Monologue

Fainall Monologue from The Way of the World

From The Way of the World by William Congreve

male · defiant · 1:40 min

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Your fame I have preserved. Your fortune has been bestowed as the prodigality of your love would have it, in pleasures which we both have shared. Yet, had not you been false I had e’er this repaid it. ’Tis true—had you permitted Mirabell with Millamant to have stolen their marriage, my lady had been incensed beyond all means of reconcilement: Millamant had forfeited the moiety of her fortune, which then would have descended to my wife. And wherefore did I marry but to make lawful prize of a rich widow’s wealth, and squander it on love and you? (MRS. MAR: Deceit and frivolous pretence!) Death, am I not married? What’s pretence? Am I not imprisoned, fettered? Have I not a wife? Nay, a wife that was a widow, a young widow, a handsome widow, and would be again a widow, but that I have a heart of proof, and something of a constitution to bustle through the ways of wedlock and this world. Will you yet be reconciled to truth and me? (MRS. MAR: Impossible. Truth and you are inconsistent.—I hate you, and shall for ever.) For loving you?

About this piece

30s · anger · betrayal · love · identity · power

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