Horn. Faith, I can’t help it.

Pinch. Now, I think I have deserved your infinite friendship and kindness, and have showed myself sufficiently an obliging kind friend and husband; am I not so, to bring a letter from my wife to her gallant?

Horn. Ay, the devil take me, art thou, the most obliging, kind friend and husband in the world, ha! ha!

Pinch. Well, you may be merry, sir; but in short I must tell you, sir, my honour will suffer no jesting.

Horn. What dost thou mean?

Pinch. Does the letter want a comment? Then, know, sir, though I have been so civil a husband, as to bring you a letter from my wife, to let you kiss and court her to my face, I will not be a cuckold, sir, I will not.

Horn. Thou art mad with jealousy. I never saw thy wife in my life but at the play yesterday, and I know not if it were she or no. I court her, kiss her!

Pinch. I will not be a cuckold, I say; there will be danger in making me a cuckold.

Horn. Why, wert thou not well cured of thy last clap?

Pinch. I wear a sword.

Horn. It should be taken from thee, lest thou shouldst do thyself a mischief with it; thou art mad, man.

Pinch. As mad as I am, and as merry as you are, I must have more reason from you ere we part. I say again, though you kissed and courted last night my wife in man’s clothes, as she confesses in her letter—

Horn. Ha!

[Aside.

Pinch. Both she and I say, you must not design it again, for you have mistaken your woman, as you have done your man.

Horn. [aside]. O—I understand something now—[Aloud.] Was that thy wife! Why wouldst thou not tell me ’twas she? Faith, my freedom with her was your fault, not mine.

Pinch. Faith, so ’twas.

[Aside.

Horn. Fy! I’d never do’t to a woman before her husband’s face, sure.

Pinch. But I had rather you should do’t to my wife before my face, than behind my back; and that you shall never do.

Horn. No—you will hinder me.

Pinch. If I would not hinder you, you see by her letter she would.

Horn. Well, I must e’en acquiesce then, and be contented with what she writes.

Pinch. I’ll assure you ’twas voluntarily writ; I had no hand in’t you may believe me.