The Way of the World by William Congreve (bts book recommendations TXT) 📕

intent
To mark out who by characters are meant:
And though no perfect likeness they can trace,
Yet each pretends to know the copied face.
These, with false glosses, feed their own ill-nature,
And turn to libel what was meant a satire.
May such malicious fops this fortune find,
To think themselves alone the fools designed:
If any are so arrogantly vain,
To think they singly can support a scene,
And furnish fool enough to entertain.
For well the learned and the judicious know,
That satire scorns to stoop so meanly low,
As any one abstracted fop to show.
For, as when painters form a matchless face,
They from each fair one catch some different grace,
And shining features in one portrait blend,
To which no single beauty must pretend:
So poets oft do in one piece expose
Whole belles assemblées of coquettes and beaux. Endnotes

“Audire est operae⁠ ⁠… [laborent].” It is worth your while, ye that do not wish well to adulterers, to hear how they are hampered on all sides. —⁠Lib. i. Satires i. 2, 37 ↩

“[Haec] metuat⁠ ⁠… deprensa.” The woman fears for her dowry, if she should be caught. —⁠Lib. i. Satires i. 2, 131 ↩

“In the vain joys⁠ ⁠… sight.” A reference is here intended to the various shows which were common in London at this time. ↩

“Though senseless⁠ ⁠… quaff.” That is, the well-dressed barbarians know Congreve’s name and power, such is his compelling art, although they are insensible to mirth except when they laugh and feel wise only when they have drunk to a surfeit. ↩

“Arabella.” A generic name for the ladies who inspire the lyrical name of Congreve. ↩

“William glorious in the strife.” The allusion is to Congreve’s “To the King, on the Taking of Namour.” ↩

“In her own nest⁠ ⁠… changeling-kind.” An allusion to the fact that the cuckoo lays her eggs in the nest of another bird. ↩

“The squire⁠ ⁠… undone.” “Buttered still,” that is, always heaped with loathsome flattery. ↩

“declares for a friend and ratafia.” Ratafia was a liqueur flavoured with fruits. The term “friend” as here used indicates a man friend with whom one’s relations were not entirely unquestionable. ↩

“continued in the state of nature.” Gone on in a natural course. ↩

“the last canonical hour.” Canonical hours were hours prescribed by the canons when prayers might be said. ↩

“Pancras.” The Church of St. Pancras in the Fields. ↩

“Duke’s-place.” St. James’s Church, Duke’s-place, Aldgate, became notorious for the irregular marriages, under the name of Fleet marriages, that were to be purchased there. ↩

“Dame Partlet.” Partlet or Pertelote, the name of the hen in Chaucer’s “Nonne Preestes Tale.” ↩

“Rosamond’s Pond.” A famous meeting place of lovers, situated in the southwestern corner of St. James’s Park. ↩

“the monster in The Tempest.” Caliban. ↩

“commonplace of comparisons.” A collection of figures or quotations for the purposes of argument or conversation. ↩

“cinnamon-water.” A drink composed of sugar, water, and spirit flavoured with cinnamon. ↩

“he would slip you out of this chocolate-house.” He would slip out of this chocolate-house. This is an instance of the ethical dative. ↩

“thou wo’t tell me.” The form wo’t is a contraction of woulds’t. Compare also sha’t, above. ↩

“worse than a quaker hates a parrot.” Because the parrot is so talkative. ↩

“than a fishmonger hates a hard frost.” The work of the fish pedlar was made very disagreeable by cold weather. ↩

“the Mall.” A broad promenade in St. James’s Park, now the street known as Pall Mall. ↩

“transcendently.” An affectation in the fashionable speech of the day. ↩

“Penthesilea.” Queen of the Amazons. ↩

“you have a mask.” Masks were commonly worn in the eighteenth century. ↩

“like Mosca in The Fox⁠ ⁠… terms.” “To stand upon terms” is to dally over the terms of an agreement. Mosca in Ben Jonson’s comedy Volpone deceives the suitors of Volpone by making them believe that his master is about to die and make them his heirs. ↩

“the beau monde.” The world of fashion. ↩

“tift and tift.” A tift is a fit of perverse fretting, a humour. ↩

“You are not⁠ ⁠… fools.” From the general trend of the conversation it would seem that course is here used in the sense of a course of treatment in which fools are the chief medicinal agent. ↩

“like Solomon⁠ ⁠… hanging.” Such Biblical subjects often formed the basis for designs in tapestry. ↩

“B’w’y.” A contraction of “God be with you.” ↩

“Mopus.” A dull person. ↩

“Spanish paper.” Used for the complexion. ↩

“with a bit of nutmeg.” Nutmeg was much eaten in eighteenth-century England. ↩

“like Maritornes⁠ ⁠… Quixote.” Maritornes is a chambermaid with whom Don Quixote persists in being in love. ↩

“Quarles and Prynne.” Francis Quarles was a writer of sacred poems, author of Divine Emblems, one of the most popular works of the age. William Prynne was a lawyer and pamphleteer, author of Hisiriomastix, a savage attack upon the stage in the time of Charles I. ↩

“The Short View of the Stage.” The full title is A Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage. This righteous attack on the abuses of the stage by Jeremy Collier caused a flutter among the playwrights and in time