William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition (246 page)

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Authors: William Shakespeare

Tags: #Drama, #Literary Criticism, #Shakespeare

BOOK: William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition
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FORD So say I too, sir.
Enter Mistress 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.
FORD ⌈
to John and Robert
⌉ Empty the basket, I say.
⌈PAGE⌉ Why, man, why?
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.
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.
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!
⌈
Enter Mistress Page, and Sir John Falstaff,
disguised as an old woman.
⌉
⌈
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
4.3
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
4.4
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.
⌈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 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.
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 moneyed, and his friends
Potent at court. He, none but he, shall have her,
Though twenty thousand worthier come to crave her.
Exit
 
4.5
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!
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.

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