Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

A Woman Will Have Her Will

John Fletcher (1579–1625)

TELL me, what is that only thing

For which all women long;

Yet, having what they most desire,

To have it does them wrong?

’Tis not to be chaste, nor fair,—

Such gifts malice may impair—

Richly trimmed, to walk and ride,

Or to wanton unespied;

To preserve an honest name,

And so to give it up to fame;

These are toys. In good or ill

They desire to have their will;

Yet, when they have it, they abuse it,

For they know not how to use it.