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Updated: May 24, 2025
Says I to Mirabell an hour ago, you know that is my name for Charles, for 'twas when he played Mirabell to my Millamant that we fell in love, 'Well, says I, 'I'll lay a gold-furbelowed scarf to a yard of oznaburg that Mr.
Should sorrow come, as 'twill, to cast me down, Or Death, as come he must, to hush my voice, Her laugh would wake me just as now it thrills me That little, giddy laugh wherewith she kills me. 'Tis the very laugh of Millamant in The Way of the World! 'I would rather, cried Hazlitt, 'have seen Mrs. Abington's Millamant than any Rosalind that ever appeared on the stage. Such wishes are idle.
But the hysterical rants of Lady Wishfort, the meeting of Witwould and his brother, the country knight's courtship and his subsequent revel, and, above all, the chase and surrender of Millamant, are superior to anything that is to be found in the whole range of English comedy from the civil war downwards. It is quite inexplicable to us that this play should have failed on the stage.
It was not surely from want of wit that Shakspeare adopted so different a manner. Benedick and Beatrice throw Mirabel and Millamant into the shade. All the good sayings of the facetious houses of Absolute and Surface might have been clipped from the single character of Falstaff, without being missed.
Millamant is an admirable, almost a lovable heroine. It is a piece of genius in a writer to make a woman's manner of speech portray her. You feel sensible of her presence in every line of her speaking.
Millamant side by side with Celimene is an example of how far the realistic painting of a character can be carried to win our favour; and of where it falls short. Celimene is a woman's mind in movement, armed with an ungovernable wit; with perspicacious clear eyes for the world, and a very distinct knowledge that she belongs to the world, and is most at home in it.
I think I have and the horrid man looks as if he thought so too, etc. etc. One hears the tones, and sees the sketch and colour of the whole scene in reading it. Celimene is behind Millamant in vividness. An air of bewitching whimsicality hovers over the graces of this Comic heroine, like the lively conversational play of a beautiful mouth. But in wit she is no rival of Celimene.
And, after an interview: 'Think of you! To think of a whirlwind, though 'twere in a whirlwind, were a case of more steady contemplation, a very tranquillity of mind and mansion. There is a picturesqueness, as of Millamant and no other, in her voice, when she is encouraged to take Mirabel by Mrs. Fainall, who is 'sure she has a mind to him': MILLAMANT: Are you?
A tress of hair, fallen from its fastening, swept her cheek; Mistress Stagg, stooping, put it in place behind the small ear, then straightened herself and pressed her Mirabell's arm. "Well, my love," quoth that gentleman, clearing his throat. "'Great minds, like Heaven, are pleased in doing good. My Millamant, declare your thoughts!" Mistress Stagg twisted her apron hem between thumb and finger.
His Way of the World might be called The Conquest of a Town Coquette, and Millamant is a perfect portrait of a coquette, both in her resistance to Mirabel and the manner of her surrender, and also in her tongue. The wit here is not so salient as in certain passages of Love for Love, where Valentine feigns madness or retorts on his father, or Mrs.
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