The School for Scandal

have a score of tradesmen waiting in the antechamber, and an officer behind every guest’s chair. Joseph Surface This may be entertainment to you gentlemen but you pay very little regard to the feelings of a brother. Maria Aside. Their malice is intolerable!⁠—Aloud. Lady Sneerwell, I must wish you a good morning: I’m not very well. Exit Maria. Mrs. Candour O dear! She changes colour very much! Lady Sneerwell Do, Mrs. Candour, follow her; she may want your assistance. Mrs. Candour That I will, with all my soul ma’am⁠—Poor dear girl, who knows⁠—what her situation may be! Exit Mrs. Candour. Lady Sneerwell ’Twas nothing but that she could not bear to hear Charles reflected on, notwithstanding their difference. Sir Benjamin The young lady’s penchant is obvious. Crabtree But Benjamin, you mustn’t give up the pursuit for that: follow her and put her into good humour. Repeat her some of your own verses. Come, I’ll assist you. Sir Benjamin Mr. Surface, I did not mean to hurt you; but depend on’t your brother is utterly undone. Crabtree O Lud, aye! undone as ever man was⁠—can’t raise a guinea!⁠— Sir Benjamin And everything sold, I’m told, that was movable.⁠— Crabtree I have seen one that was at his house.⁠—Not a thing left but some empty bottles that were overlooked, and the family pictures, which I believe are framed in the wainscots⁠— Sir Benjamin And I’m very sorry to hear some bad stories against him. Going. Crabtree Oh, he has done many mean things, that’s certain! Sir Benjamin But, however, as he is your brother⁠—Going. Crabtree We’ll tell you all another opportunity. Exeunt Crabtree and Sir Benjamin. Lady Sneerwell Ha! ha! ’tis very hard for them to leave a subject they have not quite run down. Joseph Surface And I believe the abuse was no more acceptable to your ladyship than Maria. Lady Sneerwell I doubt her affections are farther engaged than we imagine. But the family are to be here this evening, so you may as well dine where you are, and we shall have an opportunity of observing farther; in the meantime, I’ll go and plot mischief and you shall study sentiment. Exeunt.

Scene II

A room in Sir Peter Teazle’s house.

	Enter Sir Peter Teazle.
Sir Peter	When an old bachelor marries a young wife, what is he to expect? ’T is now six months since Lady Teazle made me the happiest of men⁠—and I have been the most miserable dog ever since! We tifted a little going to church, and fairly quarrelled before the bells had done ringing. I was more than once nearly choked with gall during the honeymoon, and had lost all comfort in life before my friends had done wishing me joy. Yet I chose with caution⁠—a girl bred wholly in the country, who never knew luxury beyond one silk gown, nor dissipation above the annual gala of a race ball. Yet she now plays her part in all the extravagant fopperies of fashion and the town with as ready a grace as if she never had seen a bush or a grass-plot out of Grosvenor Square! I am sneered at by all my acquaintance, and paragraphed in the newspapers. She dissipates my fortune, and contradicts all my humours; yet the worst of it is, I doubt I love her, or I should never bear all this. However, I’ll never be weak enough to own it.
	Enter Rowley.3
Rowley	Oh! Sir Peter, your servant: how is it with you, sir?
Sir Peter	Very bad, Master Rowley, very bad. I meet with nothing but crosses and vexations.
Rowley	What can have happened to trouble you since yesterday?
Sir Peter	A good question to a married man!
Rowley	Nay, I’m sure, Sir Peter, your lady can’t be the cause of your uneasiness.
Sir Peter	Why, has anybody told you she was dead?
Rowley	Come, come, Sir Peter, you love her, notwithstanding your tempers don’t exactly agree.
Sir Peter	But the fault is entirely hers, Master Rowley. I am, myself, the sweetest-tempered man alive, and hate a teasing temper; and so I tell her a hundred times a day.
Rowley	Indeed!
Sir Peter	Ay; and what is very extraordinary, in all our disputes she is always in the wrong! But Lady Sneerwell, and the set she meets at her house, encourage the perverseness of her disposition. — Then, to complete my vexation, Maria, my ward, whom I ought to have the power of a father over, is determined to turn rebel too, and absolutely refuses the man whom I have long resolved on for her husband; meaning, I suppose, to bestow herself on his profligate brother.
Rowley	You know, Sir Peter, I have always taken the liberty to differ with you on the subject of these two young gentlemen. I only wish you may not be deceived in your opinion of the elder. For Charles, my life on’t! he will retrieve his errors yet. Their worthy father, once my honoured master, was, at his years, nearly as wild a spark; yet, when he died, he did not leave a more benevolent heart to lament his loss.
Sir Peter	You are wrong, Master Rowley. On their father’s death, you know, I acted as a kind of guardian to them both, till their uncle Sir Oliver’s liberality gave them an early independence: of course, no person could have more opportunities of judging of their hearts, and I was never mistaken in my life. Joseph is indeed a model of the young men of the age. He is a man of sentiment, and acts up to the sentiments he professes, but, for the other, take my word for ’t, if he had any grain of virtue by descent, he has dissipated it with the rest of his inheritance. Ah! my old friend, Sir Oliver, will be deeply mortified when he finds how part of his bounty has been misapplied.
Rowley	I am sorry to find you so violent against the young man, because this may be the most critical period of his fortune. I came hither with news that will surprise you.
Sir Peter	What!