Marwood were themselves guilty of adultery, Fainall ignores the accusation and points out that he will still create a scandal which would blacken the name of Mrs. When Mirabell brings two servants to prove that Fainall and Mrs. Fainall insists that he wants control of the rest of his wife's money and immediate management of Lady Wishfort's fortune. This move of Fainall's is now countered Millamant says that she will marry Sir Wilfull to save her own fortune. In addition, he wants assurance that Lady Wishfort will not marry so that Mrs. He demands that the balance of Millamant's fortune, now forfeit, be turned over to his sole control, as well as the unspent balance of Mrs. He unmasks Sir Rowland, the false uncle, and blackmails Lady Wishfort with the threat of her daughter's disgrace. In the same afternoon, Millamant accepts Mirabell's proposal and rejects Sir Wilfull Witwoud, Lady Wishfort's candidate for her hand.įainall now dominates the action. The two conspirators now have both motive and means for revenge. Marwood also overhears insulting comments about herself, she is vengeful and informs Fainall of the plot and the fact, which he suspected before, that his wife was once Mirabell's mistress. Fainall and Foible discussing the scheme, as well as Mirabell and Mrs. Mirabell bids fair to succeed until, unfortunately, Mrs. In the meantime, although Millamant quite clearly intends to have Mirabell, she enjoys teasing him in his state of uncertainty. Marwood, Fainall's mistress, is in love with Mirabell. Fainall is Mirabell's former mistress, and Mrs. There are hints at the fact that Fainall has been twice duped by Mirabell: Mrs. During Mirabell's card game with Fainall, it becomes clear that the relations between the two men are strained. When the play opens, Mirabell is impatiently waiting to hear that Waitwell is married to Foible. Millamant is aware of the plot, probably through Foible. Waitwell was to marry Foible, Lady Wishfort's maid, before the masquerade so that he might not decide to hold Lady Wishfort to her contract Mirabell is too much a man of his time to trust anyone in matters of money or love. Then Mirabell intends to reveal the actual status of the successful wooer and obtain her consent to his marriage to Millamant by rescuing her from this misalliance. He has arranged for a pretended uncle (his valet, Waitwell) to woo and win Lady Wishfort. Mirabell, therefore, has contrived an elaborate scheme. Unfortunately, Mirabell had earlier offended Lady Wishfort she had misinterpreted his flattery as love. Half of Millamant's fortune was under her own control, but the other half, 6,000 pounds, was controlled by Lady Wishfort, to be turned over to Millamant if she married a suitor approved by her aunt. There are, however, financial complications. Fainall ended (although this is not explicitly stated), and Mirabell found himself in love with Millamant, the niece and ward of Lady Wish-fort, and the cousin of his former mistress. In time, the liaison between Mirabell and Mrs. Fainall, for his part, married the young widow because he coveted her fortune to support his amour with Mrs. Fainall, a man whom he feels to be of sufficiently good reputation to constitute a respectable match, but not a man of such virtue that tricking him would be unfair. To protect her from scandal in the event of pregnancy, he has helped engineer her marriage to Mr. Fainall, the widowed daughter of Lady Wishfort. Mirabell, a young man-about-town, apparently not a man of great wealth, has had an affair with Mrs. Before the action of the play begins, the following events are assumed to have taken place.