Act III, Scene 5

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, like a 1750
  barrow of butcher's offal, and to be thrown in the
  Thames? 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 1755
  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 1760
  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 have been a mountain of mummy.

[Re-enter BARDOLPH with sack]

• Bardolph. Here's Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with you. 1765

• Falstaff. 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]

• Hostess 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? 1775

• Falstaff. Simple of itself; I'll no pullet-sperm in my brewage.
  [Exit BARDOLPH]
  How now!

• Hostess Quickly. Marry, sir, I come to your worship from Mistress Ford.

• Falstaff. Mistress Ford! I have had ford enough; I was thrown 1780
  into the ford; I have my belly full of ford.

• Hostess 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.

• Hostess Quickly. Well, she laments, sir, for it, that it would yearn 1785
  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 1790
  think what a man is: let her consider his frailty,
  and then judge of my merit.

• Hostess Quickly. I will tell her.

• Falstaff. Do so. Between nine and ten, sayest thou?

• Hostess Quickly. Eight and nine, sir. 1795

• Falstaff. Well, be gone: I will not miss her.

• Hostess 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. 1800

[Enter FORD]

• 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. 1805

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

• Ford. And sped you, sir?

• Falstaff. Very ill-favoredly, Master Brook.

• Ford. How so, sir? Did she change her determination? 1810

• 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; 1815
  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. 1820

• 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. 1825

• 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 villanous smell that ever offended nostril. 1830

• 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 1835
  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 1840
  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 1845
  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 1850
  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 1855
  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, I am sorry that for my sake you 1860
  have sufferd 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 1865
  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 1870
  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 1880
  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 1885
  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]