[From Congreve's pamphlet Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations (1698).]
Collier quotes numerous examples of profanity from Congreve's The Double Dealer in A Short View. In the present pamphlet, Congreve defends himself, at times invoking Jonson against Collier. He likens the dispute to the controversy between Zeal-of-the-Land Busy and the puppet in Bartholomew Fair: 'it is profane, and it is not profane, is all the Argument the thing will admit of on either side' (pp. 45-6); later (pp. 97-8) he takes issue with Collier over his selective quotations from Jonson's Discoveries. In the extract below, Congreve defends the line 'tho' Marriage makes Man and Wife One Flesh, it leaves 'em still Two Fools' ( The Double-Dealer (1694), Act 2.1, p. 18), which Collier, misquoting, had attacked as profaning Genesis 2.24 (p. 82).
*****************************************Though Marriage makes Man and Wife one Flesh, it leaves 'em STILL two Fools. Which by means of that little word still, signifies no more, than that if two People were Fools, before or when they were married, they would continue in all probability to be Fools still, and after they were married. Ben. Johnson is much bolder in the first Scene of his Bartholomew Fair. There he makes Littlewit say to his Wife - Man and Wife make one Fool; and yet I don't think he design'd even that, for a jest either upon Genesis 2. or St. Matthew 19. I have said nothing comparable to that, and yet Mr. Collier in his penetration has thought fit to accuse me of nothing less.
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