For the initial joke in Service's "Madame la Marquise", cf.

A JOKE VERSIFIED

"Come, come," said Tom's father, "at your time of life,
There's no longer excuse for thus playing the rake---
It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife,"---
"Why, so it is, father---whose wife should I take?"

---Thomas Moore
In _The Stag's Hornbook_ (John McClure, ed.), Knopf, 1920