Perde 1
PHILEMATIUM
Why look at me and examine, how this becomes me.
SCAPHA
Thanks to your good looks, it happens that whatever you put on becomes you.
PHILOLACHES
Now then, for that expression, Scapha, I’ll make you some present or other to-day,
and I won’t allow you to have praised her for nothing who is so pleasing to me.
175
PHILEMATIUM
I don’t want you to flatter me.
SCAPHA
Really you are a very simple woman. Come now, would you rather be censured undeservedly, than be praised with truth? Upon my faith, for my own part, even though undeservedly, I’d much rather be praised than be found fault with with reason, or that other people should laugh at my appearance.
PHILEMATIUM
I love the truth; I wish the truth to be told me; I detest a liar.
SCAPHA
So may you love me, and so may your Philolaches love you, how charming you are.
PHILOLACHES
How say you, you hussy? In what words did you adjure? So may I love her? Why wasn’t So may she love me added as well? I revoke the present.
What I just now promised you is done for; you have lost the present.
185
SCAPHA
Troth, for my part I am surprised that you, a person so knowing, so clever, and so well educated, are not aware that you are acting foolishly.
PHILEMATIUM
Then give me your advice, I beg, if I have done wrong in anything.
SCAPHA
I’ faith, you certainly do wrong, in setting your mind upon him alone, in fact, and humouring him in particular in this way and slighting other men.
It’s the part of a married woman, and not of courtesans, to be devoted to a single lover.
190
PHILOLACHES
O Jupiter! Why, what pest is this that has befallen my house? May all the Gods and Goddesses destroy me in the worst of fashions, if I don’t kill this old hag with thirst, and hunger, and cold.
PHILEMATIUM
I don’t want you, Scapha, to be giving me bad advice.
SCAPHA
You are clearly a simpleton, in thinking that he’ll for everlasting be your friend and well-wisher. I warn you of that; he’ll forsake you by reason of age and satiety.
