In most seminars for my third-year module on Restoration and eighteenth-century drama, we do some close reading. In the spring of 2021, we were studying George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem together, and I found myself trying to explain just how good this play is, by getting students to see how much he’s managed to pack into a single word. It’s a ‘No.’ that Mrs Sullen says to her husband, in the middle of the dispute between them that follows Mr Sullen’s interruption of a rendez-vous between his wife and Count Bellair. Mrs Sullen wanted such an interruption to happen, as part of a desperate plan to reawaken her husband’s affections.

Here’s the dialogue in question:

Enter Squire Sullen with his sword drawn.

Squire Sul. Hold, villain, hold!

Mrs. Sul. [Presenting a pistol.] Do you hold!

Squire Sul. What! murder your husband, to defend your bully!

Mrs. Sul. Bully! for shame, Mr. Sullen, bullies wear long swords, the gentleman has none; he’s a prisoner, you know. I was aware of your outrage, and prepared this to receive your violence; and, if occasion were, to preserve myself against the force of this other gentleman.

Count Bel. O madam, your eyes be bettre firearms than your pistol; they nevre miss.

Squire Sul. What! court my wife to my face!

Mrs. Sul. Pray, Mr. Sullen, put up; suspend your fury for a minute. 

Squire Sul. To give you time to invent an excuse!

Mrs. Sul. I need none.

Squire Sul. No, for I heard every syllable of your discourse.

Count Bel. Ah! and begar, I tink the dialogue was vera pretty.

Mrs. Sul. Then I suppose, sir, you heard something of your own barbarity?

Squire Sul. Barbarity! ‘oons, what does the woman call barbarity? Do I ever meddle with you?

Mrs. Sul. No.

How to pronounce the ‘No’ here? This is, after all, the moment when Mrs Sullen tells her husband to his face that he no longer cares for her.

There’s a weird balance of comic and tragic here. You could make the line almost pantomime, an arch ‘No’ that invited a snigger. But I prefer something a little sadder, a little softer: Mrs Sullen perhaps lowering the pistol, and delivering this word quietly – a ‘No’ that actually marks a moment of realizing that her husband cares so little for her that he won’t even meddle with her.

There’s a lot packed into those two letters.