The Dramatic Works Author:Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE OLD MAID. (A COMEDY IN THREE ACTS.) Non tu mine liominum mores Tides ? Dum dos fit, nullum vitium vitio vertitur.—Plauhtt. ' Tb Old Maid" was wri... more »tten at Leipzig daring the yean 1716—1748 DRAMATIS PERSONA Fraulein Ohldinn. Lelio, her cousin. Lisette, maid to Fraulein Ohldinh. Herr Oront. Frau Oront. Herr Von Stamp, a captain. Peter, a cake seller. Cutandeb, a friend of Lelio. Erausel, a poet. A Tailor. Herr Rehfuss. The scene is in a parlour. THE OLD MAID. ACT I. Scene I.—Fraulein Ohldinn, Herr Oront, Frau Oront Herr Or. Ah ! What whims! One never grows too old for that. And how old are you, then ? How long is it since I saw you carried in the nurse's arms ? If it were fifty, one, two well, say some fifty years Fr. Ohl. Why not eighty at once ? If you take me to be as old as that why do you talk to me so much about marriage ? Herr Or. Oh, come now! You are not too old ! Not at all too old. Four-and-fifty is just the right age for a marriageable girl. If the young things marry so young, it will follow that the children too Fr. Ohl. What nonsense about your four-and-fifty years ' Frau Or. (to Herr Or). Quite true. You are mistaken, my dear. You even cannot be as old as that yet. Herr Or. I should be glad if that were so. I and the century go along together. Have you anything to complain of in my age? Am I not still Frau Or. Well, well. Then you can't have known her as a child. Herr Or. Oh ! bother the child Fr. Ohl. If you won't believe me. my baptismal certificate can prove that I shall only be fifty next Easter. Herr Or. What? You only just fifty? I thought you were who knows how old. Ah ! Then your tine isnot past yet. Sarah was ninety years old. And to judge from your face, I should cert...« less