SCRUPLE

After his father’s bankruptcy, Plotwell has been forced to give up his riotous, hedonistic life as a law student and now lives soberly in the household of his uncle, Warehouse. He and his sister Penelope have also given up their plans to marry Susan and Timothy, the son and daughter of the merchant Seathrift. Now Penelope has absconded from her duties as a seamstress. Suspecting that his nephew’s reformation may be only an act, Warehouse pretends to go on a long voyage abroad in the company of Seathrift, who has similar doubts about Timothy: in their absence, the two heirs will reveal their true character, observed by the old men’s spies. No sooner has Warehouse gone than Plotwell meets up with two friends from the Inns of Court and arranges to visit a newly arrived lady, Aurelia, who is actually Penelope in disguise. Plotwell plans to revive her proposed marriage to Timothy; she in turn plans to get him married to Susan, who has disguised herself as Aurelia’s Puritan waiting-woman. London flocks to see a display of a strange fish caught in the New World. It turns out that some tricksters have dressed up the drunken Timothy as a sea creature, and when he wakes there is speculation about how the ‘fish’ can speak. (He learned human language from years of being on display, the tricksters explain.) Plotwell and Timothy learn that Warehouse and Seathrift have drowned. Noting that their heirs are insufficiently upset by the news, the merchants reveal themselves and disinherit the young men. Warehouse sends for the match-maker Bannswright to find him a wife so that he can beget a new son and heir with immediate effect. Bannswright proposes Aurelia as a suitable candidate, but helps Plotwell to circumvent the marriage. Timothy is sent in, posing as a knight, to woo and marry Aurelia, and Warehouse is offered Dorcas as a substitute. They are married by a French priest who is really one of the tricksters in disguise, using a text from Rabelais instead of a genuine marriage service. After Warehouse settles a portion of his estate on her, Dorcas refuses to sleep with her new husband or share his company, and insists on separate living arrangements within his house. Plotwell tells his uncle that she is a notorious whore who sleeps around and enjoys looking at pictures of men; he further arranges for the arrival of false news that Warehouse’s ships have been wrecked. The plan is that he will be the one who proves the marriage unsound and the ships safe, thereby…