Chapter 21

_Enter FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH._

_Fal._ Bardolph, I say,--

_Bard._ Here, sir.

_Fal._ Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in’t. [_Exit Bard._] Have I lived to be carried in a basket, like a barrow of butcher’s offal, and to be thrown in the Thames? Well, 5 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 10 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 15 have been a mountain of mummy.

_Re-enter BARDOLPH with sack._

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

_Fal._ Come, let me pour in some sack to the Thames water; for my belly’s as cold as if I had swallowed snow-balls for pills to cool the reins. Call her in. 20

_Bard._ Come in, woman!

_Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY._

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

_Fal._ Take away these chalices. Go brew me a pottle of sack finely. 25

_Bard._ With eggs, sir?

_Fal._ Simple of itself; I’ll no pullet-sperm in my brewage. [_Exit Bardolph._] How now!

_Quick._ Marry, sir, I come to your worship from Mistress Ford. 30

_Fal._ Mistress Ford! I have had ford enough; I was thrown into the ford; I have my belly full of ford.

_Quick._ Alas the day! good heart, that was not her fault: she does so take on with her men; they mistook their erection. 35

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

_Quick._ 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 40 between eight and nine: I must carry her word quickly: she’ll make you amends, I warrant you.

_Fal._ 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. 45

_Quick._ I will tell her.

_Fal._ Do so. Between nine and ten, sayest thou?

_Quick._ Eight and nine, sir.

_Fal._ Well, be gone: I will not miss her.

_Quick._ Peace be with you, sir. [_Exit._ 50

_Fal._ 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!

_Fal._ Now, Master Brook,--you come to know what 55 hath passed between me and Ford’s wife?

_Ford._ That, indeed, Sir John, is my business.

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

_Ford._ And sped you, sir? 60

_Fal._ Very ill-favouredly, Master Brook.

_Ford._ How so, sir? Did she change her determination?

_Fal._ 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 65 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. 70

_Ford._ What, while you were there?

_Fal._ While I was there.

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

_Fal._ You shall hear. As good luck would have it, 75 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!

_Fal._ By the Lord, a buck-basket!--rammed me in with 80 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?

_Fal._ Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have 85 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, 90 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 95 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 100 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 105 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; 110 you’ll undertake her no more?

_Fal._ 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 115 nine is the hour, Master Brook.

_Ford._ ’Tis past eight already, sir.

_Fal._ 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 120 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 125 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 130 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._

NOTES: III, 5