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Enter Wife.

WIFE

What will become of us? All will away.

My husband never ceases in expense,

Both to consume his credit and his house.

And 'tis set down by Heaven's just decree,

That riot's child must needs be beggary.

Are these the virtues that his youth did promise:

Dice, and voluptuous meetings, midnight revels,

Taking his bed with surfeits, ill-beseeming

The ancient honour of his house and name?

And this not all: but that which kills me most,

When he recounts his losses and false fortunes,

The weakness of his state so much dejected,

Not as a man repentant, but half mad.

His fortunes cannot answer his expense.

He sits and sullenly locks up his arms,

Forgetting Heaven looks downward, which makes him

Appear so dreadful, that he frights my heart;

Walks heavily, as if his soul were on earth,

Not penitent for those his sins are past,

But vex'd his money cannot make them last:

A fearful melancholy, ungodly sorrow.

Oh, yonder he comes; now in despite of ills,

I'll speak to him, and I will hear him speak,

And do my best to drive it from his heart.

Enter Husband.

HUSBAND

Pox o' th' last throw, it made

Five hundred angels vanish from my sight!

I'm damn'd, I'm damn'd: the angels have forsook me!

Nay, 'tis certainly true, for he that has no coin

Is damn'd in this world: he's gone, he's gone.

WIFE

Dear husband.

HUSBAND

Oh, most punishment of all, I have a wife!

WIFE

I do entreat you as you love your soul,

Tell me the cause of this your discontent.

HUSBAND

A vengeance strip thee naked, thou art cause,

Effect, quality, property, thou, thou, thou!

Exit Husband.

WIFE

Bad turn'd to worse? Both beggary of the soul,

As of the body; and so much unlike

Himself at first, as if some vexed spirit

Had got his form upon him.

Enter Husband.

[Aside] He comes again.

He says I am the cause: I never yet

Spoke less than words of duty and of love.

HUSBAND

[Aside] If marriage be honourable, then cuckolds are honourable, for they cannot be made without marriage. Fool! What meant I to marry to get beggars? Now must my eldest son be a knave or nothing. He cannot live [upon the soil], for he will have no land to maintain him: that mortgage sits like a snaffle upon mine inheritance, and makes me chew upon iron. My second son must be a promoter, and my third a thief, or an underputter, a slave pander. Oh beggary, beggary, to what base uses does thou put a man!

I think the devil scorns to be a bawd:

He bears himself more proudly, has more care on's credit.

Base, slavish, abject, filthy poverty!

WIFE

Good sir, by all our vows I do beseech you,

Show me the true cause of your discontent.

HUSBAND

Money, money, money, and thou must supply me!

WIFE

Alas, I am the [least] cause of your discontent;

Yet what is mine, either in rings or jewels,

Use to your own desire. But I beseech you,

As y'are a gentleman by many bloods,

Though I myself be out of your respect,

Think on the state of these three lovely boys

You have been father to.

HUSBAND

Puh! Bastards, bastards,

Bastards, begot in tricks, begot in tricks!

WIFE

Heaven knows how those words wrong me! But I may

Endure these griefs among a thousand more.

Oh, call to mind your lands already [mortgaged],

Yourself wound into debts, your hopeful brother

At the university in bonds for you,

Like to be [seiz'd] upon. And--

HUSBAND

Ha' done, thou harlot,

Whom though for fashion sake I married,

I never could abide? Thinkst thou thy words

Shall kill my pleasures? Fall off to thy friends,

Thou and thy bastards beg: I will not bate

A whit in humour.--Midnight, still I love you

And revel in your company. Curb'd in,

Shall it be said in all societies

That I broke custom, that I flagg'd in money?

No, those thy jewels I will play as freely

As when my state was fullest.

WIFE

Be it so.

HUSBAND

Nay, I protest, and take that for an earnest!

Spurns her.

I will forever hold thee in contempt,

And never touch the sheets that cover thee;

But be divorc'd in bed till thou consent

Thy dowry