SELBY
      I like your humour, and will meet your jest. 
      She should be one about my Katherine’s age;
      But not so old, by some ten years, in gravity. 
      One that would meet my mirth, sometimes outrun it;
      No puling, pining moppet, as you said,
      Nor moping maid, that I must still be teaching
      The freedoms of a wife all her life after: 
      But one, that, having worn the chain before,
      (And worn it lightly, as report gave out,)
      Enfranchised from it by her poor fool’s death,
      Took it not so to heart that I need dread
      To die myself, for fear a second time
      To wet a widow’s eye.

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      Some widows, sir,
      Hearing you talk so wildly, would be apt
      To put strange misconstruction on your words,
      As aiming at a Turkish liberty,
      Where the free husband hath his several mates,
      His Penseroso, his Allegro wife,
      To suit his sober, or his frolic fit.

      SELBY
      How judge you of that latitude?

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      As one,
      In European customs bred, must judge.  Had I
      Been born a native of the liberal East,
      I might have thought as they do.  Yet I knew
      A married man that took a second wife,
      And (the man’s circumstances duly weigh’d,
      With all their bearings) the considerate world
      Nor much approved, nor much condemn’d the deed.

      SELBY
      You move my wonder strangely.  Pray, proceed.

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      An eye of wanton liking he had placed
      Upon a Widow, who liked him again,
      But stood on terms of honourable love,
      And scrupled wronging his most virtuous wife—–­
      When to their ears a lucky rumour ran,
      That this demure and saintly-seeming wife
      Had a first husband living; with the which
      Being question’d, she but faintly could deny. 
      “A priest indeed there was; some words had passed,
      But scarce amounting to a marriage rite. 
      Her friend was absent; she supposed him dead;
      And, seven years parted, both were free to chuse.”

      SELBY
      What did the indignant husband?  Did he not
      With violent handlings stigmatize the cheek
      Of the deceiving wife, who had entail’d
      Shame on their innocent babe?

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      He neither tore
      His wife’s locks nor his own; but wisely weighing
      His own offence with her’s in equal poise,
      And woman’s weakness ’gainst the strength of man,
      Came to a calm and witty compromise. 
      He coolly took his gay-faced widow home,
      Made her his second wife; and still the first
      Lost few or none of her prerogatives. 
      The servants call’d her mistress still; she kept
      The keys, and had the total ordering
      Of the house affairs; and, some slight toys excepted,
      Was all a moderate wife would wish to be.