She Stoops to Conquer

Act I

Scene I. A Chamber in an old-fashioned house.

Enter Mrs. Hardcastle and Mr. Hardcastle.

Mrs. Hardcastle

I vow, Mr. Hardcastle, you’re very particular. Is there a creature in the whole country but ourselves, that does not take a trip to town now and then, to rub off the rust a little? There’s the two Miss Hoggs, and our neighbour Mrs. Grigsby, go to take a month’s polishing every winter.

Hardcastle

Ay, and bring back vanity and affectation to last them the whole year. I wonder why London cannot keep its own fools at home! In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stagecoach. Its fopperies come down not only as inside passengers, but in the very basket.

Mrs. Hardcastle

Ay, your times were fine times indeed; you have been telling us of them for many a long year. Here we live in an old rumbling mansion, that looks for all the world like an inn, but that we never see company. Our best visitors are old Mrs. Oddfish, the curate’s wife, and little Cripplegate, the lame dancing-master; and all our entertainment your old stories of Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough. I hate such old-fashioned trumpery.

Hardcastle

And I love it. I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine; and I believe, Dorothy, Taking her hand. you’ll own I have been pretty fond of an old wife.

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