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| Filippo Juvarra Stage Design - Garden Loggia ca. 1700-1714 drawing Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
Mirabell: I would beg a little private audience too. – You had the tyranny to deny me last night, though you knew I came to impart a secret to you that concerned my love.
Millamant: You saw I was engaged.
Mirabell: Unkind. You had the leisure to entertain a herd of fools, things who visit you from their excessive idleness, bestowing on your easiness that time which is the encumbrance of their lives. How can you find delight in such society? It is impossible they should admire you, they are not capable. Or if they were, it should be to you as a mortification, for sure, to please a fool is some degree of folly.
Millamant: I please myself. Besides, sometimes to converse with fools is for my health.
Mirabell: Your health! Is there a worse disease than the conversation of fools?
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| Gaetano Lazzara Design for Illusionistic Wall Decoration with King and Soldiers 1703 drawing Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Anonymous artist Stage Design - Kitchen ca. 1700-1750 drawing Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| after Andrea Pozzo Perspective Design for Painted Dome and Cupola ca. 1725 drawing Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Anonymous artist Design for Proscenium and Plan for a Stage ca. 1725-50 drawing Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
Millamant: Come, don't look grave then. Well, what do you say to me?
Mirabell: I say that a man may as soon make a friend by his wit, or a fortune by his honesty, as win a woman with plain dealing and sincerity.
Millamant: Sententious Mirabell! Prithee don't look with that violent and inflexible wise face, like Solomon at the dividing of the child in an old tapestry-hanging.
Mirabell: You are merry, Madam, but I would persuade you for one moment to be serious.
Millamant: What, with that face? No, if you keep your countenance, 'tis impossible I should hold mine.
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| Anonymous artist Interior of a Temple ca. 1775-1800 drawing Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Anonymous Italian artist Stage Design - Prison Cellar ca. 1700-1800 drawing Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Anonymous Italian artist Stage Design - Prison Hall ca. 1700-1800 Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Louis-Jean Desprez Sepulchre in Egyptian style with Death carrying a Smoking Lamp ca. 1779-84 wash drawing Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Louis-Jean Desprez Sepulchre in Egyptian style with Caryatids and Lion ca. 1779-84 wash drawing Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Louis-Jean Desprez Sepulchre in Egyptian style with Sphinxes and Owl ca. 1779-84 wash drawing Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Louis-Jean Desprez Sepulchre in Egyptian style with Death seated and crowned ca. 1779-84 wash drawing Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Anonymous artist Stage Design - Palace Hall ca. 1775-1800 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
Millamant: Vanity! No – I'll fly and be followed to the last moment. Though I am upon the very verge of matrimony, I expect you should solicit me as much as if I were wavering at the grate of a monastery, with one foot over the threshold. I'll be solicited to the very last, nay and afterwards.
Mirabell: What, after the last?
Millamant: Oh, I should think I was poor and had nothing to bestow, if I were reduced to an inglorious ease and freed from the agreeable fatigues of solicitation.
Mirabell: But do not you know that when favors are conferred upon instant and tedious solicitation, that they diminish in their value, and that both the giver loses the grace and the receiver lessens his pleasure?
Millamant: It may be, in things of common application, but never sure in love. Oh, I hate a lover that can dare to think he draws a moment's air independent on the bounty of his mistress. There is not so impudent a thing in nature as the saucy look of an assured man, confident of success. The pedantic arrogance of a very husband has not so pragmatical an air. Ah! I'll never marry unless I am first made sure of my will and pleasure.
Mirabell: Would you have 'em both before marriage? Or will you be contented with the first now, and stay for the other till after grace?
Millamant: Ah, don't be impertinent. – My dear liberty, shall I leave thee? My faithful solitude, my darling contemplation, must I bid you then adieu? Aye, adieu – my morning thoughts, agreeable wakings, indolent slumbers, all ye douceurs, ye sommeils du matin, adieu – I can't do't, 'tis more than impossible – positively, Mirabell, I'll lie abed in a morning as long as I please.
Mirabell: Then I'll get up in a morning as early as I please.
Millamant: Ah! Idle creature, get up when you will – and d'ye hear, I won't be called names after I'm married, positively I won't be called names.
Mirabell: Names!
Millamant: Aye, as Wife, Spouse, My dear, Joy, Jewel, Love, Sweetheart, and the rest of that nauseous cant in which men and their wives are so fulsomely familiar – I shall never bear that . . .
– William Congreve, from The Way of the World (1700)
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| Anonymous French artist Design for semi-circular Council Chamber dedicated to Nature ca. 1795-97 drawing Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |