The Beaux-Stratagem: A comedy in five acts

Chapter 24: THE END.

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About This Book

The comedy follows two fashionable young men who travel to a provincial town under false pretences in pursuit of advantageous matches and entertainment. Their stratagems involve assumed identities and the complicity of a servant, producing a sequence of farcical encounters at an inn and among local families. A melancholy married woman and a benevolent matron figure into parallel plots that test loyalties and expose social pretensions. Through witty dialogue and comic reversals, the play satirizes affectation and hypocrisy while allowing moments of tenderness and moral ambiguity as schemes are revealed and relationships are renegotiated.

Both happy in their several states, we find:

Those parted by consent, and those conjoin'd.

Consent, if mutual, saves the lawyer's fee;

Consent is law enough to set you free.

[Exeunt Omnes.

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Contemporary spellings have been retained. Hyphenation is inconsistent throughout.

Two changes have been made to the text and can be identified in the body of the text by a grey dotted underline:

In Act 2, at the end of Scene 1, in Mrs. Sullen's penultimate speech,
"her" was changed to "here" in the sentence:
The Count is to dine here tonight.

In Act 3, Scene 2:
The words "Yes, faith", spoken by a non-existent character called Alon, were assigned to Aimwell in keeping with the dialogue sequence.