Act III, Scene v:
A room in the Garter Inn.

[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, and to be thrown in

the Thames like a barrow of butcher's offal? 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

had been swelled! I should have been a mountain of

mummy.

[Re-enter BARDOLPH, with the sack.]

BARDOLPH:

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

FALSTAFF:

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. Call her in.

BARDOLPH:

Come in, woman.

[Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY.]

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!

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.

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.

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.

QUICKLY:

I will tell her.

FALSTAFF:

Do so. Between nine and ten, sayest thou?

QUICKLY:

Eight and nine, sir.

FALSTAFF:

Well, be gone; I will not miss her.

QUICKLY:

Peace be with you, sir.

[Exit.]

FALSTAFF:

I marvel I hear not of Master Brook; he sent me

word to stay within. I like his money well. O! here he

comes.

[Enter FORD disguised.]

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 how sped you, sir?

FALSTAFF:

Very ill-favouredly, 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 villainous smell that ever offended nostril.

FORD:

And how long lay you there?

FALSTAFF:

Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have

suffered to bring this woman to evil for your good. 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, sir, I am sorry that for my sake you

have suffered all this. My suit, then, is desperate;

you'll undertake her no more.

FALSTAFF:

Master Brook, I will be thrown into Etna, as I

have been into Thames, ere I will leave her thus. Her

husband is this morning gone a-birding; I have 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 half-penny 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.

[Exit.]