The Merry Wives of Windsor eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 98 pages of information about The Merry Wives of Windsor.

The Merry Wives of Windsor eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 98 pages of information about The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Ford.  Now, sir, who’s a cuckold now?  Master Brook, Falstaff’s a knave, a cuckoldly knave; here are his horns, Master Brook; and, Master Brook, he hath enjoyed nothing of Ford’s but his buck-basket, his cudgel, and twenty pounds of money, which must be paid to Master Brook; his horses are arrested for it, Master Brook.

Mrs. Ford
Sir John, we have had ill luck; we could never meet.  I will never
take you for my love again; but I will always count you my deer.

Falstaff
I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass.

Ford
Ay, and an ox too; both the proofs are extant.

Falstaff.  And these are not fairies?  I was three or four times in the thought they were not fairies; and yet the guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprise of my powers, drove the grossness of the foppery into a received belief, in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and reason, that they were fairies.  See now how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent when ’tis upon ill employment!

Evans
Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies
will not pinse you.

Ford
Well said, fairy Hugh.

Evans
And leave you your jealousies too, I pray you.

Ford
I will never mistrust my wife again, till thou art able to woo her
in good English.

Falstaff.  Have I laid my brain in the sun, and dried it, that it wants matter to prevent so gross o’er-reaching as this?  Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too?  Shall I have a cox-comb of frieze?  ’Tis time I were choked with a piece of toasted cheese.

Evans
Seese is not good to give putter:  your belly is all putter.

Falstaff.  ‘Seese’ and ‘putter’!  Have I lived to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of English?  This is enough to be the decay of lust and late-walking through the realm.

Mrs. Page.  Why, Sir John, do you think, though we would have thrust virtue out of our hearts by the head and shoulders, and have given ourselves without scruple to hell, that ever the devil could have made you our delight?

Ford
What, a hodge-pudding? a bag of flax?

Mrs. Page
A puffed man?

Page
Old, cold, withered, and of intolerable entrails?

Ford
And one that is as slanderous as Satan?

Page
And as poor as Job?

Ford
And as wicked as his wife?

Evans.  And given to fornications, and to taverns, and sack and wine, and metheglins, and to drinkings and swearings and starings, pribbles and prabbles?

Falstaff
Well, I am your theme; you have the start of me; I am dejected;
I am not able to answer the Welsh flannel.  Ignorance itself is
a plummet o’er me; use me as you will.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Merry Wives of Windsor from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.