Chapter Provoked Husband to Psycarpax of P by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Provoked Husband to Psycarpax

Provoked Husband The, a comedy by Cibber and Vanbrugh. The “provoked husband” is lord Townly, justly annoyed at the conduct of his young wife, who wholly neglects her husband and her home duties for a life of gambling and dissipation. The husband, seeing no hope of amendment, resolves on a separate maintenance; but then the lady’s eyes are opened—she promises amendment, and is forgiven.

(This comedy was Vanbrugh’s Journey to London, left unfinished at his death. Cibber took it, completed it, and brought it out under the title of The Provoked Husband, 1728.)

Provoked Wife (The, lady Brute, the wife of sir John Brute, who, by his ill manners, brutality, and neglect, is “provoked” to intrigue with one Constant. The intrigue is not of a very serious nature, since it is always interrupted before it makes head. At the conclusion, sir John says—

Surly I may be, Stubborn I am not,
For I have both forgiven and forgot.
   —Sir F. Vanbrugh (1697).

Provost of Bruges (The), a tragedy based on “The Serf,” in Leitch Ritchie’s Romance of History. Published anonymously in 1836; the author is S. Knowles. (For the plot, see Bertulphe, p. 115.)

Prowler (Hugh), any vagrant or highwayman.

For fear of Hugh Prowler, get home with the rest.
Tusser: Five Hundred Points of Good
   —Husbandry, xxxiii. 25 (1557).

Prudence (Mistress), the lady attendant on Violet ward of lady Arundel. When Norman “the sea-captain” made love to Violet, Mistress Prudence remonstrated, “What will the countess say if I allow myself to see a stranger speaking to her ward?” Norman clapped a guinea on her left eye, and asked, “What see you now?” “Why, nothing with my left eye,” she answered, “but the right has still a morbid sensibility.” “Poor thing!” said Norman; “this golden ointment soon will cure it. What see you now, my Prudence?” “Not a soul,” she said.—Lord Lytton: The Sea-Captain (1839).

Prudens, the wife of Melibeus in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (“The Host’s Tale,” in prose, 1388).

Prudes for proctors; dowagers for deans.—Tennyson: prologue of The Princess (1830).

Prudhomme (Joseph), “pupil of Brard and Saint-Omer,” caligraphist and sworn expert in the courts of law. Joseph Prudhomme is the synthesis of bourgeois imbecility; radiant, serene, and self satisfied; letting fall from his fat lips “one weak, washy, everlasting flood” of peurile aphorisms and inane circumlocutions. He says, “The car of the state floats on a precipice.” “This sword is the proudest day of my life.”—Henri Monnier: Grandeur et Décadence de Joseph Prudhomme (1852).

No creation of modern fiction ever embodied a phase of national character with such original power as that of “M. Joseph Prudhomme.”… “Podsnap,” his English parallel, is more self-contained, more ponderous and less polite. …In 1857 Monnier turned his piece into a bulky volume, entitled Vie et Opinions de M. Joseph Prudhomme.

Prue (Miss), a schoolgirl still under the charge of a nurse, very precocious and very injudiciously brought up. Miss Prue is the daughter of Mr. Foresight a mad astrologer, and Mrs. Foresight a frail nonentity.—Congreve: Love for Love (1695).

The love-scene between jack Bannister [1760–1836], as “Tattle,” and “Miss Prue,” when this latter part was acted by Mrs. Jordan, was probably never surpassed in rich natural comedy.—F. Reynolds.

Prunes and Prisms, the words which give the lip the right plie of the highly aristocratic mouth, as Mrs. General tells Amy Dorrit.