Doctor Caius
By gar, I see ’tis an honest woman.
Ford
Well, I promised you a dinner. Come, come, walk in the Park: I pray you, pardon me; I will hereafter make known to you why I have done this. Come, wife; come, Mistress Page. I pray you, pardon me; pray heartily, pardon me.
Page
Let’s go in, gentlemen; but, trust me, we’ll mock him. I do invite you to-morrow morning to my house to breakfast: after, we’ll a-birding together; I have a fine hawk for the bush. Shall it be so?
Ford
Any thing.
Sir Hugh Evans
If there is one, I shall make two in the company.
Doctor Caius
If dere be one or two, I shall make-a the turd.
Ford
Pray you, go, Master Page.
Sir Hugh Evans
I pray you now, remembrance tomorrow on the lousy knave, mine host.
Doctor Caius
Dat is good; by gar, with all my heart!
Sir Hugh Evans
A lousy knave, to have his gibes and his mockeries!
Exeunt
SCENE IV. A ROOM IN PAGE’S HOUSE.
Enter Fenton and Anne Page
Fenton
I see I cannot get thy father’s love;
Therefore no more turn me to him, sweet Nan.
Anne Page
Alas, how then?
Fenton
Why, thou must be thyself.
He doth object I am too great of birth —,
And that, my state being gall’d with my expense,
I seek to heal it only by his wealth:
Besides these, other bars he lays before me,
My riots past, my wild societies;
And tells me ’tis a thing impossible
I should love thee but as a property.
Anne Page
May be he tells you true.
Fenton
No, heaven so speed me in my time to come!
Albeit I will confess thy father’s wealth
Was the first motive that I woo’d thee, Anne:
Yet, wooing thee, I found thee of more value
Than stamps in gold or sums in sealed bags;
And ’tis the very riches of thyself
That now I aim at.
Anne Page
Gentle Master Fenton,
Yet seek my father’s love; still seek it, sir:
If opportunity and humblest suit
Cannot attain it, why, then,— hark you hither!
They converse apart
Enter Shallow, Slender, and Mistress Quickly
Shallow
Break their talk, Mistress Quickly: my kinsman shall speak for himself.
Slender
I’ll make a shaft or a bolt on’t: ’slid, ’tis but venturing.
Shallow
Be not dismayed.
Slender
No, she shall not dismay me: I care not for that, but that I am afeard.
Mistress Quickly
Hark ye; Master Slender would speak a word with you.
Anne Page
I come to him.
Aside
This is my father’s choice.
O, what a world of vile ill-favor’d faults
Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a-year!
Mistress Quickly
And how does good Master Fenton? Pray you, a word with you.
Shallow
She’s coming; to her, coz. O boy, thou hadst a father!
Slender
I had a father, Mistress Anne; my uncle can tell you good jests of him. Pray you, uncle, tell Mistress Anne the jest, how my father stole two geese out of a pen, good uncle.
Shallow
Mistress Anne, my cousin loves you.
Slender
Ay, that I do; as well as I love any woman in
Gloucestershire.
Shallow
He will maintain you like a gentlewoman.
Slender
Ay, that I will, come cut and long-tail, under the degree of a squire.
Shallow
He will make you a hundred and fifty pounds jointure.
Anne Page
Good Master Shallow, let him woo for himself.
Shallow
Marry, I thank you for it; I thank you for that good comfort. She calls you, coz: I’ll leave you.
Anne Page
Now, Master Slender,—
Slender
Now, good Mistress Anne,—
Anne Page
What is your will?
Slender
My will! ’od’s heartlings, that’s a pretty jest indeed! I ne’er made my will yet, I thank heaven; I am not such a sickly creature, I give heaven praise.
Anne Page
I mean, Master Slender, what would you with me?
Slender
Truly, for mine own part, I would little or nothing with you. Your father and my uncle hath made motions: if it be my luck, so; if not, happy man be his dole! They can tell you how things go better than I can: you may ask your father; here he comes.
Enter Page and Mistress Page
Page
Now, Master Slender: love him, daughter Anne.
Why, how now! what does Master Fenton here?
You wrong me, sir, thus still to haunt my house:
I told you, sir, my daughter is disposed of.
Fenton
Nay, Master Page, be not impatient.
Mistress Page
Good Master Fenton, come not to my child.
Page
She is no match for you.
Fenton
Sir, will you hear me?
Page
No, good Master Fenton.
Come, Master Shallow; come, son Slender, in.
Knowing my mind, you wrong me, Master Fenton.
Exeunt Page, Shallow, and Slender
Mistress Quickly
Speak to Mistress Page.
Fenton
Good Mistress Page, for that I love your daughter
In such a righteous fashion as I do,
Perforce, against all cheques, rebukes and manners,
I must advance the colours of my love
And not retire: let me have your good will.
Anne Page
Good mother, do not marry me to yond fool.
Mistress Page
I mean it not; I seek you a better husband.
Mistress Quickly
That’s my master, master doctor.
Anne Page
Alas, I had rather be set quick i’ the earth
And bowl’d to death with turnips!
Mistress Page
Come, trouble not yourself. Good Master Fenton,
I will not be your friend nor enemy:
My daughter will I question how she loves you,
And as I find her, so am I affected.
Till then farewell, sir: she must needs go in;
Her father will be angry.
Fenton
Farewell, gentle mistress: farewell, Nan.
Exeunt Mistress Page and Anne Page
Mistress Quickly
This is my doing, now: ‘Nay,’ said I, ‘will you cast away your child on a fool, and a physician? Look on Master Fenton:’ this is my doing.
Fenton
I thank thee; and I pray thee, once to-night
Give my sweet Nan this ring: there’s for thy pains.
Mistress Quickly
Now heaven send thee good fortune!
Exit Fenton
A kind heart he hath: a woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart. But yet I would my master had Mistress Anne; or I would Master Slender had her; or, in sooth, I would Master Fenton had her; I will do what I can for them all three; for so I have promised, and I’ll be as good as my word; but speciously for Master Fenton. Well, I must of another errand to Sir John Falstaff from my two mistresses: what a beast am I to slack it!
Exit
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SCENE V. A ROOM IN THE GARTER INN.
Enter Falstaff and Bardolph
Falstaff
Bardolph, I say,—
Bardolph
Here, sir.
Falstaff
Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in’t.
Exit Bardolph
Have I lived to be carried in a basket, like a barrow of butcher’s offal, and to be thrown in the Thames? Well, if I be served such another trick, I’ll have my brains ta’en out and buttered, and give them to a dog for a new-year’s gift. The rogues slighted me into the river with as little remorse as they would have drowned a blind bitch’s puppies, fifteen i’ the litter: and you may know by my size that I have a kind of alacrity in sinking; if the bottom were as deep as hell, I should down. I had been drowned, but that the shore was shelvy and shallow,— a death that I abhor; for the water swells a man; and what a thing should I have been when I had been swelled! I should have been a mountain of mummy.
Re-enter Bardolph with sack
Bardolph
Here’s Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with you.
Falstaff
Let me pour in some sack to the Thames water; for my belly’s as cold as if I had swallowed snowballs for pills to cool the reins. Call her in.
Bardolph
Come in, woman!
Enter Mistress Quickly
Mistress Quickly
By your leave; I cry you mercy: give your worship good morrow.
Falstaff
Take away these chalices. Go brew me a pottle of sack finely.
Bardolph
With eggs, sir?
Falstaff
Simple of itself; I’ll no pullet-sperm in my brewage.
Exit Bardolph
How now!
Mistress Quickly
Marry, sir, I come to your worship from Mistress Ford.
Falstaff
Mistress Ford! I have had ford enough; I was thrown into the ford; I have my belly full of ford.
Mistress Quickly
Alas the day! good heart, that was not her fault: she does so take on with her men; they mistook their erection.
Falstaff
So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman’s promise.
Mistress Quickly
Well, she laments, sir, for it, that it would yearn your heart to see it. Her husband goes this morning a-birding; she desires you once more to come to her between eight and nine: I must carry her word quickly: she’ll make you amends, I warrant you.
Falstaff
Well, I will visit her: tell her so; and bid her think what a man is: let her consider his frailty, and then judge of my merit.
Mistress Quickly
I will tell her.
Falstaff
Do so. Between nine and ten, sayest thou?
Mistress Quickly
Eight and nine, sir.
Falstaff
Well, be gone: I will not miss her.
Mistress Quickly
Peace be with you, sir.
Exit
Falstaff
I marvel I hear not of Master Brook; he sent me word to stay within: I like his money well. O, here he comes.
Enter Ford
Ford
Bless you, sir!
Falstaff
Now, master Brook, you come to know what hath passed between me and Ford’s wife?
Ford
That, indeed, Sir John, is my business.
Falstaff
Master Brook, I will not lie to you: I was at her house the hour she appointed me.
Ford
And sped you, sir?
Falstaff
Very ill-favoredly, Master Brook.
Ford
How so, sir? Did she change her determination?
Falstaff
No, Master Brook; but the peaking Cornuto her husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual ’larum of jealousy, comes me in the instant of our encounter, after we had embraced, kissed, protested, and, as it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of his companions, thither provoked and instigated by his distemper, and, forsooth, to search his house for his wife’s love.
Ford
What, while you were there?
Falstaff
While I was there.
Ford
And did he search for you, and could not find you?
Falstaff
You shall hear. As good luck would have it, comes in one Mistress Page; gives intelligence of Ford’s approach; and, in her invention and Ford’s wife’s distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket.
Ford
A buck-basket!
Falstaff
By the Lord, a buck-basket! rammed me in with foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins; that, Master Brook, there was the rankest compound of villanous smell that ever offended nostril.
Ford
And how long lay you there?
Falstaff
Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have suffered to bring this woman to evil for your good. Being thus crammed in the basket, a couple of Ford’s knaves, his hinds, were called forth by their mistress to carry me in the name of foul clothes to Datchet-lane: they took me on their shoulders; met the jealous knave their master in the door, who asked them once or twice what they had in their basket: I quaked for fear, lest the lunatic knave would have searched it; but fate, ordaining he should be a cuckold, held his hand. Well: on went he for a search, and away went I for foul clothes. But mark the sequel, Master Brook: I suffered the pangs of three several deaths; first, an intolerable fright, to be detected with a jealous rotten bell-wether; next, to be compassed, like a good bilbo, in the circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head; and then, to be stopped in, like a strong distillation, with stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease: think of that,— a man of my kidney,— think of that,— that am as subject to heat as butter; a man of continual dissolution and thaw: it was a miracle to scape suffocation. And in the height of this bath, when I was more than half stewed in grease, like a Dutch dish, to be thrown into the Thames, and cooled, glowing hot, in that surge, like a horse-shoe; think of that,— hissing hot,— think of that, Master Brook.
Ford
In good sadness, I am sorry that for my sake you have sufferd all this. My suit then is desperate; you’ll undertake her no more?
Falstaff
Master Brook, I will be thrown into Etna, as I have been into Thames, ere I will leave her thus. Her husband is this morning gone a-birding: I have received from her another embassy of meeting; ’twixt eight and nine is the hour, Master Brook.
Ford
’Tis past eight already, sir.
Falstaff
Is it? I will then address me to my appointment. Come to me at your convenient leisure, and you shall know how I speed; and the conclusion shall be crowned with your enjoying her. Adieu. You shall have her, Master Brook; Master Brook, you shall cuckold Ford.
Exit
Ford
Hum! ha! is this a vision? is this a dream? do I sleep? Master Ford awake! awake, Master Ford! there’s a hole made in your best coat, Master Ford. This ’tis to be married! this ’tis to have linen and buck-baskets! Well, I will proclaim myself what I am: I will now take the lecher; he is at my house; he cannot ’scape me; ’tis impossible he should; he cannot creep into a halfpenny purse, nor into a pepper-box: but, lest the devil that guides him should aid him, I will search impossible places. Though what I am I cannot avoid, yet to be what I would not shall not make me tame: if I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go with me: I’ll be horn-mad.
Exit
ACT IV
SCENE I. A STREET.
Enter Mistress Page, Mistress Quickly, and William Page
Mistress Page
Is he at Master Ford’s already, think’st thou?
Mistress Quickly
Sure he is by this, or will be presently: but, truly, he is very courageous mad about
his throwing into the water. Mistress Ford desires you to come suddenly.
Mistress Page
I’ll be with her by and by; I’ll but bring my young man here to school. Look, where his master comes; ’tis a playing-day, I see.
Enter Sir Hugh Evans
How now, Sir Hugh! no school to-day?
Sir Hugh Evans
No; Master Slender is let the boys leave to play.
Mistress Quickly
Blessing of his heart!
Mistress Page
Sir Hugh, my husband says my son profits nothing in the world at his book. I pray you, ask him some questions in his accidence.
Sir Hugh Evans
Come hither, William; hold up your head; come.
Mistress Page
Come on, sirrah; hold up your head; answer your master, be not afraid.
Sir Hugh Evans
William, how many numbers is in nouns?
William Page
Two.
Mistress Quickly
Truly, I thought there had been one number more, because they say, ‘’Od’s nouns.’
Sir Hugh Evans
Peace your tattlings! What is ‘fair,’ William?
William Page
Pulcher.
Mistress Quickly
Polecats! there are fairer things than polecats, sure.
Sir Hugh Evans
You are a very simplicity ’oman: I pray you peace.
What is ‘lapis,’ William?
William Page
A stone.
Sir Hugh Evans
And what is ‘a stone,’ William?
William Page
A pebble.
Sir Hugh Evans
No, it is ‘lapis:’ I pray you, remember in your prain.
William Page
Lapis.
Sir Hugh Evans
That is a good William. What is he, William, that does lend articles?
William Page
Articles are borrowed of the pronoun, and be thus declined, Singulariter, nominativo, hic, haec, hoc.
Sir Hugh Evans
Nominativo, hig, hag, hog; pray you, mark: genitivo, hujus. Well, what is your accusative case?
William Page
Accusativo, hinc.
Sir Hugh Evans
I pray you, have your remembrance, child, accusative, hung, hang, hog.
Mistress Quickly
‘Hang-hog’ is Latin for bacon, I warrant you.
Sir Hugh Evans
Leave your prabbles, ’oman. What is the focative case, William?
William Page
O,— vocativo, O.
Sir Hugh Evans
Remember, William; focative is caret.
Mistress Quickly
And that’s a good root.
Sir Hugh Evans
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