SCENE V. A room in the Garter Inn. The Merry Wives of Windsor  Shakespeare homepage  |  Merry Wives of Windsor  | Act 3, Scene 5 

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 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 

 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 

 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 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. 

 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  MISTRESS 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! 

 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; 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 her men; they mistook their erection. 

 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 

 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. 

 MISTRESS QUICKLY  I will tell her. 

 FALSTAFF  Do so. Between nine and ten, sayest thou? 

 MISTRESS QUICKLY  Eight and nine, sir. 

 FALSTAFF  Well, be gone: I will not miss her. 

 MISTRESS 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  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 sped you, sir? 

 FALSTAFF  Very ill-favoredly, 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 villanous 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, I am sorry that for my sake you 

 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 

 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 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. 



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