Array MyBooks Classics - The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Illustrated edition (37 plays, 160 sonnets and 5 Poetry Books With Active Table of Contents)

[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 swallow’d snowballs for pills to cool the reins. Call her in.

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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

Quick. I will tell her.

Fal. Do so. Between nine and ten, say’st thou?

Quick. Eight and nine, sir.

Fal. Well, be gone; I will not miss her.

Quick. Peace be with you, sir.

[Exit.]

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 [disguised].

Ford. Bless you, sir!

Fal. Now, Master [Brook], you come to know what hath pass’d 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?

Fal. Very ill-favoredly, 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 we had embrac’d, kiss’d, protested, and, as it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of his companions, thither provok’d and instigated by his distemper, and, forsooth, to search his house for his wive’s love.

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, comes in one Mistress Page; gives intelligence of Ford’s approach; and in her invention, and Ford’s wive’s distraction, they convey’d me into a buck- basket.

Ford. A buck-basket?

Fal. [By the Lord], a buck-basket! Ramm’d 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?

Fal. Nay, you shall hear, Master [Brook], what I have suffer’d to bring this woman to evil for your good. Being thus cramm’d in the basket, a couple of Ford’s knaves, his hinds, were call’d 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 ask’d them once or twice what they had in their basket. I quak’d for fear, lest the lunatic knave would have search’d 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 suffer’d the pangs of three several deaths: first, an intolerable fright, to be detected with a jealious rotten bell-wether; next, to be compass’d like a good bilbo in the circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head; and then to be stopp’d 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 stew’d in grease, like a Dutch dish) to be thrown into the Thames, and cool’d, 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 suffer’d all this. My suit then is desperate; 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 receiv’d from her another ambassy of meeting. ’Twixt eight and 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 crown’d 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.

Exit.

¶

Enter Mistress Page, [Mistress] Quickly, William.

Mrs. Page. Is he at Master Ford’s already, think’st thou?

Quick. Sure he is by this—or will be presently. But truly he is very courageous mad about his throwing into the water. Mistress Ford desires you to come suddenly.

Mrs. Page. I’ll be with her by and by; I’ll but bring my young man here to school.

[Enter] Evans.

Look where his master comes; ’tis a playing-day, I see. How now, Sir Hugh, no school to-day?

Evans. No; Master Slender is let the boys leave to play.

Quick. Blessing of his heart!

Mrs. Page. Sir Hugh, my husband says my son profits nothing in the world at his book. I pray you ask him some questions in his accidence.

Evans. Come hither, William; hold up your head; come.

Mrs. Page. Come on, sirrah; hold up your head. Answer your master, be not afraid.

Evans. William, how many numbers is in nouns?

Will. Two.

Quick. Truly, I thought there had been one number more, because they say, “’Od’s nouns.”

Evans. Peace your tattlings! What is ‘fair,’ William?

Will. Pulcher.

Quick. Poulcats? There are fairer things than poulcats sure.

Evans. You are a very simplicity oman; I pray you peace. What is lapis, William?