Scene VI.

Love for Love

by William Congreve

FORESIGHT, MISS PRUE

MISS PRUE
O father, why will you let him go? Won't you make
him to be my husband?

FORESIGHT
Mercy on us, what do these lunacies portend?
Alas! he's mad, child, stark wild.

MISS PRUE
What, and must not I have e'er a husband, then?
What, must I go to bed to nurse again, and be a child as long as
she's an old woman? Indeed but I won't. For now my mind is set upon
a man, I will have a man some way or other. Oh, methinks I'm sick
when I think of a man; and if I can't have one, I would go to sleep
all my life: for when I'm awake it makes me wish and long, and I
don't know for what. And I'd rather be always asleep than sick with
thinking.

FORESIGHT
Oh, fearful! I think the girl's influenced too.
Hussy, you shall have a rod.

MISS PRUE
A fiddle of a rod, I'll have a husband; and if you
won't get me one, I'll get one for myself. I'll marry our Robin the
butler; he says he loves me, and he's a handsome man, and shall be my
husband: I warrant he'll be my husband, and thank me too, for he
told me so.