The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare Read Free Book Online

4 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 8 into the river with as little remorse as they would
    have drowned a blind bitch’s puppies 9 , fifteen i’th’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 11 . I
    had been drowned, but that the shore was shelvy 12 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 have been a mountain of mummy 15 .
    [
Enter Bardolph with 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 19 . Call her in.
    BARDOLPH     Come in, woman.
    [
Enter Mistress Quickly
]
    MISTRESS QUICKLY     By your leave, I cry you mercy 21 ! Give your
    worship good morrow.
    FALSTAFF     Take away these chalices. Go, brew me
    To Bardolph
    a pottle 24 of sack finely.
    BARDOLPH     With eggs, sir?
    FALSTAFF      Simple of itself. I’ll no pullet-sperm 26 in my brewage.—
    How now?
    [
Exit Bardolph
]
    MISTRESS 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 31 , I have my belly full of ford.
    MISTRESS QUICKLY     Alas the day, good heart, that was not her
    fault. She does so take on with 33 her men: they mistook their
    erection 34 .
    FALSTAFF     So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman’s
    promise.
    MISTRESS QUICKLY     Well, she laments, sir, for it, that it would
    yearn 38 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 43 , and then judge of
    my merit.
    MISTRESS QUICKLY     I will tell her.
    FALSTAFF     Do so. Between nine and ten, say’st thou?
    MISTRESS QUICKLY     Eight and nine, sir.
    FALSTAFF     Well, be gone. I will not miss 48 her.
    MISTRESS QUICKLY     Peace be with you, sir.
    [
Exit
]
    FALSTAFF     I marvel I hear not of Master Broom. He sent me
    word to stay within. I like his money well. O, here he comes.
    [
Enter Ford, disguised as Broom
]
    FORD     Bless you, sir!
    FALSTAFF     Now, Master Broom, you come to know what hath
    passed between me and Ford’s wife.
    FORD     That indeed, Sir John, is my business.
    FALSTAFF     Master Broom, I will not lie to you: I was at her
    house the hour she appointed me.
    FORD     And sped you 58 , sir?
    FALSTAFF     Very ill-favouredly 59 , Master Broom.
    FORD     How so, sir? Did she change her determination 60 ?
    FALSTAFF     No, Master Broom, but the peaking cornuto 61 her
    husband, Master Broom, dwelling in a continual ’larum 62 of
    jealousy, comes me 63 in the instant of our encounter, after we
    had embraced, kissed, protested 64 , 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     Yes, a buck-basket!