Monologue text
Act V, Scene I. Lydia, having learned her poor "Ensign Beverley" is really the wealthy and approved Captain Absolute, complains to Julia that her dream of a scandalous romantic elopement has collapsed into an ordinary respectable wedding.
Why, is it not provoking? when I thought we were coming to the prettiest distress imaginable, to find myself made a mere Smithfield bargain of at last! There, had I projected one of the most sentimental elopements!--so becoming a disguise!--so amiable a ladder of ropes!--Conscious moon--four horses--Scotch parson--with such surprise to Mrs. Malaprop--and such paragraphs in the newspapers!--Oh, I shall die with disappointment!
Now--sad reverse!--what have I to expect, but, after a deal of flimsy preparation with a bishop's license, and my aunt's blessing, to go simpering up to the altar; or perhaps be cried three times in a country church, and have an unmannerly fat clerk ask the consent of every butcher in the parish to join John Absolute and Lydia Languish, spinster! Oh that I should live to hear myself called spinster!
How mortifying, to remember the dear delicious shifts I used to be put to, to gain half a minute's conversation with this fellow! How often have I stole forth, in the coldest night in January, and found him in the garden, stuck like a dripping statue! There would he kneel to me in the snow, and sneeze and cough so pathetically! he shivering with cold and I with apprehension! and while the freezing blast numbed our joints, how warmly would he press me to pity his flame, and glow with mutual ardour!--Ah, Julia, that was something like being in love.
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