villains! 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 pinion'd.

Evans. Why, this is lunatics! this is mad as a mad dog! Shal. 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?

Mrs. Ford. Heaven be my witness you do, if you suspect me in any dishonesty.

Ford. Well said, brazen-face! hold it out. sirrah!

Page. This passes! 7

Come forth,

[Pulling the clothes out of the basket.

Mrs. Ford. Are you not ashamed? let the clothes alone. Ford. I shall find you anon.

Evans. 'Tis unreasonable! Will you take up your wife's clothes? Come away.

Ford. Empty the basket, I say!

Mrs. Ford. Why, man, why,

Ford. Master Page, as I am a man, there was one convey'd 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.

6 Ging is but another form of gang, still in use.

7 Exceeds or goes beyond all bounds; surpasses belief.

Mrs. Ford. If you find a man there, he shall die a flea's death.

Page. Here's no man.

Shal. By my fidelity, this is not well, Master Ford; this wrongs you.

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, that search'd a hollow walnut for his wife's leman.8 Satisfy me once more; once more search with me.

Mrs. 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?

Mrs. 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 the figure; and such daubery9 as this is beyond our element; we know nothing.-Come down, you witch, you hag, you; come down, I say!

Mrs. Ford. Nay, good, sweet husband,-Good gentlemen, let him not strike the old woman.

Re-enter FALSTAFF in women's clothes, led by Mrs. PAGE.

Mrs. Page. Come, Mother Prat; come, give me your hand. Ford. I'll prat her.-[Beating him.] Out of my door, you

8 Leman was in frequent use for lover or paramour.

9 Daubery is imposture or juggling. To daub was used in like sort for to disguise.

witch, you hag, you baggage, you polecat, you ronyon! 10 out, out! I'll conjure you, I'll fortune-tell you.

[Exit FALSTAFF. Mrs. Page. Are you not ashamed? I think you have kill'd the poor woman.

Mrs. Ford. Nay, he will do it. - 'Tis a goodly credit for you. Ford. Hang her, witch!

Evans. By 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 her 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,11 never trust me when I open again.

Page. Let's obey his humour a little further: come, gentle[Exeunt FORD, PAGE, SHAL., CAIUS, and EVANS.

men.

Mrs. Page. Trust me, he beat him most pitifully. Mrs. Ford. Nay, by the Mass, that he did not; he beat him most unpitifully, methought.

Mrs. Page. I'll have the cudgel hallow'd, and hung o'er the altar; it hath done meritorious service.

Mrs. Ford. What think you? may we, with the warrant of womanhood and the witness of a good conscience, pursue him with any further revenge?

:

Mrs. Page. The spirit of wantonness is, sure, scared out of him if the Devil have him not in fee-simple, with fine and recovery,12 he will never, I think, in the way of waste, attempt us again.

10 Ronyon was a term of intense disgust, signifying a mangy or scabby creature; from the French rogneux.

11 Terms of hunting. The trail is the scented track of the game; and cry out refers to the barking of the dogs on finding the trail. See vol. v., page 184, note 21.

12 Legal terms, and used with strict propriety according to the practice of the time. Ritson, a lawyer, remarks upon the passage: "Fee-simple is the largest estate, and fine and recovery the strongest assurance, known to

Mrs. Ford. Shall we tell our husbands how we have served him?

Mrs. Page. Yes, by all means; if it be but to scrape the figures 13 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.

Mrs. Ford. I'll warrant they'll have him publicly shamed : and methinks there would be no period 14 to the jest, should he not be publicly shamed.

Mrs. Page. Come, to the forge with it, then; shape it: I would not have things cool.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III. A Room in the Garter Inn.

--

Enter the Host and BARDOLPH.

Bard. Sir, the Germans desire to have three of your horses the Duke himself will be to-morrow at Court, and they are going to meet him.

I

Host. What Duke should that be comes so secretly? hear not of him in the Court. Let me speak with the gentlemen they speak English?

Bard. Ay, sir; I'll call them to you.

English law." So that the meaning is, "If Falstaff be not, to all intents and purposes, the Devil's own," &c. Commentators have wondered how Mrs. Page came to know so much of legal terms. But is it not equally strange that Shakespeare's average characters should, in their ordinary talk, speak greater poetry than any other poet has written?-"He will never, I think," &c., is another legal phrase, meaning, "he will never again attempt to ruin us, or to lay waste our good name."

13 Figures for fancies, imaginations, or visionary forms. So in Julius Cæsar, ii. 1: "Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies, which busy care draws in the brains of men."

14 I suspect period is here used in the sense of completeness, as, in writing, a period is supposed to complete the expression of a thought. Others explain it catastrophe or fitting conclusion.

Host. They shall have my horses; but I'll make them pay; I'll sauce them: they have had my house a week at command; I have turn'd away my other guests: they must come off; I'll sauce them. Come.

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV.A Room in FORD'S House.

Enter PAGE, FORD, Mistress PAGE, Mistress FORD, and Sir HUGH EVANS.

Evans. 'Tis one of the best discretions of a 'oman as ever I did look upon.

Page. And did he send you both these letters at an instant?

Mrs. Page. Within a quarter of an hour.

Ford. Pardon me, wife. Henceforth do what thou wilt; I rather will suspect the Sun with cold 2

Than thee with wantonness: now doth thy honour stand,
In him that was of late an heretic,

As firm as faith.

Page.

'Tis well, 'tis well; no more:

Be not as éxtreme in submission

As in offence.

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.

Ford. There is no better way than that they spoke of. Page. How to send him word they'll meet him in the Park at midnight? Fie, fie! he'll never come.

1 To come off is a phrase often met with in old plays; meaning, as we now say, come down with the cash.

2 Suspect the Sun of coldness. Another instance of with where present usage requires of. See page 76, note 6.