The Works of Aphra Behn Volume IV

Excerpt

ARGUMENT.

Sir Patient Fancy, a hypochondriacal old alderman, has taken a second wife, Lucia, a young and beautiful woman who, although feigning great affection and the strictest conjugal fidelity, intrigues with a gallant, Charles Wittmore, the only obstacle to their having long since married being mutual poverty. However, the jealousy and uxoriousness of the doting husband give the lovers few opportunities; on one occasion, indeed, as Lady Fancy is entertaining Wittmore in the garden they are surprised by Sir Patient, and she is obliged to pass her visitor off under the name of Fainlove as a suitor to her step-daughter, Isabella, in which rôle he is accepted by Sir Patient. But Isabella has betrothed herself to Lodwick, a son of the pedantic Lady Knowell: whilst Lucretia Knowell loves Leander, the alderman’s nephew, in spite of the fact that she is promised by her mother to Sir Credulous Easy, a bumpkinly knight from Devonshire. Lodwick, who is a close friend of Leander, has been previously known to Sir Credulous, and resolving to trick and befool the coxcomb warmly welcomes him on his arrival in town. He persuades him, in fine, to give a ridiculous serenade, or, rather, a hideous hubbub, of noisy instruments under his mistress’ window. A little before this Lady Knowell with a party of friends has visited Sir Patient, who is her next neighbour, and the loud laughter, talking, singing and foppery so enrage the precise old valetudinarian that he resolves to leave London immediately for his country house, a circumstance which would be fatal to his wife’s amours. Wittmore and she, however, persuade him that he is very ill, and on being shown his face in a looking-glass that magnifies instead of in his ordinary mirror, he imagines that he is suddenly swollen and puffed with disease, and so is led lamenting to bed, leaving the coast clear for the nonce. Isabella, however, has made an assignation with Lodwick at the same time that her stepmother eagerly awaits her own gallant, and in the dark young Knowell is by mistake escorted to Lucia’s chamber, whilst Wittmore encountering Isabella, and thinking her Lady Fancy, proceeds to act so amorously that the error is soon discovered and the girl flies from his ardour. In her hurry, however, she rushes blundering into Lucia’s bedchamber, where she finds Knowell. It is just at this moment that Sir Credulous Easy’s deafening fanfare re-echoes in the street, and Sir Patient, awakened and half-stunned by the pandemonium, is led grouty and bawling into his wife’s room, where he discovers Knowell, whom Lucia has all this time taken for Wittmore; but her obvious confusion and dismay thereon are such that Sir Patient does not suspect the real happenings, which she glozes over with a tale concerning Isabella. Meantime the serenaders are dispersed and routed by a band of the alderman’s servants and clerks. Sir Credulous courting Lucretia, who loathes him, meets Knowell bringing a tale of a jealous rival able to poison at a distance by means of some strangely subtle venom, upon which the Devonshire knight conceals himself in a basket, hoping to be conveyed away to his old uncle in Essex, whereas he is merely transported next door....