Wit at Several Weapons

Wit at Several Weapons is a seventeenth-century comedy. Sir Perfidious Oldcraft is a self-described practitioner and admirer of "wit." (In the English Renaissance, the word covered everything from prodigious intellect to cleverness, street smarts to practical jokes.) He is so dedicated to the concept that when his son Wittypate Oldcraft turns twenty-one, Sir Perfidious kicks him out of the family manse with no income, to live by his wits. The son decides to fulfill his father's dictates with a vengeance, by making his father his wits' target.