The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 384
when I had been swelled? I should have been a
mountain of mummy!
Enter BARDOLPH with sack.
BARDOLPH Here’s Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with
you.
FALSTAFF Come, let me pour in some sack to the Thames
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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.
QUICKLY By your leave, I cry you mercy! Give your
worship good morrow.
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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.
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How now?
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
QUICKLY I will tell her.
FALSTAFF Do so. Between nine and ten, sayst thou?
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QUICKLY Eight and nine, sir.
FALSTAFF Well, be gone. I will not miss her.
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. – By
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the mass, here he comes.
Enter FORD as BROOK.
FORD God save 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.
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FALSTAFF Master Brook, I will not lie to you. I was at
her house the hour she appointed me.
FORD And how sped you, sir?
FALSTAFF Very ill-favouredly, Master Brook.
FORD How so, sir? Did she change her determination?
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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rankest compound of villainous 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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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 In good sadness, sir, I am sorry that for my sake
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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 her thus. Her
husband is this morning gone a-birding; I have
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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,
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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
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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
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me – ’tis impossible he should. He cannot creep into a
half-penny purse, nor into a pepperbox. 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
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I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go with
me: I’ll be horn-mad. Exit.
4.1 Enter MISTRESS PAGE, Mistress QUICKLY<
br />
and WILLIAM.
MISTRESS PAGE Is he at Master Ford’s already, thinkst
thou?
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.
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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 EVANS.
How now, Sir Hugh, no school today?
EVANS No, Master Slender is let the boys leave to play.
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QUICKLY God’s 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.
EVANS Come hither, William. Hold up your head, come.
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MISTRESS PAGE Come on, sirrah, hold up your head.
Answer your master, be not afraid.
EVANS William, how many numbers is in nouns?
WILLIAM Two.
QUICKLY Truly, I thought there had been one number
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more, because they say ‘‘Od’s nouns’.
EVANS Peace your tattlings. What is ‘fair’, William?
WILLIAM Pulcher.
QUICKLY Polecats? There are fairer things than
polecats, sure.
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evans You are a very simplicity ‘oman; I pray you,
peace. – What is lapis, William?
WILLIAM A stone.
EVANS And what is ‘a stone’, William?
WILLIAM A pebble.
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EVANS No, it is lapis; I pray you remember in your prain.
WILLIAM Lapis.
EVANS That is a good William. What is he, William,
that does lend articles?
WILLIAM Articles are borrowed of the pronoun, and be
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thus declined: Singulariter nominativo hic, haec, hoc.
EVANS Nominativo hig, haeg, hog, pray you mark.
Genitivo huius. Well, what is your accusative case?
WILLIAM Accusativo hinc –
EVANS I pray you have your remembrance, child:
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accusativo hing, hang, hog.
QUICKLY ‘Hang-hog’ is Latin for bacon, I warrant you.
EVANS Leave your prabbles, ‘oman. – What is the
focative case, William?
WILLIAM O – vocativo – O –
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EVANS Remember, William; focative is caret.
QUICKLY And that’s a good root.
EVANS ‘Oman, forbear.
MISTRESS PAGE Peace.
EVANS What is your genitive case plural, William?
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WILLIAM Genitive case?
EVANS Ay.
WILLIAM Genitivo horum, harum, horum.
QUICKLY ‘Vengeance of Jenny’s case, fie on her! Never
name her, child, if she be a whore.
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EVANS For shame, ‘oman.
QUICKLY You do ill to teach the child such words. – He
teaches him to hick and to hack, which they’ll do fast
enough of themselves, and to call ‘whore ‘m’! – Fie
upon you!
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EVANS ‘Oman, art thou lunatics? Hast thou no
understandings for thy cases, and the numbers of the
genders? Thou art as foolish Christian creatures as I
would desires.
MISTRESS PAGE [to Quickly] Prithee hold thy peace.
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EVANS Show me now, William, some declensions of
your pronouns.
WILLIAM Forsooth, I have forgot.
EVANS It is qui, quae, quod. If you forget your quis, your
quaes, and your quods, you must be preeches. Go your
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ways and play, go.
MISTRESS PAGE He is a better scholar than I thought he was.
EVANS He is a good sprag memory. Farewell, Mistress
Page.
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MISTRESS PAGE Adieu, good Sir Hugh. [Exit Evans.]
Get you home, boy. [Exit William.]
Come, we stay too long. Exeunt.
4.2 Enter FALSTAFF and MISTRESS FORD.
FALSTAFF Mistress Ford, your sorrow hath eaten up my
sufferance. I see you are obsequious in your love and I
profess requital to a hair’s breadth, not only, Mistress
Ford, in the simple office of love, but in all the
accoutrement, compliment and ceremony of it. But
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are you sure of your husband now?
MISTRESS FORD He’s a-birding, sweet Sir John.
MISTRESS PAGE [within] What ho, gossip Ford, what ho!
MISTRESS FORD Step into the chamber, Sir John.
Exit Falstaff.