[Enter MISTRESS FORD.]
MRS. FORD
Mistress Page! trust me, I was going to your house.
MRS. PAGE
And, trust me, I was coming to you. You look very ill.
MRS. FORD
Nay, I’ll ne’er believe that; I have to show to the contrary.
MRS. PAGE
Faith, but you do, in my mind.
MRS. FORD
Well, I do, then; yet, I say, I could show you to the contrary. O, Mistress Page! give me some counsel.
MRS. PAGE
What’s the matter, woman?
MRS. FORD
O woman, if it were not for one trifling respect, I could come to such honour!
MRS. PAGE
Hang the trifle, woman; take the honour. What is it? — Dispense with trifles; — what is it?
MRS. FORD
If I would but go to hell for an eternal moment or so, I could be knighted.
MRS. PAGE
What? thou liest. Sir Alice Ford! These knights will hack; and so thou shouldst not alter the article of thy gentry.
MRS. FORD
We burn daylight: here, read, read; perceive how I might be knighted. I shall think the worse of fat men as long as I have an eye to make difference of men’s liking: and yet he would not swear; praised women’s modesty; and gave such orderly and well-behaved reproof to all uncomeliness that I would have sworn his disposition would have gone to the truth of his words; but they do no more adhere and keep place together than the Hundredth Psalm to the tune of “Greensleeves.” What tempest, I trow, threw this whale, with so many tuns of oil in his belly, ashore at Windsor? How shall I be revenged on him? I think the best way were to entertain him with hope, till the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease. Did you ever hear the like?
MRS. PAGE
Letter for letter, but that the name of Page and Ford differs. To thy great comfort in this mystery of ill opinions, here’s the twin-brother of thy letter; but let thine inherit first, for, I protest, mine never shall. I warrant he hath a thousand of these letters, writ with blank space for different names, sure, more, and these are of the second edition. He will print them, out of doubt; for he cares not what he puts into the press, when he would put us two: I had rather be a giantess and lie under Mount Pelion. Well, I will find you twenty lascivious turtles ere one chaste man.
MRS. FORD
Why, this is the very same; the very hand, the very words. What doth he think of us?
MRS. PAGE
Nay, I know not; it makes me almost ready to wrangle with mine own honesty. I’ll entertain myself like one that I am not acquainted withal; for, sure, unless he know some strain in me that I know not myself, he would never have boarded me in this fury.
MRS. FORD
“Boarding” call you it? I’ll be sure to keep him above deck.
MRS. PAGE
So will I; if he come under my hatches, I’ll never to sea again. Let’s be revenged on him; let’s appoint him a meeting, give him a show of comfort in his suit, and lead him on with a fine-baited delay, till he hath pawned his horses to mine host of the Garter.
MRS. FORD
Nay, I will consent to act any villainy against him that may not sully the chariness of our honesty. O, that my husband saw this letter! It would give eternal food to his jealousy.
MRS. PAGE
Why, look where he comes; and my good man too: he’s as far from jealousy as I am from giving him cause; and that, I hope, is an unmeasurable distance.
MRS. FORD
You are the happier woman.
MRS. PAGE
Let’s consult together against this greasy knight. Come hither.
[They retire.]
[Enter FORD, PISTOL, and PAGE and NYM.]
FORD
Well, I hope it be not so.
PISTOL
Hope is a curtal dog in some affairs:
Sir John affects thy wife.
FORD
Why, sir, my wife is not young.
PISTOL
He woos both high and low, both rich and poor,
Both young and old, one with another, Ford;
He loves the gallimaufry. Ford, perpend.
FORD
Love my wife!
PISTOL
With liver burning hot: prevent, or go thou,
Like Sir Actaeon he, with Ringwood at thy heels. —
O! odious is the name!
FORD
What name, sir?
PISTOL
The horn, I say. Farewell:
Take heed; have open eye, for thieves do foot by night;
Take heed, ere summer comes, or cuckoo birds do sing.
Away, Sir Corporal Nym.
Believe it, Page; he speaks sense.
[Exit PISTOL.]
FORD
[Aside] I will be patient: I will find out this.
NYM
[To PAGE] And this is true; I like not the humour of lying. He hath wronged me in some humours: I should have borne the humoured letter to her; but I have a sword, and it shall bite upon my necessity. He loves your wife; there’s the short and the long. My name is Corporal Nym; I speak, and I avouch ‘tis true. My name is Nym, and Falstaff loves your wife. Adieu. I love not the humour of bread and cheese; and there’s the humour of it. Adieu.
[Exit NYM.]
PAGE
[Aside] “The humour of it,” quoth ‘a! Here’s a fellow frights English out of his wits.
FORD
I will seek out Falstaff.
PAGE
I never heard such a drawling, affecting rogue.
FORD
If I do find it: well.
PAGE
I will not believe such a Cataian, though the priest o’ the town commended him for a true man.
FORD
‘Twas a good sensible fellow: well.
PAGE
How now, Meg!
[MISTRESS PAGE and MISTRESS FORD come forward.]
MRS. PAGE
Whither go you, George? — Hark you.
MRS. FORD
How now, sweet Frank! why art thou melancholy?
FORD
I melancholy! I am not melancholy. Get you home, go.
MRS. FORD
Faith, thou hast some crotchets in thy head now. Will you go, Mistress Page?
MRS. PAGE