Exit First Servant Come, come, take it up. Second Servant Pray heaven it be not full of knight again. First Servant I hope not; I had as lief bear so much lead.
Enter FORD, PAGE, SHALLOW, DOCTOR CAIUS, and SIR HUGH EVANS FORD Ay, but if it prove true, Master Page, have you any way then to unfool me again? Set down the basket, villain! Somebody call my wife. Youth in a basket!
O you panderly rascals! there's a knot, a ging, a pack, a conspiracy against me: now shall the devil be shamed. What, wife, I say! Come, come forth!
Behold what honest clothes you send forth to bleaching! PAGE Why, this passes, Master Ford; you are not to go loose any longer; you must be pinioned. SIR HUGH EVANS Why, this is lunatics! this is mad as a mad dog! SHALLOW Indeed, Master Ford, this is not well, indeed. FORD So say I too, sir.
Re-enter MISTRESS FORD
Come hither, Mistress Ford; Mistress Ford the honest woman, the modest wife, the virtuous creature, that hath the jealous fool to her husband! I suspect without cause, mistress, do I? MISTRESS FORD Heaven be my witness you do, if you suspect me in any dishonesty. FORD Well said, brazen-face! hold it out.
Come forth, sirrah!
Pulling clothes out of the basket PAGE This passes! MISTRESS FORD Are you not ashamed? let the clothes alone. FORD I shall find you anon. SIR HUGH EVANS 'Tis unreasonable! Will you take up your wife's clothes? Come away. FORD Empty the basket, I say! MISTRESS FORD Why, man, why? FORD Master Page, as I am a man, there was one conveyed out of my house yesterday in this basket: why may not he be there again? In my house I am sure he is:
my intelligence is true; my jealousy is reasonable.
Pluck me out all the linen. MISTRESS FORD If you find a man there, he shall die a flea's death. PAGE Here's no man. SHALLOW By my fidelity, this is not well, Master Ford; this wrongs you. SIR HUGH EVANS Master Ford, you must pray, and not follow the imaginations of your own heart: this is jealousies. FORD Well, he's not here I seek for. PAGE No, nor nowhere else but in your brain. FORD Help to search my house this one time.
If I find not what I seek, show no colour for my extremity;let me for ever be your table-sport; let them say of me, 'As jealous as Ford, Chat searched a hollow walnut for his wife's leman.' Satisfy me once more;once more search with me. MISTRESS FORD What, ho, Mistress Page! come you and the old woman down; my husband will come into the chamber. FORD Old woman! what old woman's that? MISTRESS FORD Nay, it is my maid's aunt of Brentford. FORD A witch, a quean, an old cozening quean!
Have I not forbid her my house? She comes of errands, does she? We are simple men; we do not know what's brought to pass under the profession of fortune-telling. She works by charms, by spells, by the figure, and such daubery as this is, beyond our element we know nothing. Come down, you witch, you hag, you; come down, I say! MISTRESS FORD Nay, good, sweet husband! Good gentlemen, let him not strike the old woman.
Re-enter FALSTAFF in woman's clothes, and MISTRESS PAGE MISTRESS PAGE Come, Mother Prat; come, give me your hand. FORD I'll prat her.
Beating him Out of my door, you witch, you hag, you baggage, you polecat, you runyon! out, out! I'll conjure you, I'll fortune-tell you.
Exit FALSTAFF MISTRESS PAGE Are you not ashamed? I think you have killed the poor woman. MISTRESS FORD Nay, he will do it. 'Tis a goodly credit for you. FORD Hang her, witch! SIR HUGH EVANS By the yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed: I like not when a 'oman has a great peard;I spy a great peard under his muffler. FORD Will you follow, gentlemen? I beseech you, follow;see but the issue of my jealousy: if I cry out thus upon no trail, never trust me when I open again. PAGE Let's obey his humour a little further:
come, gentlemen.
Exeunt FORD, PAGE, SHALLOW, DOCTOR CAIUS, and SIR HUGH EVANS MISTRESS PAGE Trust me, he beat him most pitifully. MISTRESS FORD Nay, by the mass, that he did not; he beat him most unpitifully, methought. MISTRESS PAGE I'll have the cudgel hallowed and hung o'er the altar; it hath done meritorious service. MISTRESS FORD What think you? may we, with the warrant of womanhood and the witness of a good conscience, pursue him with any further revenge? MISTRESS PAGE The spirit of wantonness is, sure, scared out of him: if the devil have him not in fee-simple, with fine and recovery, he will never, I think, in the way of waste, attempt us again. MISTRESS FORD Shall we tell our husbands how we have served him? MISTRESS PAGE Yes, by all means; if it be but to scrape the figures out of your husband's brains. If they can find in their hearts the poor unvirtuous fat knight shall be any further afflicted, we two will still be the ministers. MISTRESS FORD I'll warrant they'll have him publicly shamed: and methinks there would be no period to the jest, should he not be publicly shamed. MISTRESS PAGE Come, to the forge with it then; shape it: I would not have things cool.
