The Merry Wives of Windsor The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] · William Shakespeare
SCENE V. _A room in the Garter Inn._
_Enter FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH._ _Fal._ Bardolph, I say,-- _Bard._ Here, sir. _Fal._ Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in’t. [_Exit Bard._] Have I lived to be carried in a basket, like a barrow of butcher’s offal, and to be thrown in the Thames? Well, 5 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 10 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 15 have been a mountain of mummy. _Re-enter BARDOLPH with sack._ _Bard._ Here’s Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with you. _Fal._ Come, let me pour in some sack to the Thames water; for my belly’s as cold as if I had swallowed snow-balls for pills to cool the reins. Call her in. 20 _Bard._ Come in, woman!
_Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY._ _Quick._ By your leave; I cry you mercy: give your worship good morrow. _Fal._ Take away these chalices. Go brew me a pottle of sack finely. 25 _Bard._ With eggs, sir? _Fal._ Simple of itself; I’ll no pullet-sperm in my brewage. [_Exit Bardolph._] How now! _Quick._ Marry, sir, I come to your worship from Mistress Ford. 30 _Fal._ Mistress Ford! I have had ford enough; I was thrown into the ford; I have my belly full of ford. _Quick._ Alas the day! good heart, that was not her fault: she does so take on with her men; they mistook their erection. 35 _Fal._ So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman’s promise. _Quick._ 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 40 between eight and nine: I must carry her word quickly: she’ll make you amends, I warrant you. _Fal._ 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. 45 _Quick._ I will tell her. _Fal._ Do so. Between nine and ten, sayest thou? _Quick._ Eight and nine, sir. _Fal._ Well, be gone: I will not miss her.
_Quick._ Peace be with you, sir. [_Exit._ 50 _Fal._ 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! _Fal._ Now, Master Brook,--you come to know what 55 hath passed between me and Ford’s wife? _Ford._ That, indeed, Sir John, is my business. _Fal._ Master Brook, I will not lie to you: I was at her house the hour she appointed me. _Ford._ And sped you, sir? 60 _Fal._ Very ill-favouredly, Master Brook. _Ford._ How so, sir? Did she change her determination? _Fal._ 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 65 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. 70 _Ford._ What, while you were there? _Fal._ While I was there. _Ford._ And did he search for you, and could not find you? _Fal._ You shall hear. As good luck would have it, 75 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! _Fal._ By the Lord, a buck-basket!--rammed me in with 80 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? _Fal._ Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have 85 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, 90 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 95 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 100 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 105 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, sir, I am sorry that for my sake you have suffered all this. My suit, then, is desperate; 110 you’ll undertake her no more? _Fal._ 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 115 nine is the hour, Master Brook. _Ford._ ’Tis past eight already, sir. _Fal._ 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 120 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 125 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 130 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._
SCENE V.] SCENE XV. Pope. 5: _in_] _into_ Rowe. 9: _blind bitch’s_] _bitch’s blind_ Hanmer. 16: _mummy_] _mummy. Now, is the sack brewed?_ Theobald (from Q1 Q2). 22: SCENE XVI. Pope. 24: _pottle_] _posset_ R. G. White. 60: _sped you_] _you sped_ Rowe. 62: _How so, sir_] F1 Q3 F2. _How Sir_ F3 F4. 65: _me_] om. F4. 77: _in_] by (Q1 Q2) Theobald. _distraction_] _direction_ Hanmer. 80: _By the Lord_] (Q1 Q2) Malone. _yes_ F1 Q3. _yea_ F2 F3 F4. 83: _smell_] _smells_ Hanmer. 96: _several_] _egregious_ (Q1 Q2) Pope. 106: _in_] _is_ F2. 107: _surge_] _forge_ Capell conj. 110: _have suffered_] _suffered_ F4. 130: _nor_] _not_ Q3. 134: _one_] _me_ Dyce. [Exit.] Rowe. [Exeunt. Ff Q3.
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