Complete Plays, The (372 page)

Mistress Ford

Nay, good, sweet husband! Good gentlemen, let him not strike the old woman.

Re-enter Falstaff in woman’s clothes, and Mistress Page

Mistress Page

Come, Mother Prat; come, give me your hand.

Ford

I’ll prat her.

Beating him

Out of my door, you witch, you hag, you baggage, you polecat, you runyon! out, out! I’ll conjure you, I’ll fortune-tell you.

Exit Falstaff

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!

Sir Hugh Evans

By the yea and no, 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 Ford, Page, Shallow, Doctor Caius, and Sir Hugh Evans

Mistress Page

Trust me, he beat him most pitifully.

Mistress Ford

Nay, by the 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

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

Enter Host and Bardolph

Bardolph

Sir, the Germans desire to have three of your horses: the duke himself will be to-morrow 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

S
CENE
IV. A
ROOM
IN
F
ORD
’
S
HOUSE
.

Enter Page, Ford, Mistress Page, Mistress Ford, and Sir Hugh Evans

Sir Hugh 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.

Sir Hugh 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.

Mistress Ford

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 tree 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.

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, ouphes 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 sawpit rush at once
With some diffused song: upon their sight,
We two in great amazedness 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.

Sir Hugh Evans

I will teach the children their behaviors; and I will be like a jack-an-apes also, to burn the knight with my taber.

Ford

That will be excellent. I’ll go and buy them vizards.

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 time
Shall Master Slender steal my Nan away
And marry her at Eton. Go send to Falstaff straight.

Ford

Nay I’ll to him again in name of Brook
He’ll tell me all his purpose: sure, he’ll come.

Mistress Page

Fear not you that. Go get us properties
And tricking for our fairies.

Sir Hugh Evans

Let us about it: it is admirable pleasures and fery honest knaveries.

Exeunt Page, Ford, and Sir Hugh Evans

Mistress Page

Go, Mistress Ford,
Send quickly to Sir John, to know his mind.

Exit Mistress Ford

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 money’d, and his friends
Potent at court: he, none but he, shall have her,
Though twenty thousand worthier come to crave her.

Exit

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

Enter Host 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; hell 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.

Falstaff

[Above]
 
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!

Enter Falstaff

Falstaff

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?

Falstaff

Ay, marry, was it, mussel-shell: what would you with her?

Simple

My master, sir, Master Slender, sent to her, seeing her go through the streets, to know, sir, whether one Nym, sir, that beguiled him of a chain, had the chain or no.

Falstaff

I spake with the old woman about it.

Simple

And what says she, I pray, sir?

Falstaff

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.

Falstaff

What are they? let us know.

Host

Ay, come; quick.

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.

Falstaff

’Tis, ’tis his fortune.

Simple

What, sir?

Falstaff

To have her, or no. Go; say the woman told me so.

Simple

May I be bold to say so, sir?

Falstaff

Ay, sir; like 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?

Falstaff

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.

Enter Bardolph

Bardolph

Out, alas, sir! cozenage, mere cozenage!

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.

Enter Sir Hugh Evans

Sir Hugh Evans

Where is mine host?

Host

What is the matter, sir?

Sir Hugh Evans

Have a care of your entertainments: there is a friend of mine come to town tells me there is three cozen-germans that has cozened all the hosts of Readins, of Maidenhead, of Colebrook, 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.

Exit

Enter Doctor Caius

Doctor Caius

Vere is mine host de Jarteer?

Host

Here, master doctor, in perplexity and doubtful dilemma.

Doctor 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, dere is no duke dat the court is know to come. I tell you for good vill: adieu.

Exit

Host

Hue and cry, villain, go! Assist me, knight. I am undone! Fly, run, hue and cry, villain! I am undone!

Exeunt Host and Bardolph

Falstaff

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 crest-fallen as a dried pear. I never prospered since I forswore myself at primero. Well, if my wind were but long enough to say my prayers, I would repent.