and you have converted me. For now I am convinced that all women are not like Fortune, blind in bestowing favours, either on those who do not merit or who do not want 'em. 467

Ang. 'Tis an unreasonable accusation that you lay upon our sex: you tax us with injustice, only to cover your own want of merit. You would all have the reward of love; but few have the constancy to stay till it becomes your due. Men are generally hypocrites and infidels; they pretend to worship, but have neither zeal nor faith: how few, like Valentine, would persevere even to martyrdom, and sacrifice their interest to their constancy! In admiring me you misplace the novelty: "

The miracle to-day is, that we find

A lover true: not that a woman's kind.

478

[Exeunt omnes.

EPILOGUE

SPOKEN AT THE OPENING OF THE NEW HOUSE

BRACEGIRDLE

SURE Providence at first designed this place
To be the player's refuge in distress;

For still in every storm they all run hither,
As to a shed that shields 'em from the weather.
But thinking of this change which last befel us,
It's like what I have heard our poets tell us:
For when behind our scenes their suits are pleading,
To help their love sometimes they show their reading; "
And wanting ready cash to pay for hearts,

They top their learning on us and their parts."
Once of philosophers they told us stories,

Whom, as I think, they called — Py — Pythagories; "
I'm sure 'tis some such Latin name they give 'em,
And we, who know no better, must believe 'em.
Now to these men (say they) such souls were given,
That after death ne'er went to hell nor heaven,
But lived, I know not how, in beasts; and then,
When many years were passed, in men again.
Methinks, we players resemble such a soul;
That does from bodies, we from houses stroll.
Thus Aristotle's soul, of old that was,
May now be damned to animate an ass;
Or in this very house, for aught we know,

Is doing painful penance in some beau:

And thus, our audience, which did once resort
To shining theatres to see our sport,

Now find us tossed into a tennis-court."

IO

20

n

These walls but t'other day were filled with noise
Of roaring gamesters, and your damn-me boys;
Then bounding balls and rackets they encompast,
And now they're filled with jests, and flights, and bom-
bast!

I vow, I don't much like this transmigration,

Strolling from place to place by circulation;

Grant, Heaven, we don't return to our first station!
I know not what these think, but, for my part,
I can't reflect without an aching heart

How we should end in our original, a cart."
But we can't fear, since you're so good to save us
That you have only set us up to leave us.
Thus from the past, we hope for future grace
I beg it

And some here know I have a begging face.
Then pray continue this your kind behaviour,
For a clear stage won't do, without your favour.

30

40

THE WAY OF THE WORLD

Audire est operæ pretium, procedere recte
Qui mœchos non vultis, [ut omni parte laborent].n

- HORAT. Lib. i. Sat. 2. [37-38].

[Hæc] metuat, doti deprensa." — Ibid., Lib. i. Sat. 2. [131].

THE WAY OF THE WORLD

The Way of the World was first acted in 1700 at the Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and was not a success despite the brilliancy of the dialogue and the admirable quality of its representation of the foppish manners of the time. Congreve vowed in consequence never to write for the stage again; and he kept his word. The comedy was printed in the same year and has since been regarded as the author's masterpiece in comedy.