Complete Plays, The (370 page)

Enter Fenton and Anne Page

Fenton

I see I cannot get thy father’s love;
Therefore no more turn me to him, sweet Nan.

Anne Page

Alas, how then?

Fenton

 
Why, thou must be thyself.
He doth object I am too great of birth —,
And that, my state being gall’d 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 Page

May be he tells you true.

Fenton

No, heaven so speed me in my time to come!
Albeit I will confess thy father’s wealth
Was the first motive that I woo’d thee, Anne:
Yet, wooing thee, I found thee of more value
Than stamps in gold or sums in sealed bags;
And ’tis the very riches of thyself
That now I aim at.

Anne Page

 
Gentle Master Fenton,
Yet seek my father’s love; still seek it, sir:
If opportunity and humblest suit
Cannot attain it, why, then,— hark you hither!

They converse apart

Enter Shallow, Slender, and Mistress Quickly

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

Hark ye; Master Slender would speak a word with you.

Anne Page

I come to him.

Aside

This is my father’s choice.
O, what a world of vile ill-favor’d faults
Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a-year!

Mistress Quickly

And how does good Master Fenton? Pray you, a word with you.

Shallow

She’s coming; to her, coz. O boy, thou hadst a father!

Slender

I had a father, Mistress Anne; my uncle can tell you good jests of him. Pray you, uncle, tell Mistress Anne the jest, how my father stole two geese out of a pen, good uncle.

Shallow

Mistress Anne, my cousin loves you.

Slender

Ay, that I do; as well as I love any woman in
Gloucestershire.

Shallow

He will maintain you like a gentlewoman.

Slender

Ay, that I will, come cut and long-tail, under the degree of a squire.

Shallow

He will make you a hundred and fifty pounds jointure.

Anne Page

Good Master Shallow, let him woo for himself.

Shallow

Marry, I thank you for it; I thank you for that good comfort. She calls you, coz: I’ll leave you.

Anne Page

Now, Master Slender,—

Slender

Now, good Mistress Anne,—

Anne Page

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 heaven; I am not such a sickly creature, I give heaven praise.

Anne Page

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: you may ask your father; here he comes.

Enter Page and Mistress Page

Page

Now, Master Slender: 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 Fenton.
Come, Master Shallow; come, son Slender, in.
Knowing my mind, you wrong me, Master Fenton.

Exeunt Page, Shallow, and Slender

Mistress Quickly

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 cheques, rebukes and manners,
I must advance the colours of my love
And not retire: let me have your good will.

Anne Page

Good mother, do not marry me to yond fool.

Mistress Page

I mean it not; I seek you a better husband.

Mistress Quickly

That’s my master, master doctor.

Anne Page

Alas, I had rather be set quick i’ the earth
And bowl’d 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.

Exeunt Mistress Page and Anne Page

Mistress Quickly

This is my doing, now: ‘Nay,’ said I, ‘will you cast away your child on a fool, and a physician? Look on Master Fenton:’ this is my doing.

Fenton

I thank thee; and I pray thee, once to-night
Give my sweet Nan this ring: there’s for thy pains.

Mistress Quickly

Now heaven send thee good fortune!

Exit Fenton

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

S
CENE
V. A
ROOM
IN
THE
G
ARTER
I
NN
.

Enter Falstaff and Bardolph

Falstaff

Bardolph, I say,—

Bardolph

Here, sir.

Falstaff

Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in’t.

Exit Bardolph

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. The rogues slighted me into the river with as little remorse as they would have drowned a blind bitch’s puppies, fifteen i’ the litter: and you may know by my size that I have a kind of alacrity in sinking; if the bottom were as deep as hell, I should down. I had been drowned, but that the shore was shelvy and shallow,— a death that I abhor; for the water swells a man; and what a thing should I have been when I had been swelled! I should have been a mountain of mummy.

Re-enter Bardolph with sack

Bardolph

Here’s Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with you.

Falstaff

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. Call her in.

Bardolph

Come in, woman!

Enter Mistress Quickly

Mistress Quickly

By your leave; I cry you mercy: give your worship good morrow.

Falstaff

Take away these chalices. Go brew me a pottle of sack finely.

Bardolph

With eggs, sir?

Falstaff

Simple of itself; I’ll no pullet-sperm in my brewage.

Exit Bardolph

How now!

Mistress Quickly

Marry, sir, I come to your worship from Mistress Ford.

Falstaff

Mistress Ford! I have had ford enough; I was thrown into the ford; 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.

Falstaff

So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman’s promise.

Mistress Quickly

Well, she laments, sir, for it, that it would yearn your heart to see it. Her husband goes this morning a-birding; she desires you once more to come to her between eight and nine: I must carry her word quickly: she’ll make you amends, I warrant you.

Falstaff

Well, I will visit her: tell her so; and bid her think what a man is: let her consider his frailty, and then judge of my merit.

Mistress Quickly

I will tell her.

Falstaff

Do so. Between nine and ten, sayest thou?

Mistress Quickly

Eight and nine, sir.

Falstaff

Well, be gone: I will not miss her.

Mistress Quickly

Peace be with you, sir.

Exit

Falstaff

I marvel I hear not of Master Brook; he sent me word to stay within: I like his money well. O, here he comes.

Enter Ford

Ford

Bless you, sir!

Falstaff

Now, master Brook, you come to know what hath passed between me and Ford’s wife?

Ford

That, indeed, Sir John, is my business.

Falstaff

Master Brook, I will not lie to you: I was at her house the hour she appointed me.

Ford

And sped you, sir?

Falstaff

Very ill-favoredly, Master Brook.

Ford

How so, sir? Did she change her determination?

Falstaff

No, Master Brook; but the peaking Cornuto her husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual ’larum of jealousy, comes me in the instant of 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?

Falstaff

While I was there.

Ford

And did he search for you, and could not find you?

Falstaff

You shall hear. As good luck would have it, comes in one Mistress Page; gives intelligence of Ford’s approach; and, in her invention and Ford’s wife’s distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket.

Ford

A buck-basket!

Falstaff

By the Lord, a buck-basket! rammed me in with foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins; that, Master Brook, there was the rankest compound of villanous smell that ever offended nostril.

Ford

And how long lay you there?

Falstaff

Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have suffered to bring this woman to evil for your good. 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 Brook: I suffered the pangs of three several deaths; first, an intolerable fright, to be detected with a jealous rotten bell-wether; next, to be compassed, like a good bilbo, in the circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head; and then, to be stopped in, like a strong distillation, with 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 horse-shoe; think of that,— hissing hot,— think of that, Master Brook.

Ford

In good sadness, I am sorry that for my sake you have sufferd all this. My suit then is desperate; you’ll undertake her no more?

Falstaff

Master Brook, I will be thrown into Etna, as I have been into Thames, ere I will leave her thus. Her husband is this morning gone a-birding: I have received from her another embassy of meeting; ’twixt eight and nine is the hour, Master Brook.

Ford

’Tis past eight already, sir.

Falstaff

Is it? I will then address me to my appointment. Come to me at your convenient leisure, and you shall know how I speed; and the conclusion shall be crowned with your enjoying her. Adieu. You shall have her, Master Brook; Master Brook, you shall cuckold Ford.

Exit

Ford

Hum! ha! is this a vision? is this a dream? do I 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 pepper-box: 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.