The Merry Wives Of Windsor

1 Enter Falstaff.
2 FALSTAFF.
3 Bardolph, I say!
4 Enter Bardolph.
5 BARDOLPH.
6 Here, sir.
7 FALSTAFF.
8 Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in ’t.
9 [_Exit Bardolph._]
10 Have I lived to be carried in a basket like a barrow of butcher’s
11 offal, and to be thrown in the Thames? Well, if I be served such
12 another trick, I’ll have my brains ta’en out and buttered, and give
13 them to a dog for a New Year’s gift. ’Sblood, the rogues slighted me
14 into the river with as little remorse as they would have drowned a
15 blind bitch’s puppies, fifteen i’ the litter; and you may know by my
16 size that I have a kind of alacrity in sinking; if the bottom were as
17 deep as hell, I should down. I had been drowned, but that the shore was
18 shelvy and shallow—a death that I abhor, for the water swells a man,
19 and what a thing should I have been when I had been swelled! I should
20 have been a mountain of mummy.
21 Enter Bardolph with sack.
22 BARDOLPH
23 Here’s Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with you.
24 FALSTAFF.
25 Come, let me pour in some sack to the Thames water, for my belly’s as
26 cold as if I had swallowed snowballs for pills to cool the reins. Call
27 her in.
28 BARDOLPH.
29 Come in, woman.
30 Enter Mistress Quickly.
31 MISTRESS QUICKLY.
32 By your leave, I cry you mercy. Give your worship good morrow.
33 FALSTAFF.
34 Take away these chalices. Go, brew me a pottle of sack finely.
35 BARDOLPH.
36 With eggs, sir?
37 FALSTAFF.
38 Simple of itself. I’ll no pullet sperm in my brewage.
39 [_Exit Bardolph._]
40 How now?
41 MISTRESS QUICKLY.
42 Marry, sir, I come to your worship from Mistress Ford.
43 FALSTAFF.
44 Mistress Ford? I have had ford enough. I was thrown into the ford, I
45 have my belly full of ford.
46 MISTRESS QUICKLY.
47 Alas the day, good heart, that was not her fault. She does so take on
48 with her men; they mistook their erection.
49 FALSTAFF.
50 So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman’s promise.
51 MISTRESS QUICKLY.
52 Well, she laments, sir, for it, that it would yearn your heart to see
53 it. Her husband goes this morning a-birding; she desires you once more
54 to come to her, between eight and nine. I must carry her word quickly.
55 She’ll make you amends, I warrant you.
56 FALSTAFF.
57 Well, I will visit her. Tell her so, and bid her think what a man is.
58 Let her consider his frailty, and then judge of my merit.
59 MISTRESS QUICKLY.
60 I will tell her.
61 FALSTAFF.
62 Do so. Between nine and ten, sayst thou?
63 MISTRESS QUICKLY.
64 Eight and nine, sir.
65 FALSTAFF.
66 Well, be gone. I will not miss her.
67 MISTRESS QUICKLY.
68 Peace be with you, sir.
69 [_Exit Mistress Quickly._]
70 FALSTAFF.
71 I marvel I hear not of Master Brook; he sent me word to stay within. I
72 like his money well. O, here he comes.
73 Enter Ford disguised.
74 FORD
75 God bless you, sir.
76 FALSTAFF.
77 Now, Master Brook, you come to know what hath passed between me and
78 Ford’s wife?
79 FORD.
80 That indeed, Sir John, is my business.
81 FALSTAFF.
82 Master Brook, I will not lie to you. I was at her house the hour she
83 appointed me.
84 FORD.
85 And how sped you, sir?
86 FALSTAFF.
87 Very ill-favouredly, Master Brook.
88 FORD.
89 How so, sir? Did she change her determination?
90 FALSTAFF.
91 No. Master Brook, but the peaking cornuto her husband, Master Brook,
92 dwelling in a continual ’larum of jealousy, comes me in the instant of
93 our encounter, after we had embraced, kissed, protested, and, as it
94 were, spoke the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of
95 his companions, thither provoked and instigated by his distemper, and,
96 forsooth, to search his house for his wife’s love.
97 FORD.
98 What, while you were there?
99 FALSTAFF.
100 While I was there.
101 FORD.
102 And did he search for you, and could not find you?
103 FALSTAFF.
104 You shall hear. As good luck would have it, comes in one Mistress Page,
105 gives intelligence of Ford’s approach; and, in her invention and Ford’s
106 wife’s distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket.
107 FORD.
108 A buck-basket!
109 FALSTAFF.
110 By the Lord, a buck-basket! Rammed me in with foul shirts and smocks,
111 socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins, that, Master Brook, there was
112 the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.
113 FORD.
114 And how long lay you there?
115 FALSTAFF.
116 Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have suffered to bring this
117 woman to evil for your good. Being thus crammed in the basket, a couple
118 of Ford’s knaves, his hinds, were called forth by their mistress to
119 carry me in the name of foul clothes to Datchet Lane. They took me on
120 their shoulders, met the jealous knave their master in the door, who
121 asked them once or twice what they had in their basket. I quaked for
122 fear lest the lunatic knave would have searched it; but Fate, ordaining
123 he should be a cuckold, held his hand. Well, on went he for a search,
124 and away went I for foul clothes. But mark the sequel, Master Brook. I
125 suffered the pangs of three several deaths: first, an intolerable
126 fright to be detected with a jealous rotten bell-wether; next, to be
127 compassed like a good bilbo in the circumference of a peck, hilt to
128 point, heel to head; and then, to be stopped in, like a strong
129 distillation, with stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease.
130 Think of that, a man of my kidney, think of that—that am as subject to
131 heat as butter; a man of continual dissolution and thaw. It was a
132 miracle to ’scape suffocation. And in the height of this bath, when I
133 was more than half stewed in grease, like a Dutch dish, to be thrown
134 into the Thames and cooled, glowing hot, in that surge, like a
135 horseshoe! Think of that—hissing hot—think of that, Master Brook.
136 FORD.
137 In good sadness, sir, I am sorry that for my sake you have suffered all
138 this. My suit, then, is desperate. You’ll undertake her no more?
139 FALSTAFF.
140 Master Brook, I will be thrown into Etna, as I have been into Thames,
141 ere I will leave her thus. Her husband is this morning gone a-birding;
142 I have received from her another embassy of meeting. ’Twixt eight and
143 nine is the hour, Master Brook.
144 FORD.
145 ’Tis past eight already, sir.
146 FALSTAFF.
147 Is it? I will then address me to my appointment. Come to me at your
148 convenient leisure, and you shall know how I speed; and the conclusion
149 shall be crowned with your enjoying her. Adieu. You shall have her,
150 Master Brook. Master Brook, you shall cuckold Ford.
151 [_Exit Falstaff._]
152 FORD
153 Hum! Ha! Is this a vision? Is this a dream? Do I sleep? Master Ford,
154 awake; awake, Master Ford! There’s a hole made in your best coat,
155 Master Ford. This ’tis to be married; this ’tis to have linen and
156 buck-baskets! Well, I will proclaim myself what I am. I will now take
157 the lecher. He is at my house. He cannot scape me. ’Tis impossible he
158 should. He cannot creep into a half-penny purse, nor into a pepperbox.
159 But, lest the devil that guides him should aid him, I will search
160 impossible places. Though what I am I cannot avoid, yet to be what I
161 would not shall not make me tame. If I have horns to make one mad, let
162 the proverb go with me: I’ll be horn-mad.
163 [_Exit._]