CLARE.  Do you but think so?

SCAR.  Nay, I see you are a very perfect proper gentlewoman.

CLARE.  It is great pity then I should be alone without a proper man.

SCAR.  Your father says I shall marry you.

CLARE.  And I say, God forbid, sir! alas, I am a great deal too young.

SCAR.  I love thee, by my troth.

CLARE.  O, pray you do not so; for then you stray from the steps of gentility; the fashion among them is to marry first, and love after by leisure.

SCAR.  That I do love thee, here by heaven I swear, And call it as a witness to this kiss.

CLARE.  You will not enforce me, I hope, sir?

SCAR.  Make me this woman’s husband! thou art my Clare: 
Accept my heart, and prove as chaste as fair.

CLARE.  O God! you are too hot in your gifts; should I accept them, we should have you plead nonage some half a year hence, sue for reversement, and say the deed was done under age.

SCAR.  Prythee, do not jest.

CLARE.  No (God is my record), I speak in earnest:  and desire to know
Whether ye mean to marry me, yea or no?

SCAR.  This hand thus takes thee as my loving wife.

CLARE.  For better, for worse.

SCAR.  Ay, till death us depart,[342] love.

CLARE.  Why, then, I thank you, sir, and now I am like to have
That I long look’d for—­a husband. 
How soon from our own tongues is the word said
Captives our maiden-freedom to a head!

SCAR.  Clare, you are now mine, and I must let you know,
What every wife doth to her husband owe: 
To be a wife, is to be dedicate,
Not to a youthful course, wild and unsteady,
But to the soul of virtue, obedience,
Studying to please, and never to offend. 
Wives have two eyes created, not like birds
To roam about at pleasure, but for[343] sentinels,
To watch their husbands’ safety as their own. 
Two hands; one’s to feed him, the other herself: 
Two feet, and one of them is their husbands’. 
They have two of everything, only of one,
Their chastity, that should be his alone. 
Their very thoughts they cannot term their own.[344]
Maids, being once made wives, can nothing call
Rightly their own; they are their husbands’ all: 
If such a wife you can prepare to be,
Clare, I am yours:  and you are fit for me.

CLARE.  We being thus subdued, pray you know then,
As women owe a duty, so do men. 
Men must be like the branch and bark to trees,
Which doth defend them from tempestuous rage,
Clothe them in winter, tender them in age: 
Or as ewes love unto their eanlings gives,[345]
Such should be husbands’ custom to their wives. 
If it appear to them they’ve stray’d amiss,
They only must rebuke them with a kiss;
Or clock them, as hens chickens, with kind call,
Cover them under wing, and pardon all: 
No jars must make two beds, no strife divide them,
Those betwixt whom a faith and troth is given,
Death only parts, since they are knit by heaven: 
If such a husband you intend to be,
I am your Clare, and you are fit for me.