Chapter: SCENE 4.

A room in PAGE'S house.

[Enter FENTON, ANNE PAGE, and MISTRESS QUICKLY. MISTRESS QUICKLY
stands apart.]

FENTON.
I see I cannot get thy father's love;
Therefore no more turn me to him, sweet Nan.

ANNE.
Alas! how then?

FENTON.
Why, thou must be thyself.
He doth object, I am too great of birth;
And that my state being gall'd with my expense,
I seek to heal it only by his wealth.
Besides these, other bars he lays before me,
My riots past, my wild societies;
And tells me 'tis a thing impossible
I should love thee but as a property.

ANNE.
May be he tells you true.

FENTON.
No, heaven so speed me in my time to come!
Albeit I will confess thy father's wealth
Was the first motive that I wooed thee, Anne:
Yet, wooing thee, I found thee of more value
Than stamps in gold, or sums in sealed bags;
And 'tis the very riches of thyself
That now I aim at.

ANNE.
Gentle Master Fenton,
Yet seek my father's love; still seek it, sir.
If opportunity and humblest suit
Cannot attain it, why then,--hark you hither.

[They converse apart.]

[Enter SHALLOW, SLENDER, and MISTRESS QUICKLY.]

SHALLOW.
Break their talk, Mistress Quickly: my kinsman shall speak for himself.

SLENDER.
I'll make a shaft or a bolt on 't. 'Slid, 'tis but venturing.

SHALLOW.
Be not dismayed.

SLENDER.
No, she shall not dismay me. I care not for that, but that I am afeard.

QUICKLY.
Hark ye; Master Slender would speak a word with you.

ANNE.
I come to him. [Aside.] This is my father's choice.
O, what a world of vile ill-favour'd faults
Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!

QUICKLY.
And how does good Master Fenton? Pray you, a
word with you.

SHALLOW.
She's coming; to her, coz. O boy, thou hadst a father!

SLENDER.
I had a father, Mistress Anne; my uncle can tell you good jests
of him. Pray you, uncle, tell Mistress Anne the jest how my father
stole two geese out of a pen, good uncle.

SHALLOW.
Mistress Anne, my cousin loves you.

SLENDER.
Ay, that I do; as well as I love any woman in Gloucestershire.

SHALLOW.
He will maintain you like a gentlewoman.

SLENDER.
Ay, that I will come cut and long-tail, under the degree of a squire.

SHALLOW.
He will make you a hundred and fifty pounds jointure.

ANNE.
Good Master Shallow, let him woo for himself.

SHALLOW.
Marry, I thank you for it; I thank you for that good comfort. She
calls you, coz; I'll leave you.

ANNE.
Now, Master Slender.

SLENDER.
Now, good Mistress Anne.--

ANNE.
What is your will?

SLENDER.
My will! 'od's heartlings, that's a pretty jest indeed! I ne'er
made my will yet, I thank heaven; I am not such a sickly creature,
I give heaven praise.

ANNE.
I mean, Master Slender, what would you with me?

SLENDER.
Truly, for mine own part I would little or nothing with you. Your
father and my uncle hath made motions; if it be my luck, so; if not,
happy man be his dole! They can tell you how things go better than
I can. You may ask your father; here he comes.

[Enter PAGE and MISTRESS PAGE.]

PAGE.
Now, Master Slender: love him, daughter Anne.
Why, how now! what does Master Fenton here?
You wrong me, sir, thus still to haunt my house:
I told you, sir, my daughter is dispos'd of.

FENTON.
Nay, Master Page, be not impatient.

MRS. PAGE.
Good Master Fenton, come not to my child.

PAGE.
She is no match for you.

FENTON.
Sir, will you hear me?

PAGE.
No, good Master Fenton.
Come, Master Shallow; come, son Slender, in.
Knowing my mind, you wrong me, Master Fenton.

[Exeunt PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER.]

QUICKLY.
Speak to Mistress Page.

FENTON.
Good Mistress Page, for that I love your daughter
In such a righteous fashion as I do,
Perforce, against all checks, rebukes, and manners,
I must advance the colours of my love
And not retire: let me have your good will.

ANNE.
Good mother, do not marry me to yond fool.

MRS. PAGE.
I mean it not; I seek you a better husband.

QUICKLY.
That's my master, Master doctor.

ANNE.
Alas! I had rather be set quick i' the earth.
And bowl'd to death with turnips.

MRS. PAGE.
Come, trouble not yourself. Good Master Fenton,
I will not be your friend, nor enemy;
My daughter will I question how she loves you,
And as I find her, so am I affected.
Till then, farewell, sir: she must needs go in;
Her father will be angry.

FENTON.
Farewell, gentle mistress. Farewell, Nan.

[Exeunt MRS. PAGE and ANNE.}

QUICKLY.
This is my doing now: 'Nay,' said I, 'will you cast away your child
on a fool, and a physician? Look on Master Fenton.' This is my doing.

FENTON.
I thank thee; and I pray thee, once to-night
Give my sweet Nan this ring. There's for thy pains.

QUICKLY.
Now Heaven send thee good fortune!

[Exit FENTON.]

A kind heart he hath; a woman would run through fire and water for
such a kind heart. But yet I would my master had Mistress Anne; or
I would Master Slender had her; or, in sooth, I would Master Fenton
had her; I will do what I can for them all three, for so I have
promised, and I'll be as good as my word; but speciously for Master
Fenton. Well, I must of another errand to Sir John Falstaff from my
two mistresses: what a beast am I to slack it!

[Exit.]




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, and to be thrown in the
Thames like a barrow of butcher's offal? 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 had been swelled!
I should have been a mountain of mummy.

[Re-enter BARDOLPH, with the 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.
Call her in.

BARDOLPH.
Come in, woman.

[Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY.]

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!

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.

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.

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.

QUICKLY.
I will tell her.

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

QUICKLY.
Eight and nine, sir.

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

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 disguised.]

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 how sped you, sir?

FALSTAFF.
Very ill-favouredly, 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 villainous 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, sir, I am sorry that for my sake you have suffered
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 half-penny 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.]

 Fenton and Anne Page meet outside her house. He tells her that her father doesn't favor him as a candidate for marriage, because, though Fenton is high-born, he has no money, and Anne's father suspects that he only wants Anne's substantial dowry. He admits that Page's wealth first drew him to Anne, but in wooing her, he has found her to be worth more than money. She urges him to try to win her father's favor. They draw to the side when Slender enters with Shallow and Mistress Quickly. Quickly calls to Anne, saying that Slender wants to talk to her. Anne notes to Fenton that Slender is her father's choice, but that she doesn't like him at all. Quickly pulls Fenton away, and Anne approaches Slender and Shallow. Slender tries to tell an unrelated joke, so Shallow tells Anne that Slender loves her. Shallow speaks for Slender, while Slender says foolish things, so Anne asks Shallow to let Slender speak for himself. He mumbles idiotically, and she asks what he wants of her. He says it's Page and Shallow who have made the arrangements, but if things don't work out, he won't mind. Page and Mistress Page enter. Page demands to know why Fenton is hanging about. He tells Fenton that he will never have his daughter and goes into the house with Shallow and Slender. Quickly urges Fenton to speak to Mistress Page. He tells her he loves Anne, and Anne asks her not to make her marry Slender. She says she won't, but she favors Caius. Anne is unsatisfied, but Mistress Page says that she will talk to her daughter about her feelings for Fenton. They enter the house. Fenton thanks Quickly for her aid and gives her money. Alone, Quickly considers her duplicity. She's promised to help all three men who claim to be in love with Anne, but she'll help Fenton especially, because he's such a likeable young man. But now the busy woman must rush off to speak to Falstaff at the command of Mistress Page and Mistress Ford! Falstaff enters the Garter Inn. He orders Bardolph to make him some warm wine and moans about his bad luck. He's soaking wet, having just dragged himself out of the Thames after being dropped in with Mistress Ford's laundry. Mistress Quickly enters with reports from Mistress Ford. Falstaff says that he's fed up with her, but Quickly explains that her servants misunderstood about what to do with the laundry. Quickly reports that Mistress Ford wants Falstaff to visit again, between eight and nine that evening. Falstaff quickly agrees to go, and Quickly goes to deliver the message. Ford enters in disguise as Brooke. He asks how Falstaff did with Mistress Ford. Falstaff says that he had just begun to woo Mistress Ford when her husband arrived. He exaggeratedly narrates his flight in a laundry basket and tells of the fear and horror he experienced while hiding in the basket and when he was thrown in the river. Brooke asks if Falstaff will give up on Mistress Ford now, but Falstaff announces his next date. Fearing he's already late, Falstaff rushes out. Ford is astonished to think that Falstaff was in his house when he arrived that morning, and he's enraged that he is on his way back. He will go to his house and find him this time, he declares, and vent his rage.

