ARNOLPHE from “The School for Wives”

Age: 50s

A wealthy man and guardian of Agnès, Arnolphe is also known as Monsieur de la Souche. He thinks himself clever and protected from any future unfaithfulness when he has his ward, at age four, confined to a convent until she comes of age, when he plans to marry her. However, his misguided plan leads to some unexpected complications.

ARNOLPHE

The evil star that’s hounding me to death

Gives me no time in which to catch my breath!

Must I, again and again, be forced to see

My measures foiled through their complicity?

Shall I, at my ripe age, be duped, forsooth,

By a green girl and by a hairbrained youth?

For twenty years I’ve sagely contemplated

The woeful lives of men unwisely mated,

And analyzed with care the slips whereby

The best-planned marriages have gone awry;

Thus schooled by others’ failures I felt that I’d

Be able, when I chose a bride,

To ward off all mischance, and be protected

From griefs to which so many are subjected;

I took, to the end, all the shrewd and wise

Precautions which experience could devise;

Yet, as if fate had made the stern decision

That no man living should escape derision,

I find, for all my pondering of this

Great matter, all my keen analysis,

The twenty years and more which I have spent

In planning to escape the embarrassment

So many husbands suffer from today.

That I’m as badly victimized as they.