The Merry Wives of Windsor

SIR HUGH: There is Anne Page, which is daughter to Master Thomas Page, which is pretty virginity.

SLENDER: Anne Page? She has brown hair and speaks small like a woman?

SIR HUGH: It is that fery person for all the ‘orld, as just as you will desire. And seven hundred pounds of moneys, and gold, and silver, is her grandsire upon his death’s bed (Got deliver to a joyful resurrections!) give, when she is able to overtake seventeen years old. It were a goot motion if we leave our pribbles and prabbles, and desire a marriage between Master Abraham and Mistress Anne Page.

SLENDER: Did her grandsire leave her seven hundred pound?

SIR HUGH: Ay, and her father is make her a petter penny.

SLENDER: I know the young gentlewoman. She has good gifts.

SIR HUGH: Seven hundred pounds and possibilities is goot gifts.

ANNE: I pray you sir, walk in.

SLENDER: I had rather walk here, I thank you. I bruised my shin th’ other day with playing at sword and dagger with a master of fence—three veneys for a dish of stewed prunes—and, by my troth, I cannot abide the smell of hot meat since.

FALSTAFF: Briefly, I do mean to make love to Ford’s wife. I spy entertainment in her. She discourses, she carves; she gives the leer of invitation. I can construe the action of her familiar style; and the hardest voice of her behavior, to be Englished rightly, is “I am Sir John Falstaff’s.”

FALSTAFF: O, [Mistress Page] did so course o’er my exteriors with such a greedy intention that the appetite of her eye did seem to scorch me up like a burning-glass. Here’s another letter to her. She bears the purse too; she is a region in Guiana, all gold and bounty. I will be cheaters to them both, and they shall be exchequers to me; they shall be my East and West Indies, and I will trade to them both.

FALSTAFF, giving papers to Robin:
Hold, sirrah, bear you these letters tightly;
Sail like my pinnace to these golden shores.—
Rogues, hence, avaunt, vanish like hailstones, go,
Trudge, plod away i’ th’ hoof, seek shelter, pack!
Falstaff will learn the humor of the age:
French thrift, you rogues—myself and skirted page.

FORD: Who says this is improvident jealousy? My wife hath sent to him, the hour is fixed, the match is made. Would any man have thought this? See the hell of having a false woman: my bed shall be abused, my coffers ransacked, my reputation gnawn at. And I shall not only receive this villainous wrong but stand under the adoption of abominable terms, and by him that does me this wrong.

FORD: Page is an ass, a secure ass. He will trust his wife, he will not be jealous. I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my cheese, an Irishman with my aquavitae bottle, or a thief to walk my ambling gelding, than my wife with herself. Then she plots, then she ruminates, then she devises; and what they think in their hearts they may effect, they will break their hearts but they will effect.

FORD: Has Page any brains? Hath he any eyes? Hath he any thinking? Sure they sleep; he hath no use of them. Why, this boy will carry a letter twenty mile as easy as a cannon will shoot point-blank twelve score. He pieces out his wife’s inclination. He gives her folly motion and advantage. And now she’s going to my wife, and Falstaff’s boy with her. A man may hear this shower sing in the wind. And Falstaff’s boy with her! Good plots they are laid, and our revolted wives share damnation together. Well, I will take him, then torture my wife, pluck the borrowed veil of modesty from the so-seeming Mistress Page, divulge Page himself for a secure and willful Acteon, and to these violent proceedings all my neighbors shall cry aim.

HOST (To Page): What say you to young Master Fenton? He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May. He will carry ‘t, he will carry ‘t. ‘Tis in his buttons he will carry ‘t.

PAGE: Not by my consent, I promise you. The gentleman is of no having. He kept company with the wild Prince and Poins. He is of too high a region; he knows too much. No, he shall not knit a knot in his fortunes with the finger of my substance. If he take her, let him take her simply. The wealth I have waits on my consent, and my consent goes not that way.

MISTRESS PAGE: Hang him, dishonest varlet! We cannot misuse him enough.
We’ll leave a proof, by that which we will do,
Wives may be merry and yet honest too.
We do not act that often jest and laugh;
‘Tis old but true: “Still swine eats all the draff.”

MISTRESS FORD (calling offstage): 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: Why, 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 th’ figure, and such daubery as this is, beyond our element. We know nothing.— Come down, you witch, you hag, you! Come down, I say!

[Ford seizes a cudgel.]

MISTRESS FORD: Nay, good sweet husband!—Good gentlemen, let him not strike the old woman.

FORD: Pardon me, wife. Henceforth do what thou wilt.
I rather will suspect the sun with cold
Than thee with wantonness. Now doth thy honor stand,
In him that was of late an heretic,
As firm as faith.

PAGE: ‘Tis well, ‘tis well. No more.
Be not as extreme in submission as in offense.
But let our plot go forward. Let our wives
Yet once again, to make us public sport,
Appoint a meeting with this old fat fellow,
Where we may take him and disgrace him for it.

FALSTAFF: The Windsor bell hath struck twelve. The minute draws on. Now, the hot-blooded gods assist me! Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa; Jove set on thy horns. O powerful love, that in some respects makes a beast a man, in some other a man a beast! You were also, Jupiter, a swan for the love of Leda. O omnipotent love, how near the god drew to the complexion of a goose! A fault done first in the form of a beast; O Jove, a beastly fault! And then another fault in the semblance of a fowl; think on’t, Jove, a foul fault. When gods have hot backs, what shall poor men do?

MISTRESS PAGE: Why went you not with Master Doctor, maid?

FENTON: You do amaze her. Hear the truth of it.
You would have married her most shamefully,
Where there was no proportion held in love.
The truth is, she and I, long since contracted,
Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us.
Th’ offense is holy that she hath committed,
And this deceit loses the name of craft,
Of disobedience, or unduteous title,
Since therein she doth evitate and shun
A thousand irreligious cursed hours
Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.

FORD (to Page and Mistress Page): Stand not amazed. Here is no remedy.
In love the heavens themselves do guide the state.
Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.