“Lady T. What do you mean?

“Lord T. That women sometimes lose more than they are able to pay; and, if a creditor be a little pressing, the lady may be reduced to try if, instead of gold, the gentleman will accept of a trinket.

“Lady T. My lord, you grow scurrilous; you’ll make me hate you.  I’ll have you to know I keep company with the politest people in town, and the assemblies I frequent are full of such.

“Lord T. So are the churches—­now and then.

“Lady T. My friends frequent them, too, as well as the assemblies.

“Lord T. Yes; and would do it oftener if a groom of the chambers there were allowed to furnish cards to the company.

“Lady T. I see what you drive at all this while.  You would lay an imputation on my fame to cover your own avarice!  I might take any pleasures, I find, that were not expensive.

“Lord T. Have a care, madam; don’t let me think you only value your chastity to make me reproachable for not indulging you in everything else that’s vicious.  I, madam, have a reputation, too, to guard that’s dear to me as yours.  The follies of an ungoverned wife may make the wisest man uneasy; but ’tis his own fault if ever they make him contemptible.

“Lady T. My lord, you make a woman mad!

“Lord T. You’d make a man a fool.

“Lady T. If heaven has made you otherwise, that won’t be in my power.

“Lord T. Whatever may be in your inclination, madam, I’ll prevent you making me a beggar, at least.

“Lady T. A beggar!  Croesus, I’m out of patience.  I won’t come home till four to-morrow morning.

“Lord T. That may be, madam; but I’ll order the doors to be locked at twelve.

“Lady T. Then I won’t come home till to-morrow night.

“Lord T. Then, madam, you shall never come home again.” [Exit Lord Townley.

* * * * *

In the end, of course, Lady Townley is converted to the pleasures of domesticity, and ends the comedy by saying: 

  “So visible the bliss, so plain the way,
  How was it possible my sense could stray? 
  But now, a convert to this truth I come,
  That married happiness is never found from home.”

Perhaps when Oldfield delivered these virtuous lines, she thought to herself that happiness, even of the unmarried kind, was never very far away from home.  But she forgot sentiment when she came back to give the breezy epilogue: 

  “Methinks I hear some powder’d critics say
  Damn it, this wife reform’d has spoil’d the play! 
  The coxcombs should have drawn her more in fashion,
  Have gratify’d her softer inclination,
  Have tipt her a gallant, and clinch’d the provocation. 
  But there our bard stops short:  for ’twere uncivil
  T’have made a modern belle all o’er a devil! 
  He hop’d in honor of the sex, the age
  Would bear one mended woman—­on the stage.”