MRS. MAR. Prove it, madam? What, and have your name prostituted in
a public court; yours and your daughter's reputation worried at the
bar by a pack of bawling lawyers? To be ushered in with an OH YES
of scandal, and have your case opened by an old fumbling leacher in
a quoif like a man midwife; to bring your daughter's infamy to
light; to be a theme for legal punsters and quibblers by the
statute; and become a jest, against a rule of court, where there is
no precedent for a jest in any record, not even in Doomsday Book.
To discompose the gravity of the bench, and provoke naughty
interrogatories in more naughty law Latin; while the good judge,
tickled with the proceeding, simpers under a grey beard, and fidges
off and on his cushion as if he had swallowed cantharides, or sate
upon cow-itch.
LADY. Oh, 'tis very hard!
MRS. MAR. And then to have my young revellers of the Temple take
notes, like prentices at a conventicle; and after talk it over again
in Commons, or before drawers in an eating-house.
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