Enter ⌜Sir John⌝ Falstaff.FALSTAFF Bardolph, I say!Enter Bardolph.BARDOLPH Here, sir.FALSTAFF Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in ’t.⌜Bardolph exits.⌝ Have I lived to be carried in a basket like a barrow5 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. ⌜’Sblood,⌝ the rogues
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slighted me into the river with as little remorse as10 they would have drowned a blind bitch’s puppies, fifteen i’ th’ 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 and15 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! ⌜By the Lord,⌝ I should have been a mountain of mummy.⌜Enter Bardolph with cups of sack.⌝BARDOLPH Here’s Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with20 you.FALSTAFF Come, 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. ⌜He
drinks.⌝ Call her in.BARDOLPH 25Come in, woman.Enter ⌜Mistress⌝ Quickly.MISTRESS QUICKLY By your leave, I cry you mercy. Give your Worship good morrow.FALSTAFF, ⌜to Bardolph⌝ Take away these chalices. Go brew me a pottle of sack finely.BARDOLPH 30With eggs, sir?FALSTAFF Simple of itself. I’ll no pullet sperm in my brewage.⌜Bardolph exits.⌝ How now?MISTRESS QUICKLY Marry, sir, I come to your Worship35 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 was40 not her fault. She does so take on with her men; they mistook their erection.
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FALSTAFF So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman’s promise.MISTRESS QUICKLY Well, she laments, sir, for it, that it45 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 50Well, 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, say’st thou?MISTRESS QUICKLY 55Eight and nine, sir.FALSTAFF Well, be gone. I will not miss her.MISTRESS QUICKLY Peace be with you, sir.⌜Mistress Quickly exits.⌝FALSTAFF I marvel I hear not of Master ⌜Brook.⌝ He sent me word to stay within. I like his money well.Enter Ford ⌜disguised as Brook.⌝60 O, here ⌜he⌝ comes.FORD, ⌜as Brook⌝ ⌜God⌝ bless you, sir.FALSTAFF Now, Master ⌜Brook,⌝ you come to know what hath passed between me and Ford’s wife.FORD, ⌜as Brook⌝ That indeed, Sir John, is my65 business.FALSTAFF Master ⌜Brook,⌝ I will not lie to you. I was at her house the hour she appointed me.FORD, ⌜as Brook⌝ And sped you, sir?FALSTAFF Very ill-favoredly, Master ⌜Brook.⌝FORD, ⌜as Brook⌝ 70How 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
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75 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 for80 his wife’s love.FORD, ⌜as Brook⌝ What, while you were there?FALSTAFF While I was there.FORD, ⌜as Brook⌝ And did he search for you and could not find you?FALSTAFF 85You 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, ⌜as Brook⌝ 90A 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 villainous smell that95 ever offended nostril.FORD, ⌜as Brook⌝ 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 couple100 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 they105 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.⌝110 I suffered the pangs of three several deaths: first,
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an intolerable fright to be detected with a jealous rotten bellwether; 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, like115 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 in120 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 horseshoe! Think of that—hissing hot—think of that, Master ⌜Brook.⌝FORD, ⌜as Brook⌝ 125In good sadness, sir, I am sorry that for my sake you have suffered 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 her130 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, ⌜as Brook⌝ ’Tis past eight already, sir.FALSTAFF 135Is 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.⌝ Master140 ⌜Brook,⌝ you shall cuckold Ford.⌜Falstaff exits.⌝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 linen145 and buck-baskets! Well, I will proclaim myself what I am. I will now take the lecher. He is at my
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house. He cannot ’scape me. ’Tis impossible he should. He cannot creep into a half-penny purse, nor into a pepper-box. But lest the devil that150 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.⌜He⌝ exits.