his glass.Let low and earthly souls grovel till they have worked themselves six foot deep into a grave.Business is not my element--I roll in a higher orb, and dwell -VAIN.In castles i' th' air of thy own building.That's thy element, Ned.Well, as high a flier as you are, I have a lure may make you stoop.[Flings a Letter.]
BELL.I, marry, sir, I have a hawk's eye at a woman's hand.
There's more elegancy in the false spelling of this superscription [takes up the Letter] than in all Cicero.Let me see.--How now!--Dear PERFIDIOUS VAINLOVE.[Reads.]
VAIN.Hold, hold, 'slife, that's the wrong.
BELL.Nay, let's see the name--Sylvia!--how canst thou be ungrateful to that creature? She's extremely pretty, and loves thee entirely--I have heard her breathe such raptures about thee -VAIN.Ay, or anybody that she's about -
BELL.No, faith, Frank, you wrong her; she has been just to you.
VAIN.That's pleasant, by my troth, from thee, who hast had her.
BELL.Never--her affections.'Tis true, by heaven: she owned it to my face; and, blushing like the virgin morn when it disclosed the cheat which that trusty bawd of nature, night, had hid, confessed her soul was true to you; though I by treachery had stolen the bliss.
VAIN.So was true as turtle--in imagination--Ned, ha? Preach this doctrine to husbands, and the married women will adore thee.
BELL.Why, faith, I think it will do well enough, if the husband be out of the way, for the wife to show her fondness and impatience of his absence by choosing a lover as like him as she can; and what is unlike, she may help out with her own fancy.
VAIN.But is it not an abuse to the lover to be made a blind of?
BELL.As you say, the abuse is to the lover, not the husband.For 'tis an argument of her great zeal towards him, that she will enjoy him in effigy.
