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)
Splay. | Spl.
Words
405
Characters
2042
Typicality
0.37 (cosine to cluster centroid)
TCP id
A19183
BritDrama no.
1303
Cluster
Cluster 24 — Gods, cupids & celestial agents
Important excerpts
No keyword-matching excerpt could be extracted (the cluster label doesn't share vocabulary with this character's speech).
Full speech
Prithee, prithee, in faith that conjunction continued pulatiue, is that partly of speech that I live by. She that is passed it, and prays for them that may. Oh do not name that name, do you not know That I could never endure to hear that name. But if your man would leave us, I would read The lesson that last night I promised you. Daughter attend, for I will tell thee now What in my young days I my self have tried: Be ruled by me and I will make thee rich. You God be praised are fair, and as they say Full of good parts, you have be often tried To be a woman of good carriage, Which in my mind is very commendable. And as I told you, being fair, I wish Sweet daughter you were as fortunate. When any suitor comes to ask thy love, Look not into his words, but into his sleeve. If thou canst learn what language his purse speaks, Be ruled by that, thats golden eloquence. Money can make a slavering tongue speak plain. If he that loves thee be deformed and rich, Accept his love, gold hides deformity. Gold can make limping Vulcan walk upright, Make squint eyes look strait, a crabd face look smooth, Guilds Copernoses, makes them look Like gold. Fills ages wrinkles up and makes a face As old as Nestor's, look as young as Cupid's. If thou wilt arm thy self against all shifts, Regard all men according to their gifts. This if thou practice, thou when I am dead Wilt say old mother Splay soft laid thy head. God for thy passion what a beast am I, To scar the bird that to the net would fly. Not have her will, Gods passion I say still, A woman's no body that wants her will. A what? speak, a what? touch her, and touch me; taint her, and taint me, speak, speak, a what? How do you mean that? And whats that? And why? I say I care not whose dead or alive, So by their lives or death's, we two may thrive. I herd him too, pity but he should die, And Like a murderer be sent to hell, To poison her, and make her belly swell. How can it be the poysan took no force? She lives with that which would have killed a horse. No indeed they were not.
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.