in How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad — Anonymous (?)
Metadata
Play
How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad
Author
Anonymous (?)
Year (catalogued)
1602
First performance
1602
Decade
1600s
Genre
Comedy
Play type
Adult Professional
Company
Worcester's Men
Speech prefix(es)
Hu. | Hue.
Words
165
Characters
782
Typicality
0.28 (cosine to cluster centroid)
TCP id
A19183
BritDrama no.
1303
Cluster
Cluster 9 — Boon companions & bluff banter
Important excerpts
No keyword-matching excerpt could be extracted (the cluster label doesn't share vocabulary with this character's speech).
Full speech
I thank you M. Pipkin, I have God many a good dish of broth by your means. I will answer you with the Like sweet Pipkin, gratias. My M. hath left his gloves behind where he sat in his chair, and hath sent me to fetch them, it is such and old snudge, he will not lose the dropping of his nose. Oh M. Pipkin, what do you mean, what do you mean M. Pipkin? Oh Pipkin, o God, o God, o Pipkin. Death quotha, he hath almost made me dead with beating. No by my faith M. Brabo, you have the better heart, at least you should have: I am sure you have more Iron and steel, then I have, do you lay hands upon him, I pro mice you I dare not. Truly M. Arthur we will use you as well as heart can think, the Justices fit to day, and my Mistress is chiefo, you shall command me. Come bear him away.
Plot summary
Plot — How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad
Arthur has fallen out with his wife: he is bored with her, convinced she is always trying to put him down, and also just wants a change. When the couple’s fathers visit in an effort to achieve marital harmony, they enter without knocking and find Arthur beating his wife. Her father, Old Lusam, wants to take her home, but she won’t go; she also resists the efforts of Anselm to seduce her and rejects his criticisms of her husband. The fathers take her to Justice Reason in an attempt to have him intervene, but she will not co-operate and Reason will not get involved. Arthur becomes attracted to Mary, a courtesan whom the schoolmaster Aminadab also loves. Seeing her attentions to Arthur makes Aminadab suicidal, and he tries to obtain poison from Fuller, pretending he needs it for an infestation of rats; Fuller gives him a sleeping potion instead. Seeking to kill his wife, Arthur takes the ‘poison’ from Aminadab under cover of preventing his suicide, and holds a dinner party. One of the guests is Mary, but Mistress Arthur puts up even with this, only to be given ‘poisoned’ wine by her husband. Mistress Arthur is interred in her family vault. Anselm visits her tomb and she revives when he kisses her. He hides her in his mother’s house, but despite everything she remains faithful to her husband 1601 and resists her rescuer’s advances. Meanwhile Arthur marries Mary, but finds her an unloving, disobedient, spendthrift wife. In an attempt to win her trust, he tells her the guilty secret of his first wife’s death; she immediately puts the information in the hands of the authorities, and Arthur is forced to go on the run. Rejected by his family, Arthur is starving when he calls at the house of Anselm’s mother and meets a young woman who reminds him of (and, of course, is) his ‘dead’ wife. Stricken with conscience, he gives himself up and is brought before Justice Reason. The use of poison, which it is felony to sell, brings first Aminadab, then Fuller into trouble, until Mistress Arthur arrives and the truth comes out. After his experiences, Arthur now knows the difference between a good wife and a bad.