Literature Network » William Congreve » The Way of the World » Scene IX.

Scene IX.

MIRABELL, WAITWELL.

WAITWELL
Sir Rowland, if you please. The jade's so pert upon her preferment she forgets herself.

MIRABELL
Come, sir, will you endeavour to forget yourself--and transform into Sir Rowland?

WAITWELL
Why, sir, it will be impossible I should remember myself. Married, knighted, and attended all in one day! 'Tis enough to make any man forget himself. The difficulty will be how to recover my acquaintance and familiarity with my former self, and fall from my transformation to a reformation into Waitwell. Nay, I shan't be quite the same Waitwell neither--for now I remember me, I'm married, and can't be my own man again.

Ay, there's my grief; that's the sad change of life: To lose my title, and yet keep my wife.

Literature Network » William Congreve » The Way of the World » Scene IX.