THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR

by Shakespeare · Cluster: World Upside Down · Comedy

Abstract

A middle-class citizen comedy set in Windsor in which Falstaff’s attempts to seduce two married women are turned against him by the wives’ ingenious tricks; a farce of disguise, jealousy, and bourgeois domestic life.

Capitoli / Chapters

• Act I, Scene 1
• Act I, Scene 2
• Act I, Scene 3
• Act I, Scene 4
• Act II, Scene 1
• Act II, Scene 2
• Act II, Scene 3
• Act III, Scene 1
• Act III, Scene 2
• Act III, Scene 3
• Act III, Scene 4
• Act III, Scene 5
• Act IV, Scene 1
• Act IV, Scene 2
• Act IV, Scene 3
• Act IV, Scene 4
• Act IV, Scene 5
• Act V, Scene 1
• Act V, Scene 2
• Act V, Scene 3
• Act V, Scene 4
• Act V, Scene 5

Connections

Topoi: World Upside Down Archetypes: Fool, Trickster Motifs: Concealment Hidden Identity, Letters and Writing, Money and Gold Themes & Concepts: Jealousy, Marriage and Fidelity, Deception, Satire of Society, Lust Sexual Desire, Common Man Forms & Genres: Comedy, Verse Drama Historical References: Elizabethan England Settings: Rural England Characters: Falstaff, Mistress Ford, Mistress Page, Master Ford, Master Page, Mistress Quickly, Anne Page, Fenton, Doctor Caius

Testo integrale / Full text

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR A LEGEND dating from 1702 claims that Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor in fourteen days and by command of Queen Elizabeth; in 1709 she was said to have wished particularly to see Falstaff in love. Whether or not this is true, a passage towards the end of the play alluding directly to the ceremonies of the Order of the Garter, Britain’s highest order of chivalry, encourages the belief that the play has a direct connection with a specific occasion. In 1597 George Carey, Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain and patron of Shakespeare’s company, was installed at Windsor as a Knight of the Garter. The Queen was not present at the installation but had attended the Garter Feast at the Palace of Westminster on St George’s Day (23 April). Shakespeare’s play was probably performed in association with this occasion, and may have been written especially for it. It was first printed, in a corrupt text, in 1602; a better text appears in the 1623 Folio. Some of the characters—Sir John Falstaff, Mistress Quickly, Pistol, Nim, Justice Shallow—appear also in I and 2 Henry IV and Henry V, but in spite of a reference to ’the wild Prince and Poins’ at 3.2.66-7, this is essentially an Elizabethan comedy, the only one that Shakespeare set firmly in England. The play is full of details that would have been familiar to Elizabethan Londoners, and the language is colloquial and up to date. The plot, however, is made up of conventional situations whose ancestry is literary rather than realistic. There are many analogues to Shakespeare’s basic plot situations in medieval and other tales, some in books that he probably or certainly knew. The central story, of Sir John’s unsuccessful attempts to seduce Mistress Page and Mistress Ford, and of Master Ford’s unfounded jealousy, is in the tradition of the Italian novella, and may have been suggested by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino’s II Pecorone (1558). Alongside it Shakespeare places the comical but finally romantic love story of Anne Page, wooed by the foolish but rich Abraham Slender and the irascible French Doctor Caius, but won by the young and handsome Fenton. The play contains a higher proportion of prose to verse than any other play by Shakespeare, and the action is often broadly comic; but it ends, after the midnight scene in Windsor Forest during which Sir John is frightened out of his lechery, in forgiveness and love. The Merry Wives of Windsor is known to have been acted for James I on 4 November 1604, and for Charles I in 1638. It was revived soon after the theatres reopened, in 1660; at first it was not particularly popular, but since 1720 it has consistently pleased audiences. Many artists have illustrated it, and it forms the basis for a number of operas, including Otto Nicolai’s Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (1849) and Giuseppe Verdi’s comic masterpiece, Falstaff (1893).

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Atto 1, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Justice Shallow, Master Slender, and Sir Hugh Evans
SHALLOW	Sir Hugh, persuade me not. I will make a Star Chamber matter of it. If he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, Esquire.
SLENDER	In the county of Gloucester, Justice of Peace and Coram.
SHALLOW	Ay, cousin Slender, and Custalorum.
SLENDER	Ay, and Ratolorum too; and a gentleman born, Master Parson, who writes himself ‘Armigero’ in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation: ‘Armigero’.
SHALLOW	Ay, that I do, and have done any time these three hundred years.
SLENDER	All his successors gone before him hath done’t, and all his ancestors that come after him may. They may give the dozen white luces in their coat.
SHALLOW	It is an old coat.
EVANS	The dozen white louses do become an old coad well. It agrees well passant: it is a familiar beast to man, and signifies love.
SHALLOW	The luce is the fresh fish; the salt fish is an old cod.
SLENDER	I may quarter, coz.
SHALLOW	You may, by marrying.
EVANS	It is marring indeed if he quarter it.
SHALLOW	Not a whit.
EVANS	Yes, py’r Lady. If he has a quarter of your coat, there is but three skirts for yourself, in my simple conjectures. But that is all one. If Sir John Falstaff have committed disparagements unto you, I am of the Church, and will be glad to do my benevolence to make atonements and compromises between you.
SHALLOW	The Council shall hear it; it is a riot.
EVANS	It is not meet the Council hear a riot. There is no fear of Got in a riot. The Council, look you, shall desire to hear the fear of Got, and not to hear a riot. Take your ’visaments in that.
SHALLOW	Ha! O’ my life, if I were young again, the sword should end it.
EVANS	It is petter that friends is the sword and end it. And there is also another device in my prain, which peradventure prings goot discretions with it. There is Anne Page which is daughter to Master George Page, which is pretty virginity.
SLENDER	Mistress Anne Page? She has brown hair, and speaks small like a woman?
EVANS	It is that fery person for all the ‘orld, as just as you will desire. And seven hundred pounds of moneys, and gold and silver, is her grandsire upon his death’s-bed—Got deliver to a joyful resurrections—give, when she is able to overtake seventeen years old. It were a goot motion if we leave our pribbles and prabbles, and desire a marriage between Master Abraham and Mistress Anne Page.
SLENDER	Did her grandsire leave her seven hundred pound?
(didascalia)	EVANS Ay, and her father is make her a petter penny. SHALLOWI know the young gentlewoman. She has good gifts.
EVANS	Seven hundred pounds and possibilities is goot gifts.
SHALLOW	Well, let us see honest Master Page. Is Falstaff there?
EVANS	Shall I tell you a lie? I do despise a liar as I do despise one that is false, or as I despise one that is not true. The knight Sir John is there, and I beseech you be ruled by your well-willers. I will peat the door for Master Page. He knocks on the door What ho! Got pless your house here I
(didascalia)	PAGE within Who’s there?
EVANS	Here is Got’s plessing and your friend, and Justice Shallow, and here young Master Slender, that peradventures shall tell you another tale if matters grow to your likings.
(didascalia)	Enter Master Page
PAGE	I am glad to see your worships well. I thank you for my venison, Master Shallow.
SHALLOW	Master Page, I am glad to see you. Much good do it your good heart! Iwished your venison better; it was ill killed.—How doth good Mistress Page?—And I thank you always with my heart, la, with my heart.
PAGE	Sir, I thank you.
SHALLOW	Sir, I thank you. By yea and no, I do.
PAGE	I am glad to see you, good Master Slender.
SLENDER	How does your fallow greyhound, sir? I heard say he was outrun on Cotswold.
PAGE	It could not be judged, sir.
SLENDER	You’ll not confess, you’ll not confess.
SHALLOW	That he will not. ‘Tis your fault, ’tis your fault. (To Page) ’Tis a good dog.
PAGE	A cur, sir.
SHALLOW	Sir, he’s a good dog and a fair dog. Can there be more said? He is good and fair. Is Sir John Falstaff here?
PAGE	Sir, he is within; and I would I could do a good office between you.
EVANS	It is spoke as a Christians ought to speak.
SHALLOW	He hath wronged me, Master Page.
PAGE	Sir, he doth in some sort confess it.
SHALLOW	If it be confessed, it is not redressed. Is not that so, Master Page? He hath wronged me; indeed he hath; at a word, he hath. Believe me, Robert Shallow, Esquire, saith he is wronged.
(didascalia)	Enter Sir John Falstaff, Bardolph, Nim, and Pistol
PAGE	Here comes Sir John.
SIR JOHN	Now, Master Shallow, you’ll complain of me to the King?
SHALLOW	Knight, you have beaten my men, killed my deer, and broke open my lodge.
SIR JOHN	But not kissed your keeper’s daughter?
SHALLOW	Tut, a pin. This shall be answered.
SIR JOHN	I will answer it straight: I have done all this. That is now answered.
SHALLOW	The Council shall know this.
SIR JOHN	’Twere better for you if it were known in counsel. You’ll be laughed at.
EVANS	Pauca verba, Sir John, good worts.
SIR JOHN	Good worts? Good cabbage!—Slender, I broke your head. What matter have you against me?
SLENDER	Marry, sir, I have matter in my head against you, and against your cony-catching rascals, Bardolph, Nim, and Pistol.
BARDOLPH	You Banbury cheese!
SLENDER	Ay, it is no matter.
PISTOL	How now, Mephistopheles?
SLENDER	Ay, it is no matter.
NIM	Slice, I say pauca, pauca. Slice, that’s my humour.
SLENDER	(to Shallow) Where’s Simple, my man? Can you tell, cousin?
EVANS	Peace, I pray you. Now let us understand. There is three umpires in this matter, as I understand: that is, Master Page, fidelicet Master Page; and there is myself, fidelicet myself; and the three party is, lastly and finally, mine Host of the Garter.
PAGE	We three to hear it, and end it between them.
EVANS	Fery goot. I will make a prief of it in my notebook, and we will afterwards ’ork upon the cause with as great discreetly as we can.
SIR JOHN	Pistol.
PISTOL	He hears with ears.
EVANS	The tevil and his tam! What phrase is this? ‘He hears with ear’! Why, it is affectations.
SIR JOHN	Pistol, did you pick Master Slender’s purse?
SLENDER	Ay, by these gloves did he—or I would I might never come in mine own great chamber again else—of seven groats in mill-sixpences, and two Edward shovel-boards that cost me two shilling and twopence apiece of Ed Miller. By these gloves.
SIR JOHN	Is this true, Pistol?
EVANS	No, it is false, if it is a pickpurse.
PISTOL	Ha, thou mountain-foreigner Sir John and master mine, I combat challenge of this latten bilbo.— Word of denial in thy labras here, Word of denial: froth and scum, thou liest.
SLENDER	(pointing to Nim) By these gloves, then, ’twas he.
NIM	Be advised, sir, and pass good humours. I will say ’marry, trap with you’ if you run the nuthook’s humour on me. That is the very note of it.
SLENDER	By this hat, then, he in the red face had it. For though I cannot remember what I did when you made me drunk, yet I am not altogether an ass.
SIR JOHN	(to Bardolph) What say you, Scarlet and John?
BARDOLPH	Why, sir, for my part I say the gentleman had drunk himself out of his five sentences.
EVANS	It is ‘his five senses’. Fie, what the ignorance is!
BARDOLPH	And being fap, sir, was, as they say, cashiered. And so conclusions passed the careers.
SLENDER	Ay, you spake in Latin then, too. But ‘tis no matter. I’ll ne’er be drunk, whilst I live, again, but in honest, civil, godly company, for this trick. If I be drunk, I’ll be drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with drunken knaves.
EVANS	So Got ’udge me, that is a virtuous mind.
SIR JOHN	You hear all these matters denied, gentlemen, you hear it.
(didascalia)	Enter Anne Page, with wine
PAGE	Nay, daughter, carry the wine in; we’ll drink within. Exit Anne
(didascalia)	SLENDER O heaven, this is Mistress Anne Page! Enter at another door Mistress Ford and Mistress Pagel
PAGE	How now, Mistress Ford?
SIR JOHN	Mistress Ford, by my troth, you are very well met. By your leave, good mistress.
(didascalia)	He kisses her
PAGE	Wife, bid these gentlemen welcome.—Come, we have a hot venison pasty to dinner. Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.
(didascalia)	Exeunt all but Slender
SLENDER	I had rather than forty shillings I had my book of songs and sonnets here.
(didascalia)	Enter Simple
SLENDER	How now, Simple, where have you been? I must wait on myself, must I? You have not the book of riddles about you, have you?
SIMPLE	Book of riddles? Why, did you not lend it to Alice Shortcake upon Allhallowmas last, a fortnight afore Michaelmas?
(didascalia)	Enter Shallow and Evans
SHALLOW	(to Slender) Come, coz; come, coz; we stay for you. (Aside to him) A word with you, coz. He draws Slender aside Marry, this, coz: there is, as ’twere, a tender, a kind of tender, made afar off by Sir Hugh here. Do you understand me?
SLENDER	Ay, sir, you shall find me reasonable. If it be so, I shall do that that is reason.
SHALLOW	Nay, but understand me.
SLENDER	So I do, sir.
EVANS	Give ear to his motions. Master Slender, I will description the matter to you, if you be capacity of it.
SLENDER	Nay, I will do as my cousin Shallow says. I pray you pardon me. He’s a Justice of Peace in his country, simple though I stand here.
EVANS	But that is not the question. The question is concerning your marriage.
SHALLOW	Ay, there’s the point, sir.
EVANS	Marry, is it, the very point of it—to Mistress Anne Page.
SLENDER	Why, if it be so, I will marry her upon any reasonable demands.
EVANS	But can you affection the ’oman ? Let us command to know that of your mouth, or of your lips—for divers philosophers hold that the lips is parcel of the mouth. Therefore, precisely, can you carry your good will to the maid?
SHALLOW	Cousin Abraham Slender, can you love her?
SLENDER	I hope, sir, I will do as it shall become one that would do reason.
EVANS	Nay, Got’s lords and his ladies, you must speak positable if you can carry her your desires towards her.
SHALLOW	That you must. Will you, upon good dowry, marry her?
SLENDER	I will do a greater thing than that upon your request, cousin, in any reason.
SHALLOW	Nay, conceive me, conceive me, sweet coz. What I do is to pleasure you, coz. Can you love the maid?
SLENDER	I will marry her, sir, at your request. But if there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another. I hope upon familiarity will grow more contempt. But if you say ‘marry her’, I will marry her. That I am freely dissolved, and dissolutely.
EVANS	It is a fery discretion answer, save the faul’ is in the ’ord ‘dissolutely’. The ’ort is, according to our meaning, ‘resolutely’. His meaning is good.
SHALLOW	Ay, I think my cousin meant well.
SLENDER	Ay, or else I would I might be hanged, la.
(didascalia)	Enter Anne Page
SHALLOW	Here comes fair Mistress Anne.—Would I were young for your sake, Mistress Anne.
ANNE	The dinner is on the table. My father desires your worships’ company.
SHALLOW	I will wait on him, fair Mistress Anne.
EVANS	’Od’s plessed will, I will not be absence at the grace. Exeunt Shallow and Evans
ANNE	(to Slender) Will’t please your worship to come in, sir?
SLENDER	No, I thank you, forsooth, heartily; I am very well.
ANNE	The dinner attends you, sir.
SLENDER	I am not a-hungry, I thank you, forsooth. (To Simple) Go, sirrah; for all you are my man, go wait upon my cousin Shallow. Exit Simple A Justice of Peace sometime may be beholden to his friend for a man. I keep but three men and a boy yet, till my mother be dead. But what though? Yet I live like a poor gentleman born.
ANNE	I may not go in without your worship. They will not sit till you come.
SLENDER	I’faith, I’ll eat nothing. I thank you as much as though I did.
ANNE	I pray you, sir, walk in.
(didascalia)	Dogs bark within
SLENDER	I had rather walk here, I thank you. I bruised my shin th‘other day, with playing at sword and dagger with a master of fence—three veneys for a dish of stewed prunes—and, by my troth, I cannot abide the smell of hot meat since. Why do your dogs bark so? Be there bears i’th’ town?
ANNE	I think there are, sir. I heard them talked of.
SLENDER	I love the sport well—but I shall as soon quarrel at it as any man in England. You are afraid if you see the bear loose, are you not?
ANNE	Ay, indeed, sir.
SLENDER	That’s meat and drink to me, now. I have seen Sackerson loose twenty times, and have taken him by the chain. But I warrant you, the women have so cried and shrieked at it that it passed. But women, indeed, cannot abide ’em. They are very ill-favoured, rough things.
(didascalia)	Enter Page
PAGE	Come, gentle Master Slender, come. We stay for you.
SLENDER	I’ll eat nothing, I thank you, sir.
PAGE	By cock and pie, you shall not choose, sir. Come, come.
SLENDER	Nay, pray you lead the way.
PAGE	Come on, sir.
SLENDER	Mistress Anne, yourself shall go first.
ANNE	Not I, sir. Pray you keep on.
SLENDER	Truly, I will not go first, truly, la. I will not do you that wrong.
ANNE	I pray you, sir.
SLENDER	I’ll rather be unmannerly than troublesome. You do yourself wrong, indeed, la.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Slender first, the others following

Atto 1, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Hugh Evans and Simple, from dinner
EVANS	Go your ways, and ask of Doctor Caius’ house which is the way. And there dwells one Mistress Quickly, which is in the manner of his ’oman, or his dry-nurse, or his cook, or his laundry, his washer, and his wringer.
SIMPLE	Well, sir.
(didascalia)	EVANS Nay, it is petter yet. Give her this letter, for it is a ’oman that altogethers acquaintance with Mistress Anne Page. And the letter is to desire and require her to solicit your master’s desires to Mistress Anne Page. I pray you be gone. Exit Simple I will make an end of my dinner; there’s pippins and cheese to come. Exit

Atto 1, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sir John Falstaff, Bardolph, Nim, Pistol, and Robin
SIR JOHN	Mine Host of the Garter!
(didascalia)	Enter the Host of the Garter
HOST	What says my bully rook? Speak scholarly and wisely.
SIR JOHN	Truly, mine Host, I must turn away some of my followers.
HOST	Discard, bully Hercules, cashier. Let them wag. Trot, trot.
SIR JOHN	I sit at ten pounds a week.
HOST	Thou’rt an emperor: Caesar, kaiser, and pheezer. I will entertain Bardolph. He shall draw, he shall tap. Said I well, bully Hector? 11
SIR JOHN	Do so, good mine Host.
HOST	I have spoke; let him follow. (To Bardolph) Let me see thee froth and lime. I am at a word: follow. Exit
SIR JOHN	Bardolph, follow him. A tapster is a good trade. An old cloak makes a new jerkin; a withered servingman a fresh tapster. Go; adieu.
BARDOLPH	It is a life that I have desired. I will thrive.
(didascalia)	Exit
PISTOL	O base Hungarian wight, wilt thou the spigot wield?
NIM	He was gotten in drink; his mind is not heroic. Is not the humour conceited?
SIR JOHN	I am glad I am so acquit of this tinderbox. His thefts were too open. His filching was like an unskilful singer: he kept not time. Him The good humour is to steal at a minute’s rest.
PISTOL	‘Convey’ the wise it call. ‘Steal’? Foh, a fico for the phrase!
SIR JOHN	Well, sirs, I am almost out at heels.
PISTOL	Why then, let kibes ensue.
SIR JOHN	There is no remedy: I must cony-catch, I must shift.
PISTOL	Young ravens must have food.
SIR JOHN	Which of you know Ford of this town?
PISTOL	I ken the wight. He is of substance good.
SIR JOHN	My honest lads, I will tell you what I am about.
PISTOL	Two yards and more.
SIR JOHN	No quips now, Pistol. Indeed, I am in the waist two yards about. But I am now about no waste; I am about thrift. Briefly, I do mean to make love to Ford’s wife. I spy entertainment in her. She discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitation. I can construe the action of her familiar style; and the hardest voice of her behaviour, to be Englished rightly, is ‘I am Sir John Falstaff’s’.
PISTOL	He hath studied her well, and translated her will: out of honesty, into English.
NIM	The anchor is deep. Will that humour pass?
SIR JOHN	Now, the report goes, she has all the rule of her husband’s purse; he hath a legion of angels.
PISTOL	As many devils entertain, and ‘To her, boy!’ say I.
NIM	The humour rises; it is good. Humour me the angels!
SIR JOHN	(showing letters) I have writ me here a letter to her—and here another to Page’s wife, who even now gave me good eyes too, examined my parts with most judicious oeillades; sometimes the beam of her view gilded my foot, sometimes my portly belly.
PISTOL	Then did the sun on dunghill shine.
NIM	I thank thee for that humour.
SIR JOHN	O, she did so course o’er my exteriors, with such a greedy intention, that the appetite of her eye did seem to scorch me up like a burning-glass! Here’s another letter to her. She bears the purse too. She is a region in Guiana, all gold and bounty. I will be cheaters to them both, and they shall be exchequers to me. They shall be my East and West Indies, and I will trade to them both. (Giving a letter to Pistol) Go bear thou this letter to Mistress Page, (giving a letter to Nim) and thou this to Mistress Ford. We will thrive, lads, we will thrive.
PISTOL	(returning the letter) Shall I Sir Pandarus of Troy become, And by my side wear steel? Then Lucifer take all.
NIM	(returning the letter) I will run no base humour. Here, take the humour-letter. I will keep the haviour of reputation.
SIR JOHN	(to Robin) Hold, sirrah. Bear you these letters tightly. Sail like my pinnace to these golden shores. He gives Robin the letters Rogues, hence, avaunt! Vanish like hailstones! Go! Trudge, plod, away o’th’ hoof, seek shelter, pack! Falstaff will learn the humour of the age: French thrift, you rogues—myself and skirted page.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Sir John and Robin
PISTOL	Let vultures gripe thy guts!—for gourd and fullam holds, And high and low beguiles the rich and poor. Tester I’ll have in pouch when thou shalt lack, Base Phrygian Turk!
NIM	I have operations which be humours of revenge.
PISTOL	Wilt thou revenge?
NIM	By welkin and her stars!
PISTOL	With wit or steel?
NIM	With both the humours, I. I will discuss the humour of this love to Ford.
PISTOL	And I to Page shall eke unfold How Falstaff, varlet vile, His dove will prove, his gold will hold, And his soft couch defile.
NIM	My humour shall not cool. I will incense Ford to deal with poison; I will possess him with yellowness; for this revolt of mine is dangerous. That is my true humour.
PISTOL	Thou art the Mars of malcontents. I second thee. Troop on. Exeunt

Atto 1, Scena 4

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Quickly and Simple
MISTRESS QUICKLY	What, John Rugby!
(didascalia)	Enter John Rugby
MISTRESS QUICKLY	I pray thee, go to the casement and see if you can see my master, Master Doctor Caius, coming. If he do, i’faith, and find anybody in the house, here will be an old abusing of God’s patience and the King’s English.
RUGBY	I’ll go watch.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Go; and we’ll have a posset for’t soon at night, in faith, at the latter end of a seacoal fire.
(didascalia)	Exit Rugby
MISTRESS QUICKLY	An honest, willing, kind fellow as ever servant shall come in house withal; and, I warrant you, no telltale, nor no breedbate. His worst fault is that he is given to prayer; he is something peevish that way—but nobody but has his fault. But let that pass. Peter Simple you say your name is?
SIMPLE	Ay, for fault of a better.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	And Master Slender’s your master ?
SIMPLE	Ay, forsooth.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Does he not wear a great round beard, like a glover’s paring-knife?
SIMPLE	No, forsooth; he hath but a little whey face, with a little yellow beard, a Cain-coloured beard.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	A softly spirited man, is he not?
SIMPLE	Ay, forsooth; but he is as tall a man of his hands as any is between this and his head. He hath fought with a warrener.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	How say you?—O, I should remember him: does he not hold up his head, as it were, and strut in his gait?
SIMPLE	Yes, indeed does he.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Well, heaven send Anne Page no worse fortune! Tell Master Parson Evans I will do what I can for your master. Anne is a good girl, and I wish—
(didascalia)	Enter Rugby
(didascalia)	RUGBY Out, alas, here comes my master! Exit
MISTRESS QUICKLY	We shall all be shent. Run in here, good young man; for God’s sake, go into this closet. He will not stay long. Simple steps into the closet What, John Rugby! John! What, John, I say!
(didascalia)	Enter Rugby
(didascalia)	Speaking loudly Go, John, go enquire for my master. I
MISTRESS QUICKLY	doubt he be not well, that he comes not home.
(didascalia)	Exit Rugby
MISTRESS QUICKLY	(Singing) ’And down, down, adown-a’ (etc.)
(didascalia)	Enter Doctor Caius
CAIUS	Vat is you sing? I do not like dese toys. Pray you go and vetch me in my closet un boîtier vert—a box, a green-a box. Do intend vat I speak? A green-a box.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Ay, forsooth, I’ll fetch it you. (Aside) I am glad he went not in himself. If he had found the young man, he would have been horn-mad. She goes to fetch the box
CAIUS	Fe, fe, fe, fe! Ma foi, il fait fort chaud! Je m’en vais à la cour. La grande affaire.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Is it this, sir?
CAIUS	Oui. Mets-le à ma pochette. Dépêche, quickly! Vere is dat knave Rugby?
MISTRESS QUICKLY	What, John Rugby! John!
(didascalia)	Enter Rugby
RUGBY	Here, sir.
CAIUS	You are John Rugby, and you are Jack Rugby. Come, take-a your rapier, and come after my heel to the court.
RUGBY	’Tis ready, sir, here in the porch. He fetches the rapier
CAIUS	By my trot, I tarry too long. ’Od’s me, qu’ai-j’oublié? Dere is some simples in my closet dat I vill not for the varld I shall leave behind.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	(aside) Ay me, he’ll find the young man there, and be mad.
CAIUS	(discovering Simple) O diable, diable! Vat is in my closet? Villainy, larron! Rugby, my rapier! He takes the rapier
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Good master, be content.
CAIUS	Wherefore shall I be content-a?
MISTRESS QUICKLY	The young man is an honest man.
CAIUS	What shall de honest man do in my closet? Dere is no honest man dat shall come in my closet.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	I beseech you, be not so phlegmatic. Hear the truth of it. He came of an errand to me from Parson Hugh.
CAIUS	Vell.
SIMPLE	Ay, forsooth, to desire her to—
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Peace, I pray you.
CAIUS	Peace-a your tongue. (To Simple) Speak-a your tale.
SIMPLE	To desire this honest gentlewoman, your maid, to speak a good word to Mistress Anne Page for my master in the way of marriage.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	This is all, indeed, la; but I’ll ne’er put my finger in the fire an need not.
CAIUS	Sir Hugh send-a you?—Rugby, baile me some paper. Rugby brings paper (To Simple) Tarry you a little-a while. Caius writes
MISTRESS QUICKLY	(aside to Simple) I am glad he is so quiet. If he had been throughly moved, you should have heard him so loud and so melancholy. But notwithstanding, man, I’ll do your master what good I can. And the very yea and the no is, the French doctor, my master—I may call him my master, look you, for I keep his house, and I wash, wring, brew, bake, scour, dress meat and drink, make the beds, and do all myself—
SIMPLE	(aside to Mistress Quickly) ’Tis a great charge to come under one body’s hand.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	(aside to Simple) Are you advised o’ that? You shall find it a great charge—and to be up early, and down late. But notwithstanding, to tell you in your ear—I would have no words of it—my master himself is in love with Mistress Anne Page. But notwithstanding that, I know Anne’s mind: that’s neither here nor there.
CAIUS	(giving the letter to Simple) You, jack’nape, give-a this letter to Sir Hugh. By Gar, it is a shallenge. I will cut his troat in de Park, and I will teach a scurvy jackanape priest to meddle or make. You may be gone. It is not good you tarry here. By Gar, I will cut all his two stones. By Gar, he shall not have a stone to throw at his dog. Exit Simple
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Alas, he speaks but for his friend. CAIUS It is no matter-a ver dat. Do not you tell-a me dat I shall have Anne Page for myself? By Gar, I vill kill de jack-priest. And I have appointed mine Host of de Jarteer to measure our weapon. By Gar, I will myself have Anne Page.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Sir, the maid loves you, and all shall be well. We must give folks leave to prate, what the goodyear!
CAIUS	Rugby, come to the court with me. (To Mistress Quickly) By Gar, if I have not Anne Page, I shall turn your head out of my door. Follow my heels, Rugby.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	You shall have Anne—
(didascalia)	Exeunt Caius and Rugby
MISTRESS QUICKLY	—ass-head of your own. No, I know Anne’s mind for that. Never a woman in Windsor knows more of Anne’s mind than I do, nor can do more than I do with her, I thank heaven.
FENTON	(within) Who’s within there, ho!
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Who’s there, I trow?—Come near the house, I pray you.
(didascalia)	Enter Master Fenton
FENTON	How now, good woman, how dost thou?
MISTRESS QUICKLY	The better that it pleases your good worship to ask.
FENTON	What news? How does pretty Mistress Anne?
MISTRESS QUICKLY	In truth, sir, and she is pretty, and honest, and gentle, and one that is your friend. I can tell you that by the way, I praise heaven for it.
FENTON	Shall I do any good, thinkest thou? Shall I not lose my suit?
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Troth, sir, all is in His hands above. But notwithstanding, Master Fenton, I’ll be sworn on a book she loves you. Have not your worship a wart above your eye?
FENTON	Yes, marry, have I. What of that?
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Well, thereby hangs a tale. Good faith, it is such another Nan!—But I detest, an honest maid as ever broke bread.—We had an hour’s talk of that wart. I shall never laugh but in that maid’s company.—But indeed she is given too much to allicholy and musing.—But for you—well—go to!
FENTON	Well, I shall see her today. Hold, there’s money for thee. Let me have thy voice in my behalf. If thou seest her before me, commend me.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Will I? I’faith, that I will. And I will tell your worship more of the wart the next time we have confidence, and of other wooers.
FENTON	Well, farewell. I am in great haste now.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Farewell to your worship.
(didascalia)	Exit Fenton
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Truly, an honest gentleman; but Anne loves him not, for I know Anne’s mind as well as another does.—Out upon’t, what have I forgot? Exit

Atto 2, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Page, with a letter
MISTRESS PAGE	What, have I scaped love-letters in the holiday time of my beauty, and am I now a subject for them? Let me see. She reads ‘Ask me no reason why I love you, for though Love use Reason for his precision, he admits him not for his counsellor. You are not young; no more am I. Go to, then, there’s sympathy. You are merry; so am I. Ha, ha, then, there’s more sympathy. You love sack, and so do I. Would you desire better sympathy? Let it suffice thee, Mistress Page, at the least if the love of soldier can suffice, that I love thee. I will not say “pity me”—’tis not a soldier-like phrase—but I say “love me”. By me, thine own true knight, By day or night Or any kind of light, 15 With all his might For thee to fight, John Falstaff.’ What a Herod of Jewry is this! O, wicked, wicked world! One that is well-nigh worn to pieces with age, to show himself a young gallant! What an unweighed behaviour hath this Flemish drunkard picked, i’th’ devil’s name, out of my conversation, that he dares in this manner assay me? Why, he hath not been thrice in my company. What should I say to him? was then frugal of my mirth, heaven forgive me. Why, I’ll exhibit a bill in the Parliament for the putting down of men. O God, that I knew how to be revenged on him! For revenged I will be, as sure as his guts are made of puddings.
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Ford
MISTRESS FORD	Mistress Page! By my faith, I was going to your house.
MISTRESS PAGE	And by my faith, I was coming to you. You look very ill.
MISTRESS FORD	Nay, I’ll ne’er believe that: I have to show to the contrary.
MISTRESS PAGE	Faith, but you do, in my mind.
MISTRESS FORD	Well, I do, then. Yet I say I could show you to the contrary. O Mistress Page, give me some counsel.
MISTRESS PAGE	What’s the matter, woman?
MISTRESS FORD	O woman, if it were not for one trifling respect, I could come to such honour!
MISTRESS PAGE	Hang the trifle, woman; take the honour. What is it? Dispense with trifles. What is it?
MISTRESS FORD	If I would but go to hell for an eternal moment or so, I could be knighted.
MISTRESS PAGE	What? Thou liest! Sir Alice Ford? These knights will hack, and so thou shouldst not alter the article of thy gentry.
MISTRESS FORD	We burn daylight. Here: read, read. She gives Mistress Page a letter Perceive how I might be knighted. Mistress Page reads I shall think the worse of fat men as long as I have an eye to make difference of men’s liking. And yet he would not swear, praised women’s modesty, and gave such orderly and well-behaved reproof to all uncomeliness that I would have sworn his disposition would have gone to the truth of his words. But they do no more adhere and keep place together than the hundred and fifty psalms to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’. What tempest, I trow, threw this whale, with so many tuns of oil in his belly, ashore at Windsor? How shall I be revenged on him? I think the best way were to entertain him with hope, till the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease. Did you ever hear the like?
MISTRESS PAGE	Letter for letter, but that the name of Page and Ford differs. She gives Mistress Ford her letter To thy great comfort in this mystery of ill opinions, here’s the twin brother of thy letter. But let thine inherit first, for I protest mine never shall. I warrant he hath a thousand of these letters, writ with blank space for different names—sure, more, and these are of the second edition. He will print them, out of doubt—for he cares not what he puts into the press when he would put us two. I had rather be a giantess, and lie under Mount Pelion. Well, I will find you twenty lascivious turtles ere one chaste man.
MISTRESS FORD	Why, this is the very same: the very hand, the very words. What doth he think of us?
MISTRESS PAGE	Nay, I know not. It makes me almost ready to wrangle with mine own honesty. I’ll entertain myself like one that I am not acquainted withal; for, sure, unless he know some strain in me that I know not myself, he would never have boarded me in this fury.
MISTRESS FORD	’Boarding’ call you it? I’ll be sure to keep him above deck.
MISTRESS PAGE	So will I. If he come under my hatches, I’ll never to sea again. Let’s be revenged on him. Let’s appoint him a meeting, give him a show of comfort in his suit, and lead him on with a fine baited delay till he hath pawned his horses to mine Host of the Garter.
MISTRESS FORD	Nay, I will consent to act any villainy against him that may not sully the chariness of our honesty. O that my husband saw this letter! It would give eternal food to his jealousy.
(didascalia)	Enter Master Ford with Pistol, and Master Page with Nim
MISTRESS PAGE	Why, look where he comes, and my goodman too. He’s as far from jealousy as I am from giving him cause; and that, I hope, is an unmeasurable distance.
MISTRESS FORD	You are the happier woman.
MISTRESS PAGE	Let’s consult together against this greasy knight. Come hither. They withdraw.
FORD	Well, I hope it be not so.
PISTOL	Hope is a curtal dog in some affairs. Sir John affects thy wife.
FORD	Why, sir, my wife is not young.
PISTOL	He woos both high and low, both rich and poor, Both young and old, one with another, Ford. He loves the gallimaufry, Ford. Perpend.
FORD	Love my wife?
PISTOL	With liver burning hot. Prevent, Or go thou like Sir Actaeon, he, With Ringwood at thy heels. O, odious is the name!
FORD	What name, sir?
PISTOL	The horn, I say. Farewell. Take heed; have open eye; for thieves do foot by night. Take heed ere summer comes, or cuckoo-birds do sing.— Away, Sir Corporal Nim!—Believe it, Page; he speaks sense. Exit
FORD	(aside) I will be patient. I will find out this.
NIM	(to Page) And this is true. I like not the humour of lying. He hath wronged me in some humours. I should have borne the humoured letter to her; but I have a sword, and it shall bite upon my necessity. He loves your wife. There’s the short and the long. My name is Corporal Nim. I speak and I avouch ’tis true. My name is Nim, and Falstaff loves your wife. Adieu. I love not the humour of bread and cheese. Adieu.
(didascalia)	Exit
PAGE	(aside) The humour of it, quoth a? Here’s a fellow frights English out of his wits.
FORD	(aside) I will seek out Falstaff.
PAGE	(aside) I never heard such a drawling, affecting rogue.
FORD	(aside) If I do find it—well.
PAGE	(aside) I will not believe such a Cathayan though the priest o’th’ town commended him for a true man.
FORD	(aside) ’Twas a good, sensible fellow. Well. Mistress Page and Mistress Ford come forward
PAGE	How now, Meg?
MISTRESS PAGE	Whither go you, George? Hark you. They talk apart
MISTRESS FORD	How now, sweet Frank? Why art thou melancholy?
FORD	I melancholy? I am not melancholy. Get you home, go.
MISTRESS FORD	Faith, thou hast some crotchets in thy head now. Will you go, Mistress Page?
MISTRESS PAGE	Have with you.—You’ll come to dinner, George?
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Quickly
MISTRESS PAGE	(Aside to Mistress Ford) Look who comes yonder. She shall be our messenger to this paltry knight.
MISTRESS FORD	(aside to Mistress Page) Trust me, I thought on her. She’ll fit it.
MISTRESS PAGE	(to Mistress Quickly) You are come to see my daughter Anne?
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Ay, forsooth; and I pray how does good Mistress Anne?
MISTRESS PAGE	Go in with us and see. We have an hour’s talk with you.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Mistress Page, Mistress Ford, and Mistress Quickly
PAGE	How now, Master Ford?
FORD	You heard what this knave told me, did you not?
PAGE	Yes, and you heard what the other told me?
FORD	Do you think there is truth in them?
PAGE	Hang ’em, slaves! I do not think the knight would offer it. But these that accuse him in his intent towards our wives are a yoke of his discarded men—very rogues, now they be out of service.
FORD	Were they his men?
PAGE	Marry, were they.
FORD	I like it never the better for that. Does he lie at the Garter?
PAGE	Ay, marry, does he. If he should intend this voyage toward my wife, I would turn her loose to him; and what he gets more of her than sharp words, let it lie on my head.
FORD	I do not misdoubt my wife, but I would be loath to turn them together. A man may be too confident. I would have nothing lie on my head. I cannot be thus satisfied.
(didascalia)	Enter the Host of the Garter
PAGE	Look where my ranting Host of the Garter comes. There is either liquor in his pate or money in his purse when he looks so merrily.—How now, mine Host?
HOST	God bless you, bully rook, God bless you! Thou’rt a gentleman.
(didascalia)	Enter Shallow
HOST	Cavaliero Justice, I say!
SHALLOW	I follow, mine Host, I follow.—Good even and twenty, good Master Page. Master Page, will you go with us? We have sport in hand.
HOST	Tell him, Cavaliero Justice, tell him, bully rook.
SHALLOW	Sir, there is a fray to be fought between Sir Hugh, the Welsh priest, and Caius, the French doctor.
FORD	Good mine Host o’th’ Garter, a word with you.
HOST	What sayst thou, my bully rook? They talk apart
SHALLOW	(to Page) Will you go with us to behold it? My merry Host hath had the measuring of their weapons, and, I think, hath appointed them contrary places. For, believe me, I hear the parson is no jester. Hark, I will tell you what our sport shall be. They talk apart
HOST	(to Ford) Hast thou no suit against my knight, my guest cavaliero?
(didascalia)	FORD None, I protest. But I’ll give you a pottle of burnt sack to give me recourse to him and tell him my name is Brooke—only for a jest.
HOST	My hand, bully. Thou shalt have egress and regress—said I well?—and thy name shall be Brooke. It is a merry knight. (To Shallow and Page) Will you go, mijn’heers?
SHALLOW	Have with you, mine Host.
PAGE	I have heard the Frenchman hath good skill in his rapier.
(didascalia)	SHALLOW Tut, sir, I could have told you more. In these times you stand on distance—your passes, stoccados, and I know not what. ‘Tis the heart, Master Page; showing his rapier-passes ’tis here, ’tis here. I have seen the time with my long sword I would have made you four tall fellows skip like rats.
HOST	Here, boys; here, here! Shall we wag?
PAGE	Have with you. I had rather hear them scold than fight. Exeunt Host, Shallow, and Page
FORD	Though Page be a secure fool and stands so firmly on his wife’s frailty, yet I cannot put off my opinion so easily. She was in his company at Page’s house, and what they made there I know not. Well, I will look further into’t; and I have a disguise to sound Falstaff. If I find her honest, I lose not my labour. If she be otherwise, ’tis labour well bestowed. Exit

Atto 2, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sir John Falstaff and Pistol
SIR JOHN	I will not lend thee a penny.
PISTOL	I will retort the sum in equipage.
SIR JOHN	Not a penny.
(didascalia)	PISTOL drawing his sword Why then, the world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open.
SIR JOHN	Not a penny. I have been content, sir, you should lay my countenance to pawn. I have grated upon my good friends for three reprieves for you and your coach-fellow Nim, or else you had looked through the grate like a gemini of baboons. I am damned in hell for swearing to gentlemen my friends you were good soldiers and tall fellows. And when Mistress Bridget lost the handle of her fan, I took’t upon mine honour thou hadst it not.
PISTOL	Didst not thou share? Hadst thou not fifteen pence?
SIR JOHN	Reason, you rogue, reason. Thinkest thou I’ll endanger my soul gratis? At a word, hang no more about me. I am no gibbet for you. Go, a short knife and a throng, to your manor of Pickt-hatch, go. You’ll not bear a letter for me, you rogue? You stand upon your honour? Why, thou unconfinable baseness, it is as much as I can do to keep the terms of my honour precise. Ay, ay, I myself sometimes, leaving the fear of God on the left hand, and hiding mine honour in my necessity, am fain to shuffle, to hedge, and to lurch; and yet you, you rogue, will ensconce your rags, your cat-a-mountain looks, your red-lattice phrases, and your bold beating oaths, under the shelter of your honour! You will not do it, you?
(didascalia)	PISTOL sheathing his sword
SIR JOHN	I do relent. What wouldst thou more of man?
(didascalia)	Enter Robin
ROBIN	Sir, here’s a woman would speak with you.
SIR JOHN	Let her approach.
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Quickly
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Give your worship good morrow.
SIR JOHN	Good morrow, goodwife.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Not so, an’t please your worship.
SIR JOHN	Good maid, then.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	I’ll be sworn: as my mother was the first hour I was born.
SIR JOHN	I do believe the swearer. What with me?
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Shall I vouchsafe your worship a word or two?
SIR JOHN	Two thousand, fair woman, and I’ll vouchsafe thee the hearing.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	There is one Mistress Ford, sir—I pray come a little nearer this ways. She draws Sir John aside I myself dwell with Master Doctor Caius—
SIR JOHN	Well, on. Mistress Ford, ybu say.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Your worship says very true. I pray your worship come a little nearer this ways.
SIR JOHN	I warrant thee nobody hears. Mine own people, mine own people.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Are they so? God bless them and make them His servants!
SIR JOHN	Well, Mistress Ford: what of her?
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Why, sir, she’s a good creature. Lord, Lord, your worship’s a wanton! Well, heaven forgive you, and all of us, I pray—
SIR JOHN	Mistress Ford; come, Mistress Ford.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Marry, this is the short and the long of it. You have brought her into such a canaries as ’tis wonderful. The best courtier of them all, when the court lay at Windsor, could never have brought her to such a canary. Yet there has been knights, and lords, and gentlemen, with their coaches; I warrant you, coach after coach, letter after letter, gift after gift, smelling so sweetly, all musk; and so rustling, I warrant you, in silk and gold, and in such aligant terms, and in such wine and sugar of the best and the fairest, that would have won any woman’s heart; and, I warrant you, they could never get an eye-wink of her. I had myself twenty angels given me this morning—but I defy all angels, in any such sort, as they say, but in the way of honesty. And, I warrant you, they could never get her so much as sip on a cup with the proudest of them all. And yet there has been earls, nay, which is more, pensioners. But, I warrant you, all is one with her.
SIR JOHN	But what says she to me? Be brief, my good she-Mercury.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Marry, she hath received your letter, for the which she thanks you a thousand times, and she gives you to notify that her husband will be absence from his house between ten and eleven.
SIR JOHN	Ten and eleven.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Ay, forsooth, and then you may come and see the picture, she says, that you wot of. Master Ford, her husband, will be from home. Alas, the sweet woman leads an ill life with him. He’s a very jealousy man. She leads a very frampold life with him, good heart.
SIR JOHN	Ten and eleven. Woman, commend me to her. I will not fail her.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Why, you say well. But I have another messenger to your worship. Mistress Page hath her hearty commendations to you too; and, let me tell you in your ear, she’s as fartuous a civil modest wife, and one, I tell you, that will not miss you morning nor evening prayer, as any is in Windsor, whoe’er be the other; and she bade me tell your worship that her husband is seldom from home, but she hopes there will come a time. I never knew a woman so dote upon a man. Surely I think you have charms, la; yes, in truth.
SIR JOHN	Not I, I assure thee. Setting the attraction of my good parts aside, I have no other charms.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Blessing on your heart for’t!
SIR JOHN	But I pray thee tell me this: has Ford’s wife and Page’s wife acquainted each other how they love me?
MISTRESS QUICKLY	O God no, sir; that were a jest indeed! They have not so little grace, I hope. That were a trick indeed! But Mistress Page would desire you to send her your little page of all loves. Her husband has a marvellous infection to the little page; and, truly, Master Page is an honest man. Never a wife in Windsor leads a better life than she does. Do what she will; say what she will; take all, pay all; go to bed when she list; rise when she list; all is as she will. And, truly, she deserves it, for if there be a kind woman in Windsor, she is one. You must send her your page, no remedy.
SIR JOHN	Why, I will.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Nay, but do so, then; and, look you, he may come and go between you both. And in any case have a nay-word, that you may know one another’s mind, and the boy never need to understand anything—for ’tis not good that children should know any wickedness. Old folks, you know, have discretion, as they say, and know the world.
SIR JOHN	Fare thee well. Commend me to them both. There’s my purse; I am yet thy debtor.—Boy, go along with this woman. Exeunt Mistress Quickly and Robin (Aside) This news distracts me.
PISTOL	(aside) This punk is one of Cupid’s carriers. Clap on more sails! Pursue! Up with your sights! Give fire! She is my prize, or ocean whelm them all!
(didascalia)	Exit
SIR JOHN	Sayst thou so, old Jack? Go thy ways! I’ll make more of thy old body than I have done. Will they yet look after thee? Wilt thou, after the expense of so much money, be now a gainer? Good body, I thank thee. Let them say ’tis grossly done; so it be fairly done, no matter.
(didascalia)	Enter Bardolph, with sack
BARDOLPH	Sir John, there’s one Master Brooke below would fain speak with you and be acquainted with you, and hath sent your worship a morning’s draught of sack.
SIR JOHN	Brooke is his name?
BARDOLPH	Ay, sir.
(didascalia)	SIR JOHN Call him in. Drinking sack Such Brookes are welcome to me, that o’ehlows such liquor.
(didascalia)	Exit Bardolph
BARDOLPH	Aha, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, have I
(didascalia)	encompassed you? Drinking Go to. Via!
(didascalia)	Enter Bardolph, and Master Ford disguised as Brooke
FORD	God bless you, sir.
SIR JOHN	And you, sir. Would you speak with me?
FORD	I make bold to press with so little preparation upon you.
SIR JOHN	You’re welcome. What’s your will? (To Bardolph) Give us leave, drawer. Exit Bardolph
FORD	Sir, I am a gentleman that have spent much. My name is Brooke.
SIR JOHN	Good Master Brooke, I desire more acquaintance of you.
FORD	Good Sir John, I sue for yours—not to charge you, for I must let you understand I think myself in better plight for a lender than you are; the which hath something emboldened me to this unseasoned intrusion; for they say if money go before, all ways do lie open.
SIR JOHN	Money is a good soldier, sir, and will on.
FORD	Troth, and I have a bag of money here troubles me. If you will help to bear it, Sir John, take half, or all, for easing me of the carriage.
SIR JOHN	Sir, I know not how I may deserve to be your porter.
FORD	I will tell you, sir, if you will give me the hearing.
SIR JOHN	Speak, good Master Brooke. I shall be glad to be your servant.
FORD	Sir, I hear you are a scholar—I will be brief with you—and you have been a man long known to me, though I had never so good means as desire to make myself acquainted with you. I shall discover a thing to you wherein I must very much lay open mine own imperfection; but, good Sir John, as you have one eye upon my follies, as you hear them unfolded, turn another into the register of your own, that I may pass with a reproof the easier, sith you yourself know how easy it is to be such an offender.
SIR JOHN	Very well, sir, proceed.
FORD	There is a gentlewoman in this town; her husband’s name is Ford.
SIR JOHN	Well, sir.
FORD	I have long loved her, and, I protest to you, bestowed much on her, followed her with a doting observance, engrossed opportunities to meet her, fee’d every slight occasion that could but niggardly give me sight of her; not only bought many presents to give her, but have given largely to many to know what she would have given. Briefly, I have pursued her as love hath pursued me, which hath been on the wing of all occasions. But, whatsoever I have merited, either in my mind or in my means, meed I am sure I have received none, unless experience be a jewel. That I have purchased at an infinite rate, and that hath taught me to say this: ‘Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues, Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.’
SIR JOHN	Have you received no promise of satisfaction at her hands?
FORD	Never.
SIR JOHN	Have you importuned her to such a purpose?
FORD	Never.
SIR JOHN	Of what quality was your love then?
FORD	Like a fair house built on another man’s ground, so that I have lost my edifice by mistaking the place where I erected it.
SIR JOHN	To what purpose have you unfolded this to me?
FORD	When I have told you that, I have told you all. Some say that though she appear honest to me, yet in other places she enlargeth her mirth so far that there is shrewd construction made of her. Now, Sir John, here is the heart of my purpose. You are a gentleman of excellent breeding, admirable discourse, of great admittance, authentic in your place and person, generally allowed for your many warlike, court-like, and learned preparations.
SIR JOHN	O sir!
FORD	Believe it, for you know it. There is money.
(didascalia)	He offers money
FORD	Spend it, spend it; spend more; spend all I have; only give me so much of your time in exchange of it as to lay an amiable siege to the honesty of this Ford’s wife. Use your art of wooing, win her to consent to you. If any man may, you may as soon as any.
SIR JOHN	Would it apply well to the vehemency of your affection that I should win what you would enjoy? Methinks you prescribe to yourself very preposterously.
FORD	O, understand my drift. She dwells so securely on the excellency of her honour that the folly of my soul dares not present itself. She is too bright to be looked against. Now, could I come to her with any detection in my hand, my desires had instance and argument to commend themselves. I could drive her then from the ward of her purity, her reputation, her marriage vow, and a thousand other her defences which now are too too strongly embattled against me. What say you to’t, Sir John?
SIR JOHN	Master Brooke, I will first make bold with your money.
(didascalia)	He takes the money
SIR JOHN	Next, give me your hand. He takes his hand And last, as I am a gentleman, you shall, if you will, enjoy Ford’s wife.
FORD	O, good sir!
SIR JOHN	I say you shall.
FORD	Want no money, Sir John, you shall want none.
SIR JOHN	Want no Mistress Ford, Master Brooke, you shall want none. I shall be with her, I may tell you, by her own appointment. Even as you came in to me, her spokesmate, or go-between, parted from me. I say I shall be with her between ten and eleven, for at that time the jealous rascally knave her husband will be forth. Come you to me at night; you shall know how I speed.
FORD	I am blessed in your acquaintance. Do you know Ford, sir?
SIR JOHN	Hang him, poor cuckoldly knave, I know him not. Yet I wrong him to call him poor. They say the jealous wittolly knave hath masses of money, for the which his wife seems to me well favoured. I will use her as the key of the cuckoldly rogue’s coffer, and there’s my harvest-home.
FORD	I would you knew Ford, sir, that you might avoid him if you saw him.
SIR JOHN	Hang him, mechanical salt-butter rogue! I will stare him out of his wits. I will awe him with my cudgel; it shall hang like a meteor o’er the cuckold’s horns. Master Brooke, thou shalt know I will predominate over the peasant, and thou shalt lie with his wife. Come to me soon at night. Ford’s a knave, and I will aggravate his style: thou, Master Brooke, shalt know him for knave and cuckold. Come to me soon at night. Exit
FORD	What a damned epicurean rascal is this! My heart is ready to crack with impatience. Who says this is improvident jealousy? My wife hath sent to him, the hour is fixed, the match is made. Would any man have thought this? See the hell of having a false woman! My bed shall be abused, my coffers ransacked, my reputation gnawn at, and I shall not only receive this villainous wrong, but stand under the adoption of abominable terms, and by him that does me this wrong. Terms! Names! ‘Amaimon’ sounds well, ‘Lucifer’ well, ‘Barbason’ well; yet they are devils’ additions, the names of fiends. But ‘cuckold’, ‘wittot’! ’Cuckold‘—the devil himself hath not such a name. Page is an ass, a secure ass. He will trust his wife, he will not be jealous. I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my cheese, an Irishman with my aqua-vitae bottle, or a thief to walk my ambling gelding, than my wife with herself. Then she plots, then she ruminates, then she devises; and what they think in their hearts they may effect, they will break their hearts but they will effect. God be praised for my jealousy! Eleven o’clock the hour. I will prevent this, detect my wife, be revenged on Falstaff, and laugh at Page. I will about it. Better three hours too soon than a minute too late. God’s my life: cuckold, cuckold, cuckold! Exit

Atto 2, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Doctor Caius and John Rugby, with rapiers CAIUS Jack Rugby!
RUGBY	Sir.
CAIUS	Vat is the clock, Jack?
RUGBY	’Tis past the hour, sir, that Sir Hugh promised to meet.
CAIUS	By Gar, he has save his soul dat he is no come; he has pray his Pible well dat he is no come. By Gar, Jack Rugby, he is dead already if he be come.
RUGBY	He is wise, sir, he knew your worship would kill him if he came.
(didascalia)	CAIUS drawing his rapier By Gar, de herring is no dead so as I vill kill him. Take your rapier, Jack. I vill tell you how I vill kill him.
RUGBY	Alas, sir, I cannot fence.
CAIUS	Villainy, take your rapier.
RUGBY	Forbear: here’s company.
(didascalia)	Caius sheathes his rapier.
(didascalia)	Enter the Host of the Garter, Justice Shallow,
RUGBY	Master Page, and Master Slender
HOST	God bless thee, bully Doctor.
SHALLOW	God save you, Master Doctor Caius.
PAGE	Now, good Master Doctor.
SLENDER	Give you good morrow, sir.
CAIUS	Vat be all you, one, two, tree, four, come for?
HOST	To see thee fight, to see thee foin, to see thee traverse, to see thee here, to see thee there; to see thee pass thy punto, thy stock, thy reverse, thy distance, thy montant. Is he dead, my Ethiopian? Is he dead, my Francisco? Ha, bully? What says my Aesculapius, my Galen, my heart of elder, ha? Is he dead, bully stale? Is he dead?
CAIUS	By Gar, he is de coward jack-priest of de vorld. He is not show his face.
HOST	Thou art a Castalian King Urinal, Hector of Greece, my boy.
CAIUS	I pray you bear witness that me have stay six or seven, two, tree hours for him, and he is no come.
SHALLOW	He is the wiser man, Master Doctor. He is a curer of souls, and you a curer of bodies. If you should fight you go against the hair of your professions. Is it not true, Master Page?
PAGE	Master Shallow, you have yourself been a great fighter, though now a man of peace.
SHALLOW	Bodykins, Master Page, though I now be old and of the peace, if I see a sword out my finger itches to make one. Though we are justices and doctors and churchmen, Master Page, we have some salt of our youth in us. We are the sons of women, Master Page.
PAGE	’Tis true, Master Shallow.
SHALLOW	It will be found so, Master Page.—Master Doctor Caius, I am come to fetch you home. I am sworn of the peace. You have showed yourself a wise physician, and Sir Hugh hath shown himself a wise and patient churchman. You must go with me, Master Doctor.
HOST	Pardon, guest Justice. (To Caius) A word, Monsieur Mockwater.
CAIUS	Mockvater? Vat is dat?
HOST	Mockwater, in our English tongue, is valour, bully.
CAIUS	By Gar, then I have as much mockvater as de Englishman. Scurvy jack-dog priest! By Gar, me vill cut his ears.
HOST	He will clapper-claw thee tightly, bully.
CAIUS	Clapper-de-claw? Vat is dat?
HOST	That is, he will make thee amends.
CAIUS	By Gar, me do look he shall clapper-de-claw me, for, by Gar, me vill have it.
HOST	And I will provoke him to’t, or let him wag.
CAIUS	Me tank you for dat.
HOST	And moreover, bully—(Aside to the others) But first, master guest and Master Page, and eke Cavaliero Slender, go you through the town to Frogmore.
PAGE	Sir Hugh is there, is he?
HOST	He is there. See what humour he is in, and I will bring the Doctor about by the fields. Will it do well?
SHALLOW	We will do it.
(didascalia)	PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER Adieu, good Master Doctor.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Page, Shallow, and Slender
(didascalia)	CAIUS drawing his rapier By Gar, me vill kill de priest, for he speak for a jackanape to Anne Page.
HOST	Let him die. Sheathe thy impatience; throw cold water on thy choler. Go about the fields with me through Frogmore. I will bring thee where Mistress Anne Page is, at a farmhouse a-feasting; and thou shalt woo her. Cried game? Said I well?
(didascalia)	CAIUS sheathing his rapier By Gar, me dank you vor dat. By Gar, I love you, and I shall procure-a you de good guest: de earl, de knight, de lords, de gentlemen, my patiences.
HOST	For the which I will be thy adversary toward Anne Page. Said I well?
CAIUS	By Gar, ’tis good. Vell said.
HOST	Let us wag, then.
CAIUS	Come at my heels, Jack Rugby. Exeunt

Atto 3, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Hugh Evans with a rapier, and bearing a book and Simple bearing Evans’s gown
EVANS	I pray you now, good Master Slender’s servingman, and friend Simple by your name, which way have you looked for Master Caius, that calls himself Doctor of Physic?
SIMPLE	Marry, sir, the Petty Ward, the Park Ward, every way; old Windsor way, and every way but the town way.
EVANS	I most fehemently desire you you will also look that way.
(didascalia)	SIMPLE I will, sir. Exit
(didascalia)	EVANS opening the book Jeshu pless me, how full of cholers I am, and trempling of mind! I shall be glad if he have deceived me. How melancholies I am! I will knog his urinals about his knave’s costard when I have good opportunities for the ’ork. Pless my soul!—(Singing)
EVANS	To shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sings madrigals. There will we make our peds of roses, And a thousand fragrant posies. To shallow— Mercy on me! I have a great dispositions to cry.—(Singing) Melodious birds sing madrigals.— When as I sat in Pabylon— And a thousand vagram posies. To shallow (etc.)
(didascalia)	Enter Simple
SIMPLE	Yonder he is coming. This way, Sir Hugh.
EVANS	He’s welcome. (Singing) ‘To shallow rivers to whose falls-’ God prosper the right! What weapons is he?
SIMPLE	No weapons, sir. There comes my master, Master Shallow, and another gentleman, from Frogmore, over the stile this way.
EVANS	Pray you give me my gown—or else keep it in your arms.
(didascalia)	He reads.
(didascalia)	Enter Justice Shallow, Master Slender, and Master
EVANS	Page
SHALLOW	How now, Master Parson? Good morrow, good Sir Hugh. Keep a gamester from the dice and a good student from his book, and it is wonderful.
SLENDER	(aside) Ah, sweet Anne Page!
PAGE	God save you, good Sir Hugh.
EVANS	God pless you from his mercy sake, all of you.
SHALLOW	What, the sword and the Word? Do you study them both, Master Parson?
PAGE	And youthful still: in your doublet and hose this raw, rheumatic day I
EVANS	There is reasons and causes for it.
PAGE	We are come to you to do a good office, Master Parson.
EVANS	Fery well. What is it?
PAGE	Yonder is a most reverend gentleman, who, belike having received wrong by some person, is at most odds with his own gravity and patience that ever you saw.
SHALLOW	I have lived fourscore years and upward; I never heard a man of his place, gravity, and learning so wide of his own respect.
EVANS	What is he?
PAGE	I think you know him: Master Doctor Caius, the renowned French physician.
EVANS	Got’s will and his passion of my heart! I had as lief you would tell me of a mess of pottage.
PAGE	Why?
EVANS	He has no more knowledge in Hibbocrates and Galen, and he is a knave besides—a cowardly knave as you would desires to be acquainted withal.
(didascalia)	PAGE to Shallow I warrant you, he’s the man should fight with him.
SLENDER	(aside) O sweet Anne Page!
SHALLOW	It appears so by his weapons.
(didascalia)	Enter the Host of the Garter, Doctor Caius, and John Rugby
SHALLOW	Keep them asunder—here comes Doctor Caius. Evans and Caius draw and offer to fight
PAGE	Nay, good Master Parson, keep in your weapon.
SHALLOW	So do you, good Master Doctor.
HOST	Disarm them and let them question. Let them keep their limbs whole, and hack our English. Shallow and Page take Caius’s and Evans’s rapiers
CAIUS	(to Evans) I pray you let-a me speak a word with your ear. Wherefore vill you not meet-a me?
(didascalia)	EVANS aside to Caius Pray you use your patience. Aloud In good time!
CAIUS	By Gar, you are de coward, de jack-dog, john-ape.
EVANS	(aside to Caius) Pray you let us not be laughing-stocks to other men’s humours. I desire you in friendship, and I will one way or other make you amends. (Aloud) By Jeshu, I will knog your urinal about your knave’s cogscomb.
CAIUS	Diable! Jack Rugby, mine Host de Jarteer, have I not stay for him to kill him? Have I not, at de place I did appoint?
EVANS	As I am a Christians soul, now look you, this is the place appointed. I’ll be judgement by mine Host of the Garter.
HOST	Peace, I say, Gallia and Gaul, French and Welsh, soul-curer and body-curer.
CAIUS	Ay, dat is very good, excellent.
HOST	Peace, I say. Hear mine Host of the Garter. Am I politic? Am I subtle? Am I a Machiavel? Shall I lose my doctor? No, he gives me the potions and the motions. Shall I lose my parson, my priest, my Sir Hugh? No, he gives me the Proverbs and the No-verbs. (To Caius) Give me thy hand terrestrial—so. (To Evans) Give me thy hand celestial—so. Boys of art, I have deceived you both, I have directed you to wrong places. Your hearts are mighty, your skins are whole, and let burnt sack be the issue. (To Shallow and Page) Come, lay their swords to pawn. (To Caius and Evans) Follow me, lads of peace, follow, follow, follow. Exit
SHALLOW	Afore God, a mad host! Follow, gentlemen, follow. Exeunt Shallow and Page
SLENDER	(aside) O sweet Anne Page Exit
CAIUS	Ha, do I perceive dat? Have you make-a de sot of us, ha, ha?
EVANS	This is well: he has made us his vlouting-stog. I desire you that we may be friends, and let us knog our prains together to be revenge on this same scall, scurvy, cogging companion, the Host of the Garter.
CAIUS	By Gar, with all my heart. He promise to bring me where is Anne Page. By Gar, he deceive me too.
EVANS	Well, I will smite his noddles. Pray you follow.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 3, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Robin, followed by Mistress Page
MISTRESS PAGE	Nay, keep your way, little gallant. You were wont to be a follower, but now you are a leader. Whether had you rather, lead mine eyes, or eye your master’s heels?
ROBIN	I had rather, forsooth, go before you like a man than follow him like a dwarf.
MISTRESS PAGE	O, you are a flattering boy! Now I see you’ll be a courtier.
(didascalia)	Enter Master Ford
FORD	Well met, Mistress Page. Whither go you?
MISTRESS PAGE	Truly, sir, to see your wife. Is she at home?
FORD	Ay, and as idle as she may hang together, for want of company. I think if your husbands were dead you two would marry.
MISTRESS PAGE	Be sure of that—two other husbands.
FORD	Where had you this pretty weathercock?
MISTRESS PAGE	I cannot tell what the dickens his name is my husband had him of.—What do you call your knight’s name, sirrah?
ROBIN	Sir John Falstaff.
FORD	Sir John Falstaff?
MISTRESS PAGE	He, he; I can never hit on’s name. There is such a league between my goodman and he! Is your wife at home indeed?
FORD	Indeed she is.
MISTRESS PAGE	By your leave, sir, I am sick till I see her. Exeunt Robin and Mistress
FORD	Has Page any brains? Hath he any eyes? Hath he any thinking? Sure they sleep; he hath no use of them. Why, this boy will carry a letter twenty mile, as easy as a cannon will shoot point-blank twelve score. He pieces out his wife’s inclination; he gives her folly motion and advantage. And now she’s going to my wife, and Falstaff’s boy with her. A man may hear this shower sing in the wind. And Falstaff’s boy with her. Good plots—they are laid; and our revolted wives share damnation together. Well, I will take him; then torture my wife, pluck the borrowed veil of modesty from the so-seeming Mistress Page, divulge Page himself for a secure and wilful Actaeon, and to these violent proceedings all my neighbours shall cry aim.
(didascalia)	Clock strikes
FORD	The clock gives me my cue, and my assurance bids me search. There I shall find Falstaff. I shall be rather praised for this than mocked, for it is as positive as the earth is firm that Falstaff is there. I will go.
(didascalia)	Enter Master Page, Justice Shallow, Master Slender, the Host of the Garter, Sir Hugh Evans, Doctor Caius, and John Rugby
FORD	SHALLOW, PAGE, etc. Well met, Master Ford.
FORD	(aside) By my faith, a good knot! (To them) I have good cheer at home, and I pray you all go with me.
SHALLOW	I must excuse myself, Master Ford.
SLENDER	And so must I, sir. We have appointed to dine with Mistress Anne, and I would not break with her for more money than I’ll speak of.
SHALLOW	We have lingered about a match between Anne Page and my cousin Slender, and this day we shall have our answer.
SLENDER	I hope I have your good will, father Page.
PAGE	You have, Master Slender: I stand wholly for you. (To Caius) But my wife, Master Doctor, is for you altogether.
CAIUS	Ay, be Gar, and de maid is love-a me. My nursh-a Quickly tell me so mush.
HOST	(to Page) What say you to young Master Fenton? He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth; he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May. He will carry‘t, he will carry’t; ’tis in his buttons he will carry’t.
PAGE	Not by my consent, I promise you. The gentleman is of no having. He kept company with the wild Prince and Poins. He is of too high a region; he knows too much. No, he shall not knit a knot in his fortunes with the finger of my substance. If he take her, let him take her simply: the wealth I have waits on my consent, and my consent goes not that way.
FORD	I beseech you heartily, some of you go home with me to dinner. Besides your cheer, you shall have sport: I will show you a monster. Master Doctor, you shall go. So shall you, Master Page, and you, Sir Hugh.
(didascalia)	SHALLOW Well, God be with you! Aside to Slender We shall have the freer wooing at Master Page’s.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Shallow and Slender
CAIUS	Go home, John Rugby; I come anon. Exit Rugby HOST Farewell, my hearts. I will to my honest knight Falstaff, and drink canary with him. Exit
FORD	(aside) I think I shall drink in pipe-wine first with him: I’ll make him dance. (To Page, Caius, and Evans) Will you go, gentles?
(didascalia)	PAGE, CAIUS, and EVANS Have with you to see this monster. Exeunt

Atto 3, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Ford and Mistress Page
MISTRESS FORD	What, John! What, Robert!
MISTRESS PAGE	Quickly, quickly! Is the buck-basket-
MISTRESS FORD	I warrant.—What, Robert, I say!
MISTRESS PAGE	Come, come, come!
(didascalia)	Enter John and Robert, with a buck-basket
MISTRESS FORD	Here, set it down.
MISTRESS PAGE	Give your men the charge. We must be brief.
MISTRESS FORD	Marry, as I told you before, John and Robert, be ready here hard by in the brew-house; and when I suddenly call you, come forth, and without any pause or staggering take this basket on your shoulders. That done, trudge with it in all haste, and carry it among the whitsters in Datchet Mead, and there empty it in the muddy ditch close by the Thames’ side.
MISTRESS PAGE	(to John and Robert) You will do it?
MISTRESS FORD	I ha’ told them over and over; they lack no direction.—Be gone, and come when you are called.
(didascalia)	Exeunt John and Robert
(didascalia)	Enter Robin
MISTRESS PAGE	Here comes little Robin.
MISTRESS FORD	How now, my eyas-musket, what news with you?
ROBIN	My master Sir John is come in at your back door, Mistress Ford, and requests your company.
MISTRESS PAGE	You little Jack-a-Lent, have you been true to us?
ROBIN	Ay, I’ll be sworn. My master knows not of your being here, and hath threatened to put me into everlasting liberty if I tell you of it; for he swears he’ll turn me away.
MISTRESS PAGE	Thou’rt a good boy. This secrecy of thine shall be a tailor to thee, and shall make thee a new doublet and hose.—I’ll go hide me.
MISTRESS FORD	Do so. (To Robin) Go tell thy master I am alone. Exit Robin Mistress Page, remember you your cue.
MISTRESS PAGE	I warrant thee. If I do not act it, hiss me.
(didascalia)	MISTRESS FORD Go to, then. Exit Mistress Page
MISTRESS PAGE	We’ll use this unwholesome humidity, this gross watery pumpkin. We’ll teach him to know turtles from jays.
(didascalia)	Enter Sir John Falstaff
SIR JOHN	Have I caught thee, my heavenly jewel? Why, now let me die, for I have lived long enough. This is the period of my ambition. O, this blessed hour!
MISTRESS FORD	O sweet Sir John!
SIR JOHN	Mistress Ford, I cannot cog; I cannot prate, Mistress Ford. Now shall I sin in my wish: I would thy husband were dead. I’ll speak it before the best lord. I would make thee my lady.
MISTRESS FORD	I your lady, Sir John? Alas, I should be a pitiful lady.
SIR JOHN	Let the court of France show me such another. I see how thine eye would emulate the diamond. Thou hast the right arched beauty of the brow that becomes the ship-tire, the tire-valiant, or any tire of Venetian admittance.
MISTRESS FORD	A plain kerchief, Sir John—my brows become nothing else, nor that well neither.
SIR JOHN	By the Lord, thou art a tyrant to say so. Thou wouldst make an absolute courtier, and the firm fixture of thy foot would give an excellent motion to thy gait in a semicircled farthingale. I see what thou wert if fortune, thy foe, were, with nature, thy friend. Come, thou canst not hide it.
MISTRESS FORD	Believe me, there’s no such thing in me. SIR JOHN What made me love thee? Let that persuade thee there’s something extraordinary in thee. Come, I cannot cog and say thou art this and that, like a-many of these lisping hawthorn-buds that come like women in men’s apparel and smell like Bucklersbury in simple time; I cannot. But I love thee, none but thee; and thou deservest it.
MISTRESS FORD	Do not betray me, sir. I fear you love Mistress Page.
SIR JOHN	Thou mightst as well say I love to walk by the Counter gate, which is as hateful to me as the reek of a lime-kiln.
MISTRESS FORD	Well, heaven knows how I love you; and you shall one day find it.
SIR JOHN	Keep in that mind. I’ll deserve it.
MISTRESS FORD	Nay, I must tell you, so you do; or else I could not be in that mind.
(didascalia)	Enter Robin
ROBIN	Mistress Ford, Mistress Ford! Here’s Mistress Page at the door, sweating and blowing, and looking wildly, and would needs speak with you presently.
SIR JOHN	She shall not see me. I will ensconce me behind the arras.
MISTRESS FORD	Pray you do so; she’s a very tattling woman. Sir John hides behind the arras.
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Page
MISTRESS FORD	What’s the matter? How now?
MISTRESS PAGE	O Mistress Ford, what have you done? You’re shamed, you’re overthrown, you’re undone for ever.
MISTRESS FORD	What’s the matter, good Mistress Page?
MISTRESS PAGE	O well-a-day, Mistress Ford! Having an honest man to your husband, to give him such cause of suspicion!
MISTRESS FORD	What cause of suspicion?
MISTRESS PAGE	What cause of suspicion? Out upon you! How am I mistook in you
MISTRESS FORD	Why, alas, what’s the matter?
MISTRESS PAGE	Your husband’s coming hither, woman, with all the officers in Windsor, to search for a gentleman that he says is here now in the house, by your consent, to take an ill advantage of his absence. You are undone.
MISTRESS FORD	’Tis not so, I hope.
MISTRESS PAGE	Pray heaven it be not so that you have such a man here! But ’tis most certain your husband’s coming, with half Windsor at his heels, to search for such a one. I come before to tell you. If you know yourself clear, why, I am glad of it; but if you have a friend here, convey, convey him out. Be not amazed. Call all your senses to you. Defend your reputation, or bid farewell to your good life for ever.
MISTRESS FORD	What shall I do? There is a gentleman, my dear friend; and I fear not mine own shame so much as his peril. I had rather than a thousand pound he were out of the house.
MISTRESS PAGE	For shame, never stand ‘you had rather’ and ‘you had rather’. Your husband’s here at hand. Bethink you of some conveyance: in the house you cannot hide him. O, how have you deceived me! Look, here is a basket. If he be of any reasonable stature, he may creep in here; and throw foul linen upon him as if it were going to bucking. Or—it is whiting time—send him by your two men to Datchet Mead.
MISTRESS FORD	He’s too big to go in there. What shall I do?
SIR JOHN	(coming forward) Let me see’t, let me see’t, O let me see’t! I’ll in, I’ll in. Follow your friend’s counsel; I’ll in.
MISTRESS PAGE	What, Sir John Falstaff! (Aside to him) Are these your letters, knight?
SIR JOHN	(aside to Mistress Page) I love thee. Help me away. Let me creep in here. He goes into the basket I’ll never— Mistress Page and Mistress Ford put foul clothes over him
(didascalia)	MISTRESS PAGE (to Robin) Help to cover your master, boy.—Call your men, Mistress Ford. Aside to Sir John You dissembling knight!
MISTRESS FORD	What, John! Robert, John!
(didascalia)	Enter John and Robert
MISTRESS FORD	Go take up these clothes here quickly. Where’s the cowl-staff? John and Robert fit the cowl-staff Look how you drumble! Carry them to the laundress in Datchet Mead. Quickly, come! They lift the basket and start to leave.
(didascalia)	Enter Master Ford, Master Page, Doctor Caius, and
MISTRESS FORD	Sir Hugh Evans
FORD	(to Page, Caius, and Evans) Pray you come near. If I suspect without cause, why then, make sport at me; then let me be your jest—1 deserve it. (To John and Robert) How now? Whither bear you this?
(didascalia)	JOHN To the laundress, forsooth.
MISTRESS FORD	Why, what have you to do whither they bear it? You were best meddle with buck-washing!
FORD	Buck? I would I could wash myself of the buck! Buck, buck, buck? Ay, buck, I warrant you, buck. And of the season too, it shall appear.
(didascalia)	Exeunt John and Robert, with the basket
FORD	Gentlemen, I have dreamt tonight. I’ll tell you my dream. Here, here, here be my keys. Ascend my chambers, search, seek, find out. I’ll warrant we’ll unkennel the fox. Let me stop this way first. He locks the door So, now, uncoop.
PAGE	Good Master Ford, be contented. You wrong yourself too much.
FORD	True, Master Page.—Up, gentlemen! You shall see sport anon. Follow me, gentlemen. Exit
EVANS	This is fery fantastical humours and jealousies.
CAIDS	By Gar, ’tis no the fashion of France; it is not jealous in France.
PAGE	Nay, follow him, gentlemen. See the issue of his search. Exeunt Caius, Evans, and Page
MISTRESS PAGE	Is there not a double excellency in this?
MISTRESS FORD	I know not which pleases me better: that my husband is deceived, or Sir John.
MISTRESS PAGE	What a taking was he in when your husband asked what was in the basket!
MISTRESS FORD	I am half afraid he will have need of washing, so throwing him into the water will do him a benefit.
MISTRESS PAGE	Hang him, dishonest rascal! I would all of the same strain were in the same distress.
MISTRESS FORD	I think my husband hath some special suspicion of Falstaff’s being here, for I never saw him so gross in his jealousy till now.
MISTRESS PAGE	I will lay a plot to try that, and we will yet have more tricks with Falstaff. His dissolute disease will scarce obey this medicine.
MISTRESS FORD	Shall we send that foolish carrion Mistress Quickly to him, and excuse his throwing into the water, and give him another hope, to betray him to another punishment?
MISTRESS PAGE	We will do it. Let him be sent for tomorrow eight o’clock, to have amends.
(didascalia)	Enter Ford, Page, Caius, and Evans
FORD	I cannot find him. Maybe the knave bragged of that he could not compass.
MISTRESS PAGE	(aside to Mistress Ford) Heard you that?
MISTRESS FORD	You use me well, Master Ford, do you?
FORD	Ay, I do so.
MISTRESS FORD	Heaven make me better than your thoughts!
FORD	Amen.
MISTRESS PAGE	You do yourself mighty wrong, Master Ford.
FORD	Ay, ay, I must bear it.
EVANS	If there be anypody in the house, and in the chambers, and in the coffers, and in the presses, heaven forgive my sins at the day of judgement!
CAIUS	Be Gar, nor I too. There is nobodies.
PAGE	Fie, fie, Master Ford, are you not ashamed? What spirit, what devil suggests this imagination? I would not ha’ your distemper in this kind for the wealth of Windsor Castle.
FORD	’Tis my fault, Master Page. I suffer for it.
EVANS	You suffer for a pad conscience. Your wife is as honest a ’omans as I will desires among five thousand, and five hundred too.
CAIUS	By Gar, I see ’tis an honest woman.
FORD	Well, I promised you a dinner. Come, come, walk in the park. I pray you pardon me. I will hereafter make known to you why I have done this.—Come, wife; come, Mistress Page. I pray you pardon me. Pray heartily pardon me.
PAGE	(to Caius and Evans) Let’s go in, gentlemen. (Aside to them) But trust me, we’ll mock him. (To Ford, Caius, and Evans) I do invite you tomorrow morning to my house to breakfast. After, we’ll a-birding together. I have a fine hawk for the bush. Shall it be so?
FORD	Anything.
EVANS	If there is one, I shall make two in the company.
CAIUS	If there be one or two, I shall make-a the turd.
FORD	Pray you go, Master Page.
(didascalia)	Exeunt fall but Evans and Caius
EVANS	I pray you now, remembrance tomorrow on the lousy knave mine Host.
CAIUS	Dat is good, by Gar; with all my heart.
EVANS	A lousy knave, to have his gibes and his mockeries.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 3, Scena 4

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Master Fenton and Anne Page
FENTON	I see I cannot get thy father’s love; Therefore no more turn me to him, sweet Nan.
ANNE	Alas, how then?
FENTON	Why, thou must be thyself. He doth object I am too great of birth, And that, my state being galled with my expense, I seek to heal it only by his wealth. Besides these, other bars he lays before me— My riots past, my wild societies; And tells me ’tis a thing impossible I should love thee but as a property.
ANNE	Maybe he tells you true.
(didascalia)	FENTON
ANNE	No, heaven so speed me in my time to come! Albeit I will confess thy father’s wealth Was the first motive that I wooed thee, Anne, Yet, wooing thee, I found thee of more value Than stamps in gold or sums in sealèd bags; And ’tis the very riches of thyself That now I aim at.
ANNE	Gentle Master Fenton, Yet seek my father’s love, still seek it, sir. If opportunity and humblest suit Cannot attain it, why then—
(didascalia)	Enter Justice Shallow, Master Slender richly dressedl, and Mistress Quickly
ANNE	Hark you hither. They talk apart
SHALLOW	Break their talk, Mistress Quickly. My kinsman shall speak for himself.
SLENDER	I’ll make a shaft or a bolt on’t. ’Slid, ’tis but venturing.
SHALLOW	Be not dismayed.
SLENDER	No, she shall not dismay me. I care not for that, but that I am afeard.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	(to Anne) Hark ye, Master Slender would speak a word with you.
ANNE	I come to him. (To Fenton) This is my father’s choice. O, what a world of vile ill-favoured faults Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year I
MISTRESS QUICKLY	And how does good Master Fenton? Pray you, a word with you. She draws Fenton aside
SHALLOW	She’s coming. To her, coz! O boy, thou hadst a father!
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, by God, that I will, come cut and long-tail, under the degree of a squire.
SHALLOW	He will make you a hundred and fifty pounds jointure.
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. He stands aside
ANNE	Now, Master Slender.
SLENDER	Now, good Mistress Anne.
ANNE	What is your will?
SLENDER	My will? ‘Od’s heartlings, that’s a pretty jest indeed! I ne’er made my will yet, I thank God; I am not such a sickly creature, I give God 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. If it be my luck, so. If not, happy man be his dole. They can tell you how things go better than I can.
(didascalia)	Enter Master Page and Mistress Page
SLENDER	You may ask your father: here he comes.
PAGE	Now, Master Stender.—Love him, daughter Anne.— Why, how now? What does Master Fenton here? You wrong me, sir, thus still to haunt 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 Penton.— Come, Master Shallow; come, son Slender, in.— Knowing my mind, you wrong me, Master Fenton.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Page, Shallow, and Slender
MISTRESS QUICKLY	(to Fenton) Speak to Mistress Page.
FENTON	Good Mistress Page, for that I love your daughter In such a righteous fashion as I do, Perforce against all checks, rebukes, and manners I must advance the colours of my love, And not retire. Let me have your good will.
ANNE	Good mother, do not marry me to yon fool.
MISTRESS PAGE	I mean it not; I seek you a better husband.
(didascalia)	MISTRESS QUICKLY aside to Anne That’s my master, Master Doctor.
ANNE	Alas, I had rather be set quick 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. Till then, farewell, sir. She must needs go in. Her father will be angry.
FENTON	Farewell, gentle mistress.—Farewell, Nan.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Mistress Page and Anne
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, (giving her a ring) and I pray thee, once tonight Give my sweet Nan this ring. (Giving money) There’s for thy pains.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Now heaven send thee good fortune!
(didascalia)	Exit Fenton
MISTRESS QUICKLY	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, 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 another errand to Sir John Falstaff from my two mistresses. What a beast am I to slack it! Exit

Atto 3, Scena 5

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sir John Falstaff
SIR JOHN	Bardolph, I say!
(didascalia)	Enter Bardolph
BARDOLPH	Here, sir.
SIR JOHN	Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in’t.
(didascalia)	Exit Bardolph
SIR JOHN	Have I lived to be carried in a basket like a barrow 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 slighted me into the river with as little remorse as 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 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? By the Lord, a mountain of mummy!
(didascalia)	Enter Bardolph, with two large cups of sack
BARDOLPH	Here’s Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with you.
SIR JOHN	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	Come in, woman!
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Quickly
MISTRESS QUICKLY	(to Sir John) By your leave; I cry you mercy. Give your worship good morrow!
(didascalia)	SIR JOHN (drinking, then speaking to Bardolph) Take away these chalices. Go brew me a pottle of sack, finely.
BARDOLPH	With eggs, sir?
(didascalia)	SIR JOHN Simple of itself. I’ll no pullet-sperms in my brewage. Exit Bardolph, with cups
BARDOLPH	How now?
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Marry, sir, I come to your worship from Mistress Ford.
SIR JOHN	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 was not her fault. She does so take on with her men; they mistook their erection.
SIR JOHN	So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman’s promise.
MISTRESS 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.
SIR JOHN	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.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	I will tell her.
SIR JOHN	Do so. Between nine and ten, sayst thou?
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Eight and nine, sir.
SIR JOHN	Well, be gone. I will not miss her.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Peace be with you, sir. Exit
SIR JOHN	I marvel I hear not of Master Brooke; he sent me word to stay within. I like his money well.
(didascalia)	Enter Master Ford, disguised as Brooke
SIR JOHN	By the mass, here he comes.
FORD	God bless you, sir.
SIR JOHN	Now, Master Brooke, you come to know what hath passed between me and Ford’s wife.
FORD	That indeed, Sir John, is my business.
SIR JOHN	Master Brooke, I will not lie to you. I was at her house the hour she appointed me.
FORD	And sped you, sir?
SIR JOHN	Very ill-favouredly, Master Brooke.
FORD	How so, sir? Did she change her determination?
SIR JOHN	No, Master Brooke, but the peaking cornuto her husband, Master Brooke, 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 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?
SIR JOHN	While I was there.
FORD	And did he search for you, and could not find you?
SIR JOHN	You shall hear. As God would have it, comes in one Mistress Page, gives intelligence of Ford’s approach, and, by her invention and Ford’s wife’s distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket—
FORD	A buck-basket?
SIR JOHN	By the Lord, a buck-basket!—rammed me in with foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins, that, Master Brooke, there was the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.
FORD	And how long lay you there?
SIR JOHN	Nay, you shall hear, Master Brooke, 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 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 his hand. Well, on went he for a search, and away went I for foul clothes. But mark the sequel, Master Brooke. 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 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 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 Brooke!
FORD	In 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?
SIR JOHN	Master Brooke, 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 nine is the hour, Master Brooke.
FORD	’Tis past eight already, sir.
SIR JOHN	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 Brooke; Master Brooke, you shall cuckold Ford.
(didascalia)	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 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 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 I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go with me: I’ll be horn-mad. Exit

Atto 4, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Page, Mistress Quickly, and William Page
MISTRESS PAGE	Is he at Mistress Ford’s already, thinkest thou?
MISTRESS 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.
MISTRESS PAGE	I’ll be with her by and by. I’ll but bring my young man here to school.
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Hugh Evans
MISTRESS PAGE	Look where his master comes. ’Tis a playing day, I see.—How now, Sir Hugh, no school today?
EVANS	No, Master Slender is let the boys leave to play.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	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.
MISTRESS PAGE	Come on, sirrah. Hold up your head. Answer your master; be not afraid.
EVANS	William, how many numbers is in nouns?
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Truly, I thought there had been one number more, because they say ‘’Od’s nouns’.
EVANS	Peace your tattlings!—What is ‘fair’, William?
WILLIAM	‘Pulcher’.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Polecats? There are fairer things than polecats, sure.
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.
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 thus declined. Singulariter nominativo: ‘hic, haec, hoc’.
EVANS	Nominativo: ‘hig, hag, hog’. Pray you mark: genitivo: ‘huius’. Well, what is your accusative case?
WILLIAM	Accusativo: ‘hinc’—
EVANS	I pray you have your remembrance, child. Accusativo: ‘hing, hang, hog’.
MISTRESS 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—
EVANS	Remember, William, focative is caret.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	And that’s a good root.
EVANS	’Oman, forbear.
MISTRESS PAGE	(to Mistress Quickly) Peace.
EVANS	What is your genitive case plural, William?
WILLIAM	Genitive case?
EVANS	Ay.
WILLIAM	Genitivo: ‘horum, harum, horum’.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Vengeance of Jenny’s case! Fie on her! Never name her, child, if she be a whore.
EVANS	For shame, ’oman!
MISTRESS 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 ‘whorum’. Fie upon you!
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 Mistress Quickly) Prithee, hold thy peace.
EVANS	Show me now, William, some declensions of your pronouns.
WILLIAM	Forsooth, I have forgot.
EVANS	It is ‘qui, que, quod’. If you forget your ‘qui’s, your ‘que‘s, and your ‘quod’s, you must be preeches. Go your 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.
MISTRESS PAGE	Adieu, good Sir Hugh. Exit Evans Get you home, boy. Exit William (To Mistress Quickly) Come, we stay too long. Exeunt

Atto 4, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sir John Falstaff and Mistress Ford
SIR JOHN	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, complement, and ceremony of it. But 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 th’ chamber, Sir John. Sir John steps into the chamber
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Page
MISTRESS PAGE	How now, sweetheart, who’s at home besides yourself?
MISTRESS FORD	Why, none but mine own people.
MISTRESS PAGE	Indeed?
MISTRESS FORD	No, certainly. (Aside to her) Speak louder.
MISTRESS PAGE	Truly, I am so glad you have nobody here.
MISTRESS FORD	Why?
MISTRESS PAGE	Why, woman, your husband is in his old lines again. He so takes on yonder with my husband, so rails against all married mankind, so curses all Eve’s daughters of what complexion soever, and so buffets himself on the forehead, crying ‘Peer out, peer out!’, that any madness I ever yet beheld seemed but tameness, civility, and patience to this his distemper he is in now. I am glad the fat knight is not here.
MISTRESS FORD	Why, does he talk of him?
MISTRESS PAGE	Of none but him; and swears he was carried out, the last time he searched for him, in a basket, protests to my husband he is now here, and hath drawn him and the rest of their company from their sport to make another experiment of his suspicion. But I am glad the knight is not here. Now he shall see his own foolery.
MISTRESS FORD	How near is he, Mistress Page?
MISTRESS PAGE	Hard by at street end. He will be here anon. 35
MISTRESS FORD	I am undone: the knight is here.
MISTRESS PAGE	Why then, you are utterly shamed, and he’s but a dead man. What a woman are you! Away with him, away with him! Better shame than murder.
MISTRESS FORD	Which way should he go? How should I bestow him? Shall I put him into the basket again? Sir John comes forth from the chamber
SIR JOHN	No, I’ll come no more i’th’ basket. May I not go out ere he come?
MISTRESS PAGE	Alas, three of Master Ford’s brothers watch the door with pistols, that none shall issue out. Otherwise you might slip away ere he came. But what make you here?
SIR JOHN	What shall I do? I’ll creep up into the chimney.
MISTRESS FORD	There they always use to discharge their birding-pieces.
(didascalia)	MISTRESS PAGE Creep into the kiln-hole.
SIR JOHN	Where is it?
MISTRESS FORD	He will seek there, on my word. Neither press, coffer, chest, trunk, well, vault, but he hath an abstract for the remembrance of such places, and goes to them by his note. There is no hiding you in the house.
SIR JOHN	I’ll go out, then.
(didascalia)	MISTRESS PAGE If you go out in your own semblance, you die, Sir John—unless you go out disguised.
MISTRESS FORD	How might we disguise him?
MISTRESS PAGE	Alas the day, I know not. There is no woman’s gown big enough for him; otherwise he might put on a hat, a muffler, and a kerchief, and so escape.
SIR JOHN	Good hearts, devise something. Any extremity rather than a mischief.
MISTRESS FORD	My maid’s aunt, the fat woman of Brentford, has a gown above.
MISTRESS PAGE	On my word, it will serve him; she’s as big as he is; and there’s her thrummed hat, and her muffler too.—Run up, Sir John.
MISTRESS FORD	Go, go, sweet Sir John. Mistress Page and I will look some linen for your head.
MISTRESS PAGE	Quick, quick! We’ll come dress you straight. Put on the gown the while. Exit Sir John
MISTRESS FORD	I would my husband would meet him in this shape. He cannot abide the old woman of Brentford. He swears she’s a witch, forbade her my house, and hath threatened to beat her.
MISTRESS PAGE	Heaven guide him to thy husband’s cudgel, and the devil guide his cudgel afterwards!
MISTRESS FORD	But is my husband coming?
MISTRESS PAGE	Ay, in good sadness is he, and talks of the basket too, howsoever he hath had intelligence.
MISTRESS FORD	We’ll try that, for I’ll appoint my men to carry the basket again, to meet him at the door with it as they did last time.
MISTRESS PAGE	Nay, but he’ll be here presently. Let’s go dress him like the witch of Brentford.
MISTRESS FORD	I’ll first direct my men what they shall do with the basket. Go up; I’ll bring linen for him straight.
(didascalia)	MISTRESS PAGE Hang him, dishonest varlet ! We cannot misuse him enough. Exit Mistress Ford
MISTRESS FORD	We’ll leave a proof by that which we will do, Wives may be merry, and yet honest, too. We do not act that often jest and laugh. ’Tis old but true: ’Still swine eats all the draff’. Exit
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Ford, with John and Robert
MISTRESS FORD	Go, sirs, take the basket again on your shoulders. Your master is hard at door. If he bid you set it down, obey him. Quickly, dispatch! Exit
(didascalia)	JOHN Come, come, take it up.
(didascalia)	ROBERT Pray heaven it be not full of knight again.
(didascalia)	JOHN I hope not; I had as lief bear so much lead.
MISTRESS FORD	They lift the basket.
(didascalia)	Enter Master Ford, Master Page, Doctor Caius, Sir
MISTRESS FORD	Hugh Evans, and Justice Shallow
FORD	Ay, but if it prove true, Master Page, have you any way then to unfool me again? (To John and Robert) Set down the basket, villains. John and Robert set down the basket Somebody call my wife. Youth in a basket! ! O, you panderly rascals! There’s a knot, a gang, a pack, a conspiracy against me. Now shall the devil be shamed.—What, wife, I say! Come, come forth! Behold what honest clothes you send forth to bleaching.
PAGE	Why, this passes, Master Ford. You are not to go loose any longer; you must be pinioned.
EVANS	Why, this is lunatics; this is mad as a mad dog.
SHALLOW	Indeed, Master Ford, this is not well, indeed.
FORD	So say I too, sir.
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Ford
FORD	Come hither, Mistress Ford ! Mistress Ford, the honest woman, the modest wife, the virtuous creature, that hath the jealous fool to her husband I suspect without cause, mistress, do I?
MISTRESS FORD	God be my witness you do, if you suspect me in any dishonesty.
FORD	Well said, brazen-face; hold it out. He opens the basket and starts to take out clothes Come forth, sirrah!
PAGE	This passes.
MISTRESS FORD	(to Ford) Are you not ashamed? Let the clothes alone.
FORD	I shall find you anon.
EVANS	’Tis unreasonable: will you take up your wife’s clothes? Come, away.
(didascalia)	FORD to John and Robert Empty the basket, I say.
(didascalia)	PAGE Why, man, why?
(didascalia)	FORD Master Page, as I am a man, there was one conveyed out of my house yesterday in this basket. Why may not he be there again? In my house I am sure he is. My intelligence is true, my jealousy is reasonable. To John and Robert Pluck me out all the linen.
EVANS	He takes out clothes
MISTRESS FORD	If you find a man there, he shall die a flea’s death.
PAGE	Here’s no man.
SHALLOW	By my fidelity, this is not well, Master Ford. This wrongs you.
EVANS	Master Ford, you must pray, and not follow the imaginations of your own heart. This is jealousies.
FORD	Well, he’s not here I seek for.
PAGE	No, nor nowhere else but in your brain.
(didascalia)	FORD Help to search my house this one time. If I find not what I seek, show no colour for my extremity; let me for ever be your table-sport; let them say of me, ‘As jealous as Ford, that searched a hollow walnut for his wife’s leman’. Satisfy me once more; once more search with me. Exeunt John and Robert with the basket
MISTRESS FORD	What ho, Mistress Page! Come you and the old woman down. My husband will come into the chamber.
FORD	Old woman? What old woman’s that?
MISTRESS FORD	Why, it is my maid’s Aunt of Brentford.
FORD	A witch, a quean, an old, cozening quean! ! Have I not forbid her my house? She comes of errands, does she? We are simple men; we do not know what’s brought to pass under the profession of fortune-telling. She works by charms, by spells, by th’ figure, and such daubery as this is, beyond our element. We know nothing.—Come down, you witch, you hag, you ! Come down, I say!
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Page, and Sir John Falstaff,
(didascalia)	disguised as an old woman.
(didascalia)	Ford makes towards them
MISTRESS FORD	Nay, good sweet husband!—Good gentlemen, let him not strike the old woman.
MISTRESS PAGE	(to Sir John) Come, Mother Prat. Come, give me your hand.
FORD	I’ll prat her! He beats Sir John Out of my door, you witch, you rag, you baggage, you polecat, you runnion! Out, out! I’ll conjure you, I’ll fortune-tell you! Exit Sir John
MISTRESS PAGE	Are you not ashamed? I think you have killed the poor woman.
MISTRESS FORD	Nay, he will do it.—’Tis a goodly credit for you!
FORD	Hang her, witch!
EVANS	By Jeshu, I think the ‘oman is a witch indeed. I like not when a ’oman has a great peard. I spy a great peard under his muffler.
FORD	Will you follow, gentlemen? I beseech you, follow. See but the issue of my jealousy. If I cry out thus upon no trail, never trust me when I open again.
PAGE	Let’s obey his humour a little further. Come, gentlemen. Exeunt the men
MISTRESS PAGE	By my troth, he beat him most pitifully.
MISTRESS FORD	Nay, by th’ mass, that he did not—he beat him most unpitifully, methought.
MISTRESS PAGE	I’ll have the cudgel hallowed and hung o’er the altar. It hath done meritorious service.
MISTRESS FORD	What think you—may we, with the warrant of womanhood and the witness of a good conscience, pursue him with any further revenge?
MISTRESS PAGE	The spirit of wantonness is sure scared out of him. If the devil have him not in fee-simple, with fine and recovery, he will never, I think, in the way of waste attempt us again.
MISTRESS FORD	Shall we tell our husbands how we have served him?
MISTRESS PAGE	Yes, by all means, if it be but to scrape the figures out of your husband’s brains. If they can find in their hearts the poor, unvirtuous, fat knight shall be any further afflicted, we two will still be the ministers.
MISTRESS FORD	I’ll warrant they’ll have him publicly shamed, and methinks there would be no period to the jest should he not be publicly shamed.
MISTRESS PAGE	Come, to the forge with it, then shape it. I would not have things cool. Exeunt

Atto 4, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter the Host of the Garter and Bardolph
BARDOLPH	Sir, the Germans desire to have three of your horses. The Duke himself will be tomorrow at court, and they are going to meet him.
HOST	What duke should that be comes so secretly? I hear not of him in the court. Let me speak with the gentlemen. They speak English?
BARDOLPH	Ay, sir. I’ll call them to you.
HOST	They shall have my horses, but I’ll make them pay; I’ll sauce them. They have had my house a week at command; I have turned away my other guests. They must come off: I’ll sauce them. Come. Exeunt

Atto 4, Scena 4

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Master Page, Master Ford, Mistress Page, Mistress Ford, and Sir Hugh Evans
EVANS	‘Tis one of the best discretions of a ’oman as ever I did look upon.
PAGE	And did he send you both these letters at an instant?
MISTRESS PAGE	Within a quarter of an hour.
FORD	Pardon me, wife. Henceforth do what thou wilt. I rather will suspect the sun with cold Than thee with wantonness. Now doth thy honour stand, In him that was of late an heretic, As firm as faith.
PAGE	’Tis well, ’tis well; no more. Be not as extreme in submission As in offence. But let our plot go forward. Let our wives Yet once again, to make us public sport, Appoint a meeting with this old fat fellow, Where we may take him and disgrace him for it.
FORD	There is no better way than that they spoke of.
PAGE	How, to send him word they’ll meet him in the Park At midnight? Fie, fie, he’ll never come.
EVANS	You say he has been thrown in the rivers, and has been grievously peaten as an old ’oman. Methinks there should be terrors in him, that he should not come. Methinks his flesh is punished; he shall have no desires.
PAGE	So think I too.
(didascalia)	MISTRESS FORD
PAGE	Devise but how you’ll use him when he comes, And let us two devise to bring him thither.
MISTRESS PAGE	There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter, Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest, Doth all the winter time at still midnight Walk round about an oak with great ragg’d horns; And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle, And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain In a most hideous and dreadful manner. You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know The superstitious idle-headed eld Received, and did deliver to our age, This tale of Herne the hunter for a truth.
PAGE	Why, yet there want not many that do fear In deep of night to walk by this Herne’s Oak. But what of this?
MISTRESS FORD	Marry, this is our device: That Falstaff at that oak shall meet with us, Disguised like Herne, with huge horns on his head.
PAGE	Well, let it not be doubted but he’ll come, And in this shape. When you have brought him thither What shall be done with him? What is your plot?
MISTRESS PAGE	That likewise have we thought upon, and thus. Nan Page my daughter, and my little son, And three or four more of their growth, we’ll dress Like urchins, oafs, and fairies, green and white, With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads, And rattles in their hands. Upon a sudden, As Falstaff, she, and I are newly met, Let them from forth a saw-pit rush at once, With some diffused song. Upon their sight We two in great amazèdness will fly. Then let them all encircle him about, And, fairy-like, to pinch the unclean knight, And ask him why, that hour of fairy revel, In their so sacred paths he dares to tread In shape profane. [mistress! FORD And till he tell the truth, Let the supposed fairies pinch him sound, And burn him with their tapers.
MISTRESS PAGE	The truth being known, We’ll all present ourselves, dis-horn the spirit, And mock him home to Windsor.
FORD	The children must Be practised well to this, or they’ll ne’er do’t.
EVANS	I will teach the children their behaviours, and I will be like a jackanapes also, to burn the knight with my taber.
FORD	That will be excellent. I’ll go buy them vizors.
MISTRESS PAGE	My Nan shall be the Queen of all the Fairies, Finely attired in a robe of white.
PAGE	That silk will I go buy—(aside) and in that tire Shall Master Slender steal my Nan away, And marry her at Eton. (To Mistress Page) Go send to Falstaff straight.
FORD	Nay, I’ll to him again in name of Brooke. He’ll tell me all his purpose. Sure he’ll come.
MISTRESS PAGE	Fear not you that. (To Page, Ford, and Evans) Go get us properties And tricking for our fairies.
EVANS	Let us about it. It is admirable pleasures, and fery honest knaveries. Exeunt Ford, Page, and Evans
MISTRESS PAGE	Go, Mistress Ford, Send quickly to Sir John, to know his mind.
(didascalia)	Exit Mistress Ford
MISTRESS PAGE	I’ll to the Doctor. He hath my good will, And none but he, to marry with Nan Page. That Slender, though well landed, is an idiot; And he my husband best of all affects. The Doctor is well moneyed, and his friends Potent at court. He, none but he, shall have her, Though twenty thousand worthier come to crave her.
(didascalia)	Exit

Atto 4, Scena 5

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter the Host of the Garter and Simple
HOST	What wouldst thou have, boor? What, thick-skin? Speak, breathe, discuss. Brief, short, quick, snap.
SIMPLE	Marry, sir, I come to speak with Sir John Falstaff, from Master Slender.
HOST	There’s his chamber, his house, his castle, his standing-bed and truckle-bed. ’Tis painted about with the story of the Prodigal, fresh and new. Go knock and call. He’ll speak like an Anthropophaginian unto thee. Knock, I say.
SIMPLE	There’s an old woman, a fat woman, gone up into his chamber. I’ll be so bold as stay, sir, till she come down. I come to speak with her, indeed.
HOST	Ha, a fat woman? The knight may be robbed. I’ll call.—Bully knight, bully Sir John! Speak from thy lungs military! Art thou there? It is thine Host, thine Ephesian, calls.
SIR JOHN	(within) How now, mine Host?
HOST	Here’s a Bohemian Tartar tarries the coming down of thy fat woman. Let her descend, bully, let her descend. My chambers are honourable. Fie, privacy! Fie!
(didascalia)	Enter Sir John Falstaff
SIR JOHN	There was, mine Host, an old fat woman even now with me; but she’s gone.
SIMPLE	Pray you, sir, was’t not the wise woman of Brentford?
SIR JOHN	Ay, marry was it, mussel-shell. What would you with her?
SIMPLE	My master, sir, my master Slender, sent to her, seeing her go through the streets, to know, sir, whether one Nim, sir, that beguiled him of a chain, had the chain or no.
SIR JOHN	I spake with the old woman about it.
SIMPLE	And what says she, I pray, sir?
SIR JOHN	Marry, she says that the very same man that beguiled Master Slender of his chain cozened him of it.
SIMPLE	I would I could have spoken with the woman herself. I had other things to have spoken with her, too, from him.
SIR JOHN	What are they? Let us know.
HOST	Ay, come, quick.
(didascalia)	SIMPLE I may not conceal them, sir.
HOST	Conceal them, or thou diest.
SIMPLE	Why, sir, they were nothing but about Mistress Anne Page, to know if it were my master’s fortune to have her or no.
SIR JOHN	’Tis, ’tis his fortune.
SIMPLE	What, sir?
SIR JOHN	To have her or no. Go say the woman told me SO.
SIMPLE	May I be bold to say so, sir?
SIR JOHN	Ay, Sir Tike; who more bold?
SIMPLE	I thank your worship. I shall make my master glad with these tidings. Exit
HOST	Thou art clerkly, thou art clerkly, Sir John. Was there a wise woman with thee?
SIR JOHN	Ay, that there was, mine Host, one that hath taught me more wit than ever I learned before in my life. And I paid nothing for it, neither, but was paid for my learning.
(didascalia)	Enter Bardolph, muddy
BARDOLPH	O Lord, sir, cozenage, mere cozenagel
HOST	Where be my horses? Speak well of them, varletto.
BARDOLPH	Run away with the cozeners. For so soon as I came beyond Eton, they threw me off from behind one of them, in a slough of mire, and set spurs and away, like three German devils, three Doctor Faustuses.
HOST	They are gone but to meet the Duke, villain. Do not say they be fled. Germans are honest men.
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Hugh Evans
EVANS	Where is mine Host?
HOST	What is the matter, sir?
EVANS	Have a care of your entertainments. There is a friend of mine come to town tells me there is three cozen Garmombles that has cozened all the hosts of Reading, of Maidenhead, of Colnbrook, of horses and money. I tell you for good will, look you. You are wise, and full of gibes and vlouting-stocks, and ’tis not convenient you should be cozened. Fare you well.
(didascalia)	Exit
(didascalia)	Enter Doctor Caius
CAIUS	Vere is mine Host de Jarteer?
HOST	Here, Master Doctor, in perplexity and doubtful dilemma.
CAIUS	I cannot tell vat is dat, but it is tell-a me dat you make grand preparation for a duke de Jamany. By my trot, der is no duke that the court is know to come. I tell you for good will. Adieu. Exit
HOST	(to Bardolph) Hue and cry, villain, go! (To Sir John) Assist me, knight. I am undone. (To Bardolph) Fly, run, hue and cry, villain. I am undone.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Host and Bardolph severally
SIR JOHN	I would all the world might be cozened, for I have been cozened, and beaten too. If it should come to the ear of the court how I have been transformed, and how my transformation hath been washed and cudgelled, they would melt me out of my fat, drop by drop, and liquor fishermen’s boots with me. I warrant they would whip me with their fine wits till I were as crestfallen as a dried pear. I never prospered since I forswore myself at primero. Well, if my wind were but long enough, I would repent.
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Quickly
SIR JOHN	Now; whence come you?
MISTRESS QUICKLY	From the two parties, forsooth.
SIR JOHN	The devil take one party, and his dam the other, and so they shall be both bestowed. I have suffered more for their sakes, more than the villainous inconstancy of man’s disposition is able to bear.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	O Lord, sir, and have not they suffered? Yes, I warrant, speciously one of them. Mistress Ford, good heart, is beaten black and blue, that you cannot see a white spot about her.
SIR JOHN	What tellest thou me of black and blue? I was beaten myself into all the colours of the rainbow, and I was like to be apprehended for the witch of Brentford. But that my admirable dexterity of wit, my counterfeiting the action of an old woman, delivered me, the knave constable had set me i‘th’ stocks, i’th’ common stocks, for a witch.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Sir, let me speak with you in your chamber. You shall hear how things go, and, I warrant, to your content. Here is a letter will say somewhat. Good hearts, what ado here is to bring you together! Sure one of you does not serve heaven well, that you are so crossed.
SIR JOHN	Come up into my chamber. Exeunt 4.6
(didascalia)	Enter Master Fenton and the Host of the Garter HOST Master Fenton, talk not to me. My mind is heavy.
SIR JOHN	I will give over all.
FENTON	Yet hear me speak. Assist me in my purpose, And, as I am a gentleman, I’ll give thee A hundred pound in gold more than your loss.
HOST	I will hear you, Master Fenton, and I will at the least keep your counsel.
FENTON	From time to time I have acquainted you With the dear love I bear to fair Anne Page, Who mutually hath answered my affection, So far forth as herself might be her chooser, Even to my wish. I have a letter from her Of such contents as you will wonder at, The mirth whereof so larded with my matter That neither singly can be manifested Without the show of both. Fat Falstaff Hath a great scene. The image of the jest I’ll show you here at large. Hark, good mine Host. Tonight at Herne’s Oak, just ‘twixt twelve and one, Must my sweet Nan present the Fairy Queen—
(didascalia)	Showing the letter
FENTON	The purpose why is here—in which disguise, While other jests are something rank on foot, Her father hath commanded her to slip Away with Slender, and with him at Eton Immediately to marry. She hath consented. Now, sir, her mother, ever strong against that match And firm for Doctor Caius, hath appointed That he shall likewise shuffle her away, While other sports are tasking of their minds, And at the dean’ry, where a priest attends, Straight marry her. To this her mother’s plot She, seemingly obedient, likewise hath Made promise to the Doctor. Now, thus it rests. Her father means she shall be all in white; And in that habit, when Slender sees his time To take her by the hand and bid her go, She shall go with him. Her mother hath intended, The better to denote her to the Doctor— For they must all be masked and visored— That quaint in green she shall be loose enrobed, With ribbons pendant flaring ’bout her head; And when the Doctor spies his vantage ripe, To pinch her by the hand, and on that token The maid hath given consent to go with him.
HOST	Which means she to deceive, father or mother?
FENTON	Both, my good Host, to go along with me. And here it rests: that you’ll procure the vicar To stay for me at church ’twixt twelve and one, And, in the lawful name of marrying, To give our hearts united ceremony.
HOST	Well, husband your device. I’ll to the vicar. Bring you the maid, you shall not lack a priest.
FENTON	So shall I evermore be bound to thee. Besides, I’ll make a present recompense.
(didascalia)	Exeunt severally

Atto 5, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sir John Falstaff and Mistress Quickly
SIR JOHN	Prithee, no more prattling; go; I’ll hold. This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers. Away, go! They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death. Away!
MISTRESS QUICKLY	I’ll provide you a chain, and I’ll do what I can to get you a pair of horns.
SIR JOHN	Away, I say! Time wears. Hold up your head, and mince. Exit Mistress Quickly
(didascalia)	Enter Master Ford, disguised as Brooke
SIR JOHN	How now, Master Brooke ? Master Brooke, the matter will be known tonight or never. Be you in the Park about midnight at Herne’s Oak, and you shall see wonders.
FORD	Went you not to her yesterday, sir, as you told me you had appointed?
SIR JOHN	I went to her, Master Brooke, as you see, like a poor old man; but I came from her, Master Brooke, like a poor old woman. That same knave Ford, her husband, hath the finest mad devil of jealousy in him, Master Brooke, that ever governed frenzy. I will tell you, he beat me grievously in the shape of a woman—for in the shape of man, Master Brooke, I fear not Goliath with a weaver’s beam, because I know also life is a shuttle. I am in haste. Go along with me; I’ll tell you all, Master Brooke. Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipped top, I knew not what ’twas to be beaten till lately. Follow me. I’ll tell you strange things of this knave Ford, on whom tonight I will be revenged, and I will deliver his wife into your hand. Follow. Strange things in hand, Master Brooke. Follow.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 5, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Master Page, justice Shallow, and Master Slender
PAGE	Come, come, we’ll couch i’th’ Castle ditch till we see the light of our fairies. Remember, son Slender, my daughter.
SLENDER	Ay, forsooth. I have spoke with her, and we have a nay-word how to know one another. I come to her in white and cry ‘mum’; she cries ‘budget’; and by that we know one another.
SHALLOW	That’s good, too. But what needs either your ‘mum’ or her ‘budget’? The white will decipher her well enough. (To Page) It hath struck ten o’clock.
PAGE	The night is dark; lights and spirits will become it well. God prosper our sport! No man means evil but the devil, and we shall know him by his horns. Let’s away. Follow me. Exeunt

Atto 5, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Page, Mistress Ford, and Doctor Caius
MISTRESS PAGE	Master Doctor, my daughter is in green. When you see your time, take her by the hand, away with her to the deanery, and dispatch it quickly. Go before into the Park. We two must go together.
CAIUS	I know vat I have to do. Adieu.
MISTRESS PAGE	Fare you well, sir. Exit Caius My husband will not rejoice so much at the abuse of Falstaff as he will chafe at the doctor’s marrying my daughter. But ’tis no matter. Better a little chiding than a great deal of heartbreak.
MISTRESS FORD	Where is Nan now, and her troop of fairies, and the Welsh devil Hugh?
MISTRESS PAGE	They are all couched in a pit hard by Herne’s Oak, with obscured lights, which, at the very instant of Falstaff’s and our meeting, they will at once display to the night.
MISTRESS FORD	That cannot choose but amaze him.
MISTRESS PAGE	If he be not amazed, he will be mocked. If he be amazed, he will every way be mocked.
MISTRESS FORD	We’ll betray him finely.
MISTRESS PAGE	Against such lewdsters and their lechery Those that betray them do no treachery.
MISTRESS FORD	The hour draws on. To the Oak, to the Oak I Exeunt

Atto 5, Scena 4

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Hugh Evans, Disguised as a satyr, and William Page and others children, disguised as fairies
EVANS	Trib, trib, fairies! Come! And remember your parts. Be pold, I pray you. Follow me into the pit, and when I give the watch’ords, do as I pid you. Come, come; trib, trib! Exeunt

Atto 5, Scena 5

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sir John Falstaff, disguised as Herne, witch horns on his head, and bearing a chain
SIR JOHN	The Windsor bell hath struck twelve; the minute draws on. Now the hot-blooded gods assist me! Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa; love set on thy horns. O powerful love, that in some respects makes a beast a man; in some other, a man a beast! You were also, Jupiter, a swan, for the love of Leda. O omnipotent love! How near the god drew to the complexion of a goose ! A fault done first in the form of a beast—O Jove, a beastly fault!—and then another fault in the semblance of a fowl—think on‘t, Jove, a foul fault! When gods have hot backs, what shall poor men do? For me, I am here a Windsor stag, and the fattest, I think, i’th’ forest. Send me a cool rut-time, Jove, or who can blame me to piss my tallow ?
(didascalia)	Enter Mistress Ford followed by Mistress Page
SIR JOHN	Who comes here? My doe!
MISTRESS FORD	Sir John! Art thou there, my deer, my male deer?
SIR JOHN	My doe with the black scutt Let the sky rain potatoes, let it thunder to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’, hail kissing-comfits, and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.
(didascalia)	He embraces her
MISTRESS FORD	Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.
SIR JOHN	Divide me like a bribed buck, each a haunch. I will keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow of this walk, and my horns I bequeath your husbands. Am I a woodman, ha? Speak I like Herne the hunter? Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience; he makes restitution. As I am a true spirit, welcome!
(didascalia)	A noise within
MISTRESS PAGE	Alas, what noise?
MISTRESS FORD	God forgive our sins!
SIR JOHN	What should this be?
MISTRESS FORD	and MISTRESS PAGE Away, away!
(didascalia)	Exeunt Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, running
SIR JOHN	I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that’s in me should set hell on fire. He would never else cross me thus.
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Hugh Evans, William Page, and
SIR JOHN	children, disguised as before, with tapers; Mistress Quickly, disguised as the Fairy Queen; Anne Page, disguised as a fairy; and one disguised as Hobgoblin
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Fairies black, grey, green, and white, You moonshine revellers, and shades of night, You orphan heirs of fixèd destiny, Attend your office and your quality.— Crier hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes.
(didascalia)	HOBGOBLIN
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Elves, list your names. Silence, you airy toys. Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap. Where fires thou find’st unraked and hearths unswept, There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry. Our radiant Queen hates sluts and sluttery.
SIR JOHN	(aside) They are fairies. He that speaks to them shall die. I’ll wink and couch; no man their works must eye. He lies down, and hides his face
EVANS	Where’s Bead? Go you, and, where you find a maid That ere she sleep has thrice her prayers said, Raise up the organs of her fantasy, Sleep she as sound as careless infancy. But those as sleep and think not on their sins, Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	About, about! Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out. Strew good luck, oafs, on every sacred room, That it may stand till the perpetual doom In state as wholesome as in state ‘tis fit, Worthy the owner, and the owner it. The several chairs of order look you scour With juice of balm and every precious flower. Each fair instalment, coat, and sev’ral crest With loyal blazon evermore be blessed; And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing, Like to the Garter’s compass, in a ring. 65 Th‘expressure that it bears, green let it be, More fertile-fresh than all the field to see; And ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’ write In em‘rald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white, Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery, Buckled below fair knighthood’s bending knee— Fairies use flowers for their charactery. Away, disperse!—But till ’tis one o’clock Our dance of custom, round about the oak Of Herne the hunter, let us not forget.
EVANS	Pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves in order set; And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be To guide our measure round about the tree.— But stay; I smell a man of middle earth.
SIR JOHN	(aside) God defend me from that Welsh fairy, Lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!
(didascalia)	HOBGOBLIN (to Sir John)
SIR JOHN	Vile worm, thou wast o’erlooked even in thy birth.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	(to fairies) With trial-fire, touch me his finger-end. If he be chaste, the flame will back descend, And turn him to no pain; but if he start, It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.
(didascalia)	HOBGOBLIN
MISTRESS QUICKLY	A trial, come!
EVANS	Come, will this wood take fire ? They burn Sir John with tapers
SIR JOHN	O, O, O!
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire. About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme; And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time. They dance around Sir John, pinching him and singing:
FAIRIES	Fie on sinful fantasy! Fie on lust and luxury! Lust is but a bloody fire, Kindled with unchaste desire, Fed in heart, whose flames aspire, As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher. Pinch him, fairies, mutually. Pinch him for his villainy. Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about, Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out. During the song, enter Doctor Caius one way, and exit stealing away a fairy in green; enter Master Slender another way, and exit stealing away a fairy in white; enter Master Fenton, and exit stealing away Anne Page. After the song, a noise of hunting within. Exeunt Mistress Quickly, Evans, Hobgoblin, and fairies, running. Sir John rises, and starts to run away. Enter Master Page, Master Ford, Mistress Page, and Mistress Ford
PAGE	Nay, do not fly. I think we have watched you now. Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn?
MISTRESS PAGE	I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher. Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives? (Pointing to Falstaff’s horns) See you these, husband? Do not these fair yokes Become the forest better than the town ?
FORD	(to Sir John) Now, sir, who’s a cuckold now? Master Brooke, Falstaff’s a knave, a cuckoldly knave. Here are his horns, Master Brooke. And, Master Brooke, he hath enjoyed nothing of Ford’s but his buck-basket, his cudgel, and twenty pounds of money which must be paid to Master Brooke; his horses are arrested for it, Master Brooke.
MISTRESS FORD	Sir John, we have had ill luck. We could never mate. I will never take you for my love again, but I will always count you my deer.
(didascalia)	SIR JOHN I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass. He takes off the horns
FORD	Ay, and an ox, too. Both the proofs are extant.
SIR JOHN	And these are not fairies? By the Lord, I was three or four times in the thought they were not fairies, and yet the guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprise of my powers, drove the grossness of the foppery into a received belief—in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and reason—that they were fairies. See now how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent when ’tis upon ill employment!
EVANS	Sir John Falstaff, serve Got and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you.
FORD	Well said, Fairy Hugh.
EVANS	And leave you your jealousies too, I pray you.
FORD	I will never mistrust my wife again till thou art able to woo her in good English.
SIR JOHN	Have I laid my brain in the sun and dried it, that it wants matter to prevent so gross o‘er-reaching as this? Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? Shall I have a coxcomb of frieze ? ’Tis time I were choked with a piece of toasted cheese.
EVANS	Seese is not good to give putter; your belly is all putter. z to
SIR JOHN	‘Seese’ and ‘putter’? Have I lived to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of English? This is enough to be the decay of lust and late walking through the realm.
MISTRESS PAGE	Why, Sir John, do you think, though we would have thrust virtue out of our hearts by the head and shoulders, and have given ourselves without scruple to hell, that ever the devil could have made you our delight?
FORD	What, a hodge-pudding, a bag of flax?
MISTRESS PAGE	A puffed man?
PAGE	Old, cold, withered, and of intolerable entrails?
FORD	And one that is as slanderous as Satan?
PAGE	And as poor as job?
FORD	And as wicked as his wife?
EVANS	And given to fornications, and to taverns, and sack, and wine, and metheglins; and to drinkings, and swearings, and starings, pribbles and prabbles?
SIR JOHN	Well, I am your theme; you have the start of me. I am dejected. I am not able to answer the Welsh flannel. Ignorance itself is a plummet o’er me. Use me as you will.
FORD	Marry, sir, we’ll bring you to Windsor, to one Master Brooke, that you have cozened of money, to whom you should have been a pander. Over and above that you have suffered, I think to repay that money will be a biting affliction.
PAGE	Yet be cheerful, knight. Thou shalt eat a posset tonight at my house, where I will desire thee to laugh at my wife that now laughs at thee. Tell her Master Slender hath married her daughter.
MISTRESS PAGE	(aside) Doctors doubt that! If Anne Page be my daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius’s wife.
(didascalia)	Enter Master Slender
SLENDER	Whoa, ho, ho, father Page!
PAGE	Son, how now? How now, son? Have you dispatched?
SLENDER	Dispatched? I’ll make the best in Gloucestershire know on’t; would I were hanged, la, else.
PAGE	Of what, son?
SLENDER	I came yonder at Eton to marry Mistress Anne Page, and she’s a great lubberly boy. If it had not been i‘th’ church, I would have swinged him, or he should have swinged me. If I did not think it had been Anne Page, would I might never stir; and ’tis a postmaster’s boy.
PAGE	Upon my life, then, you took the wrong.
SLENDER	What need you tell me that? I think so, when I took a boy for a girl. If I had been married to him, for all he was in woman’s apparel, I would not have had him.
PAGE	Why, this is your own folly. Did not I tell you how you should know my daughter by her garments?
SLENDER	I went to her in white and cried ‘mum’, and she cried ‘budget’, as Anne and I had appointed; and yet it was not Anne, but a postmaster’s boy.
MISTRESS PAGE	Good George, be not angry. I knew of your purpose, turned my daughter into green, and indeed she is now with the Doctor at the deanery, and there married.
(didascalia)	Enter Doctor Caius
CAIUS	Ver is Mistress Page? By Gar, I am cozened! I ha’ married un garçon, a boy, un paysan, by Gar. A boy! It is not Anne Page, by Gar. I am cozened.
PAGE	Why, did you take her in green?
CAIUS	Ay, be Gar, and ’tis a boy. Be Gar, I’ll raise all Windsor.
FORD	This is strange. Who hath got the right Anne?
(didascalia)	Enter Master Fenton and Anne
PAGE	My heart misgives me: here comes Master Fenton.— How now, Master Fenton?
ANNE	Pardon, good father. Good my mother, pardon.
PAGE	Now, mistress, how chance you went not with Master Slender?
(didascalia)	MISTRESS PAGE
PAGE	Why went you not with Master Doctor, maid?
FENTON	You do amaze her. Hear the truth of it. You would have married her, most shamefully, Where there was no proportion held in love. The truth is, she and I, long since contracted, Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us. Th’offence is holy that she hath committed, And this deceit loses the name of craft, Of disobedience, or unduteous title, Since therein she doth evitate and shun A thousand irreligious cursed hours Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.
FORD	(to Page and Mistress Page) Stand not amazed. Here is no remedy. In love the heavens themselves do guide the state; Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.
SIR JOHN	I am glad, though you have ta’en a special stand to strike at me, that your arrow hath glanced.
PAGE	Well, what remedy? Fenton, heaven give thee joy I What cannot be eschewed must be embraced.
SIR JOHN	When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chased.
MISTRESS PAGE	Well, I will muse no further. Master Fenton, Heaven give you many, many merry days! Good husband, let us every one go home, And laugh this sport o’er by a country fire, Sir John and all.
FORD	Let it be so, Sir John. To Master Brooke you yet shall hold your word, For he tonight shall lie with Mistress Ford. Exeunt 2 HENRY IV 2 Henry IV, printed in 1600 as The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, was not reprinted until it was included in somewhat revised form in the 1623 Folio, with the same title. Shakespeare may have started to write it in 1597, directly after I Henry IV, but have laid it aside while he composed The Merry Wives of Windsor. As in I Henry IV, he drew on The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, Holinshed’s Chronicles, and Samuel Daniel’s Four Books of the Civil Wars, along with other, minor sources; but the play contains a greater proportion of non-historical material apparently invented by Shakespeare. In this play Shakespeare seems from the start to have accepted the change of Sir John’s surname to Falstaff which had been enforced upon him in I Henry IV. Like I Henry IV, Part Two draws on the techniques of comedy, but its overall tone is more sombre. At its start, the Prince seems to have regressed from his reformed state at the end of Part One; his father still has many causes for anxiety, has not made his expiatory pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and is again the victim of rebellion, led this time by the Earl of Northumberland, the Archbishop of York, and the Lords Hastings and Mowbray. Again Henry’s public responsibilities are exacerbated by anxieties about Prince Harry’s behaviour; the climax of their relationship comes after Harry, discovering his sick father asleep and thinking him dead, tries on his crown; after bitterly upbraiding him, Henry accepts his son’s assertions of good faith, and, recalling the devious means by which he himself came to the throne, warns Harry that he may need to protect himself against civil strife by pursuing ‘foreign quarrels’-the campaigning against France depicted in Henry V. The King dies in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey, the closest he will get to the Holy Land. In this play the Prince spends less time than in Part One with Sir John, who is shown much in the company of Mistress Quickly and Doll Tearsheet at the Boar’s Head tavern in Eastcheap and later in Gloucestershire on his way to and from the place of battle. Shakespeare never excelled the bitter-sweet comedy of the passages involving Falstaff and his old comrade Justice Shallow. The play ends in a counterpointing of major and minor keys as the newly crowned Henry V rejects Sir John and all that he has stood for.
THE PERSONS OF THE	PLAY