Scene XIV.

Love for Love

by William Congreve

[To them] MRS FRAIL.

TATTLE
Oh, unfortunate! She's come already; will you have
patience till another time? I'll double the number.

SCANDAL
Well, on that condition. Take heed you don't fail
me.

MRS FRAIL
I shall get a fine reputation by coming to see
fellows in a morning. Scandal, you devil, are you here too? Oh, Mr
Tattle, everything is safe with you, we know.

SCANDAL
Tattle -

TATTLE
Mum. O madam, you do me too much honour.

VALENTINE
Well, Lady Galloper, how does Angelica?

MRS FRAIL
Angelica? Manners!

VALENTINE
What, you will allow an absent lover -

MRS FRAIL
No, I'll allow a lover present with his mistress
to be particular; but otherwise, I think his passion ought to give
place to his manners.

VALENTINE
But what if he has more passion than manners?

MRS FRAIL
Then let him marry and reform.

VALENTINE
Marriage indeed may qualify the fury of his
passion, but it very rarely mends a man's manners.

MRS FRAIL
You are the most mistaken in the world; there is
no creature perfectly civil but a husband. For in a little time he
grows only rude to his wife, and that is the highest good breeding,
for it begets his civility to other people. Well, I'll tell you
news; but I suppose you hear your brother Benjamin is landed? And my
brother Foresight's daughter is come out of the country: I assure
you, there's a match talked of by the old people. Well, if he be but
as great a sea-beast as she is a land-monster, we shall have a most
amphibious breed. The progeny will be all otters. He has been bred
at sea, and she has never been out of the country.

VALENTINE
Pox take 'em, their conjunction bodes me no good,
I'm sure.

MRS FRAIL
Now you talk of conjunction, my brother Foresight
has cast both their nativities, and prognosticates an admiral and an
eminent justice of the peace to be the issue male of their two
bodies; 'tis the most superstitious old fool! He would have
persuaded me that this was an unlucky day, and would not let me come
abroad. But I invented a dream, and sent him to Artimedorus for
interpretation, and so stole out to see you. Well, and what will you
give me now? Come, I must have something.

VALENTINE
Step into the next room, and I'll give you
something.

SCANDAL
Ay, we'll all give you something.

MRS FRAIL
Well, what will you all give me?

VALENTINE
Mine's a secret.

MRS FRAIL
I thought you would give me something that would
be a trouble to you to keep.

VALENTINE
And Scandal shall give you a good name.

MRS FRAIL
That's more than he has for himself. And what
will you give me, Mr Tattle?

TATTLE
I? My soul, madam.

MRS FRAIL
Pooh! No, I thank you, I have enough to do to
take care of my own. Well, but I'll come and see you one of these
mornings. I hear you have a great many pictures.

TATTLE
I have a pretty good collection, at your service,
some originals.

SCANDAL
Hang him, he has nothing but the Seasons and the
Twelve Caesars--paltry copies--and the Five Senses, as
ill-represented as they are in himself, and he himself is the only
original you will see there.

MRS FRAIL
Ay, but I hear he has a closet of beauties.

SCANDAL
Yes; all that have done him favours, if you will
believe him.

MRS FRAIL
Ay, let me see those, Mr Tattle.

TATTLE
Oh, madam, those are sacred to love and
contemplation. No man but the painter and myself was ever blest with
the sight.

MRS FRAIL
Well, but a woman -

TATTLE
Nor woman, till she consented to have her picture
there too-- for then she's obliged to keep the secret.

SCANDAL
No, no; come to me if you'd see pictures.

MRS FRAIL
You?

SCANDAL
Yes, faith; I can shew you your own picture, and
most of your acquaintance to the life, and as like as at
Kneller's.

MRS FRAIL
O lying creature! Valentine, does not he lie? I
can't believe a word he says.

VALENTINE
No indeed, he speaks truth now. For as Tattle has
pictures of all that have granted him favours, he has the pictures of
all that have refused him: if satires, descriptions, characters, and
lampoons are pictures.

SCANDAL
Yes; mine are most in black and white. And yet
there are some set out in their true colours, both men and women. I
can shew you pride, folly, affectation, wantonness, inconstancy,
covetousness, dissimulation, malice and ignorance, all in one piece.
Then I can shew you lying, foppery, vanity, cowardice, bragging,
lechery, impotence, and ugliness in another piece; and yet one of
these is a celebrated beauty, and t'other a professed beau. I have
paintings too, some pleasant enough.

MRS FRAIL
Come, let's hear 'em.

SCANDAL
Why, I have a beau in a bagnio, cupping for a
complexion, and sweating for a shape.

MRS FRAIL
So.

SCANDAL
Then I have a lady burning brandy in a cellar with a
hackney coachman.

MRS FRAIL
O devil! Well, but that story is not true.

SCANDAL
I have some hieroglyphics too; I have a lawyer with
a hundred hands, two heads, and but one face; a divine with two
faces, and one head; and I have a soldier with his brains in his
belly, and his heart where his head should be.

MRS FRAIL
And no head?

SCANDAL
No head.

MRS FRAIL
Pooh, this is all invention. Have you never a
poet?

SCANDAL
Yes, I have a poet weighing words, and selling
praise for praise, and a critic picking his pocket. I have another
large piece too, representing a school, where there are huge
proportioned critics, with long wigs, laced coats, Steinkirk cravats,
and terrible faces; with cat-calls in their hands, and horn-books
about their necks. I have many more of this kind, very well painted,
as you shall see.

MRS FRAIL
Well, I'll come, if it be but to disprove you.