Epicoene; Or, The Silent Woman - Part 33
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Part 33

CUT: Yes, causa frigiditatis--

MOR: O, mine ears!

OTT: She may have libellum divortii against you.

CUT: Ay, divortii libellum she will sure have.

MOR: Good echoes, forbear.

OTT: If you confess it.

CUT: Which I would do, sir--

MOR: I will do any thing.

OTT: And clear myself in foro conscientiae--

CUT: Because you want indeed--

MOR: Yet more?

OTT: Exercendi potestate.

[EPICOENE RUSHES IN, FOLLOWED BY HAUGHTY, CENTAURE, MAVIS, MISTRESS OTTER, DAW, AND LA-FOOLE.]

EPI: I will not endure it any longer. Ladies, I beseech you, help me. This is such a wrong as never was offered to poor bride before: upon her marriage day, to have her husband conspire against her, and a couple of mercenary companions to be brought in for form's sake, to persuade a separation!

If you had blood or virtue in you, gentlemen, you would not suffer such ear-wigs about a husband, or scorpions to creep between man and wife.

MOR: O the variety and changes of my torment!

HAU: Let them be cudgell'd out of doors, by our grooms.

CEN: I'll lend you my foot-man.

MAV: We'll have our men blanket them in the hall.

MRS. OTT: As there was one at our house, madam, for peeping in at the door.

DAW: Content, i'faith.

TRUE: Stay, ladies and gentlemen; you'll hear, before you proceed?

MAV: I'd have the bridegroom blanketted too.

CEN: Begin with him first.

HAU: Yes, by my troth.

MOR: O mankind generation!

DAUP: Ladies, for my sake forbear.

HAU: Yes, for sir Dauphine's sake.

CEN: He shall command us.

LA-F: He is as fine a gentleman of his inches, madam, as any is about the town, and wears as good colours when he lists.

TRUE: Be brief, sir, and confess your infirmity, she'll be a-fire to be quit of you, if she but hear that named once, you shall not entreat her to stay: she'll fly you like one that had the marks upon him.

MOR: Ladies, I must crave all your pardons--

TRUE: Silence, ladies.

MOR: For a wrong I have done to your whole s.e.x, in marrying this fair, and virtuous gentlewoman--

CLER: Hear him, good ladies.

MOR: Being guilty of an infirmity, which, before I conferred with these learned men, I thought I might have concealed--

TRUE: But now being better informed in his conscience by them, he is to declare it, and give satisfaction, by asking your public forgiveness.

MOR: I am no man, ladies.

ALL: How!

MOR: Utterly unabled in nature, by reason of frigidity, to perform the duties, or any the least office of a husband.

MAV: Now out upon him, prodigious creature!

CEN: Bridegroom uncarnate!

HAU: And would you offer it to a young gentlewoman?

MRS. OTT: A lady of her longings?

EPI: Tut, a device, a device, this, it smells rankly, ladies.

A mere comment of his own.

TRUE: Why, if you suspect that, ladies, you may have him search'd--

DAW: As the custom is, by a jury of physicians.

LA-F: Yes faith, 'twill be brave.

MOR: O me, must I undergo that?

MRS. OTT: No, let women search him, madam: we can do it ourselves.