The Merry Wives of Windsor (13 page)

choice.

O, what a world of vile
ill-favoured
³³
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
³⁷
!

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
⁴⁵
, under the

degree of a squire.

SHALLOW
    He will make you a hundred and fifty pounds

jointure
⁴⁸
.

ANNE
    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
    Now, Master Slender.

SLENDER
    Now, good Mistress Anne.

ANNE
    What is your
will
⁵⁴
?

SLENDER
    My will?
’Od’s heartlings
⁵⁵
, 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
    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
⁶⁰
. If it

be my luck, so; if not,
happy man be his dole
⁶¹
. They can tell

you how things go better than I can. You may ask your

father, here he comes.

PAGE
    Now, Master Slender — love him, daughter Anne.—

Why, how now? What does Master Fenton here?

You wrong me, sir, thus still to
haunt
⁶⁶
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.

MISTRESS QUICKLY
    Speak to Mistress Page.

FENTON
    Good Mistress Page,
for that
⁷⁶
I love your daughter

In such a righteous fashion as I do,

Perforce
, against all
checks
, rebukes and
manners
⁷⁸
,

I must
advance the colours
⁷⁹
of my love

And not retire. Let me have your good will.

ANNE
    Good mother, do not marry me to
yond
⁸¹
fool.

MISTRESS PAGE
    I mean it not, I seek you a better husband.

MISTRESS QUICKLY
    That’s my master, Master Doctor.

ANNE
    Alas, I had rather be
set quick
⁸⁴
i’th’earth,

And bowled 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
⁸⁹
.

Till then, farewell, sir. She must needs go in,

Her father will be angry.

FENTON
    Farewell, gentle mistress.— Farewell, Nan.

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
⁹⁶

tonight, Give my sweet Nan this ring.
There’s
⁹⁷
for

thy pains.

MISTRESS QUICKLY
    Now heaven send thee good fortune.

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
¹⁰³
, 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
¹⁰⁵

another errand to Sir John Falstaff from my two mistresses.

What a beast am I to slack it!

FALSTAFF
    Bardolph, I say!

BARDOLPH
    Here, sir.

FALSTAFF
    Go fetch me a
quart
of sack: put a
toast
³
in’t.

Have I lived to be carried in a basket like a
barrow
⁴
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
⁸
into the river with as little remorse as they would

have drowned a
blind bitch’s puppies
⁹
, 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
¹¹
. I

had been drowned, but that the
shore was shelvy
¹²
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
¹⁵
.

BARDOLPH
    Here’s Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with 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
¹⁹
. Call her in.

BARDOLPH
    Come in, woman.

MISTRESS QUICKLY
    By your leave, I
cry you mercy
²¹
! Give your

worship good morrow.

FALSTAFF
    Take away these chalices. Go, brew me

a
pottle
²⁴
of sack finely.

BARDOLPH
    With eggs, sir?

FALSTAFF
    
Simple
of itself. I’ll no
pullet-sperm
²⁶
in my brewage.—

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
³¹
, 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
³³
her men: they mistook their

erection
³⁴
.

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
³⁸
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
⁴³
, and then judge of

my merit.

MISTRESS QUICKLY
    I will tell her.

FALSTAFF
    Do so. Between nine and ten, say’st thou?

MISTRESS QUICKLY
    Eight and nine, sir.

FALSTAFF
    Well, be gone. I will not
miss
⁴⁸
her.

MISTRESS QUICKLY
    Peace be with you, sir.

FALSTAFF
    I marvel I hear not of Master Broom. He sent me

word to stay within. I like his money well. O, here he comes.

FORD
    Bless you, sir!

FALSTAFF
    Now, Master Broom, you come to know what hath

passed between me and Ford’s wife.

FORD
    That indeed, Sir John, is my business.

FALSTAFF
    Master Broom, I will not lie to you: I was at her

house the hour she appointed me.

FORD
    And
sped you
⁵⁸
, sir?

FALSTAFF
    Very
ill-favouredly
⁵⁹
, Master Broom.

FORD
    How so, sir? Did she change her
determination
⁶⁰
?

FALSTAFF
    No, Master Broom, but the
peaking cornuto
⁶¹
her

husband, Master Broom, dwelling in a continual
’larum
⁶²
of

jealousy,
comes me
⁶³
in the instant of our encounter, after we

had embraced, kissed,
protested
⁶⁴
, 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
    Yes, a buck-basket!
Rammed
⁷⁶
me in with foul shirts

and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins,
that
⁷⁷
,

Master Broom, there was the rankest compound of villainous

smell that ever offended nostril.

FORD
    And how long lay you there?

FALSTAFF
    Nay, you shall hear, Master Broom, 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
⁸³

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
⁸⁹
his hand.

Well, on went he for a search, and away went I for foul

clothes. But
mark
⁹¹
the sequel, Master Broom. I suffered the

pangs of three
several
⁹²
deaths: first, an intolerable fright, to

be
detected with
a jealous
rotten
bell-wether
⁹³
: next, to be

compassed
, like a good
bilbo
in the circumference of a
peck
⁹⁴
,

hilt to point, heel to head, and then, to be
stopped
⁹⁵
in like a

strong
distillation
with stinking clothes that
fretted
⁹⁶
in their

own grease. Think of that, a man of my
kidney
⁹⁷
, think of

that — that am as subject to heat as butter — a man of

continual
dissolution
⁹⁹
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
¹⁰¹
, 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 Broom.

FORD
    In
good sadness
¹⁰⁵
, 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 Broom, I will be thrown into
Etna
¹⁰⁸
, 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
¹¹¹
of meeting: ’twixt eight and nine is the

hour, Master Broom.

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 Broom.

Master Broom, you shall cuckold Ford.