Har. Because I contrived the mistake to make a little mirth you believe I like the man.
Emil. Mr. Bellair believes you love him.
Har. Men are seldom in the right when they guess at a woman’s mind; would she whom he loves loved him no better!
Busy [aside]. That’s e’en well enough, on all conscience.
Emil. Mr. Dorimant has a great deal of wit.
Har. And takes a great deal of pains to show it.
Emil. He’s extremely well-fashioned.
Har. Affectedly grave or ridiculously wild and apish.
Busy. You defend him still against your mother.
Har. I would not were he justly rallied, but I cannot hear any one underservedly railed at.
Emil Has your woman learnt the song you were so taken with?
Har. I was fond of a new thing; ’tis dull at second hearing.
Emil. Mr. Dorimant made it.
Busy. She knows it, madam, and has made me sing it at least a dozen times this morning.
Har. Thy tongue is as impertinent as thy fingers.
Emil. You have provoked her.
Busy. ’Tis but singing the song, and I shall appease her.
Emil. Prithee do.
Har. She has a voice will grate your ears worse than a cat-call, and dresses so ill she’s scarce fit to trick up a yeoman’s daughter on a holiday.
Busy [sings].
One evening on the plain,
And saw the charming Strephon wait
To tell the nymph his pain,
The threatening danger to remove
She whisper’d in her ear,
Ah, Phyllis! if you would not love,
This shepherd do not hear.
None ever had so strange an art
His passion to convey
Into a listening virgin’s heart,
And steal her soul away.
Fly, fly betimes, for fear you give
Occasion for your fate.
In vain, said she, in vain I strive,
Alas! ’tis now too late
Enter D
Dor. Music so softens and disarms the mind—
Har. That not one arrow does resistance find.
Dor. Let us make use of the lucky minute then.
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