51 The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, by
51 The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, by William Shakespeare
ACT II
SCENE I. Before Page’s house
Enter Mistress Page reading a letter.
MISTRESS PAGE.
What, have I scaped love-letters in the holiday-time of my beauty, and am I now
a subject for them? Let me see.
[Reads.] Ask me no reason why I love you, for though Love use Reason
for his precisian, he admits him not for his counsellor. You are not young, no
more am I. Go to, then, there’s sympathy. You are merry, so am I. Ha, ha, then
there’s more sympathy. You love sack, and so do I. Would you desire better
sympathy? Let it suffice thee, Mistress Page, at the least, if the love of
soldier can suffice, that I love thee. I will not say, pity me—’tis not a
soldier-like phrase—but I say love me. By me,
Thine own true knight,
By day or night,
Or any kind of light,
With all his might,
For thee to fight,
John Falstaff.
What a Herod of Jewry is this! O wicked, wicked world! One that is well-nigh
worn to pieces with age, to show himself a young gallant! What an unweighed
behaviour hath this Flemish drunkard picked—with the devil’s name!—out of my
conversation, that he dares in this manner assay me? Why, he hath not been
thrice in my company! What should I say to him? I was then frugal of my
mirth. Heaven forgive me! Why, I’ll exhibit a bill in the parliament for the
putting down of men. How shall I be revenged on him? For revenged I will be, as
sure as his guts are made of puddings.
Enter Mistress Ford.
MISTRESS FORD.
Mistress Page! Trust me, I was going to your house.
MISTRESS PAGE.
And, trust me, I was coming to you. You look very ill.
MISTRESS FORD.
Nay, I’ll ne’er believe that. I have to show to the contrary.
MISTRESS PAGE.
Faith, but you do, in my mind.
MISTRESS FORD.
Well, I do, then. Yet I say I could show you to the contrary. O, Mistress
Page, give me some counsel.
MISTRESS PAGE.
What’s the matter, woman?
MISTRESS FORD.
O woman, if it were not for one trifling respect, I could come to such honour!
MISTRESS PAGE.
Hang the trifle, woman; take the honour. What is it? Dispense with
trifles. What is it?
MISTRESS FORD.
MISTRESS PAGE.
What? Thou liest! Sir Alice Ford! These knights will hack, and so thou shouldst
not alter the article of thy gentry.
MISTRESS 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 ow