1    Bardolph, I say,--

2    Here, sir.

3    Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in't.
Exit BARDOLPH
4    Have I lived to be carried in a basket, like a
5    barrow of butcher's offal, and to be thrown in the
6    Thames? Well, if I be served such another trick,
7    I'll have my brains ta'en out and buttered, and give
8    them to a dog for a new-year's gift. The rogues
9    slighted me into the river with as little remorse as
10   they would have drowned a blind bitch's puppies,
11   fifteen i' the litter: and you may know by my size
12   that I have a kind of alacrity in sinking; if the
13   bottom were as deep as hell, I should down. I had
14   been drowned, but that the shore was shelvy and
15   shallow,--a death that I abhor; for the water swells
16   a man; and what a thing should I have been when I
17   had been swelled! I should have been a mountain of mummy.

18   Here's Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with you.

19   Let me pour in some sack to the Thames water; for my
20   belly's as cold as if I had swallowed snowballs for
21   pills to cool the reins. Call her in.

22   Come in, woman!

23   By your leave; I cry you mercy: give your worship
24   good morrow.

25   Take away these chalices. Go brew me a pottle of
26   sack finely.

27   With eggs, sir?

28   Simple of itself; I'll no pullet-sperm in my brewage.
Exit BARDOLPH
29   How now!

30   Marry, sir, I come to your worship from Mistress Ford.

31   Mistress Ford! I have had ford enough; I was thrown
32   into the ford; I have my belly full of ford.

33   Alas the day! good heart, that was not her fault:
34   she does so take on with her men; they mistook their erection.

35   So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman's promise.

36   Well, she laments, sir, for it, that it would yearn
37   your heart to see it. Her husband goes this morning
38   a-birding; she desires you once more to come to her
39   between eight and nine: I must carry her word
40   quickly: she'll make you amends, I warrant you.

41   Well, I will visit her: tell her so; and bid her
42   think what a man is: let her consider his frailty,
43   and then judge of my merit.

44   I will tell her.

45   Do so. Between nine and ten, sayest thou?

46   Eight and nine, sir.

47   Well, be gone: I will not miss her.

48   Peace be with you, sir.

49   I marvel I hear not of Master Brook; he sent me word
50   to stay within: I like his money well. O, here he comes.

51   Bless you, sir!

52   Now, master Brook, you come to know what hath passed
53   between me and Ford's wife?

54   That, indeed, Sir John, is my business.

55   Master Brook, I will not lie to you: I was at her
56   house the hour she appointed me.

57   And sped you, sir?

58   Very ill-favoredly, Master Brook.

59   How so, sir? Did she change her determination?

60   No, Master Brook; but the peaking Cornuto her
61   husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual
62   'larum of jealousy, comes me in the instant of our
63   encounter, after we had embraced, kissed, protested,
64   and, as it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy;
65   and at his heels a rabble of his companions, thither
66   provoked and instigated by his distemper, and,
67   forsooth, to search his house for his wife's love.

68   What, while you were there?

69   While I was there.

70   And did he search for you, and could not find you?

71   You shall hear. As good luck would have it, comes
72   in one Mistress Page; gives intelligence of Ford's
73   approach; and, in her invention and Ford's wife's
74   distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket.

75   A buck-basket!

76   By the Lord, a buck-basket! rammed me in with foul
77   shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy
78   napkins; that, Master Brook, there was the rankest
79   compound of villanous smell that ever offended nostril.

80   And how long lay you there?

81   Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have
82   suffered to bring this woman to evil for your good.
83   Being thus crammed in the basket, a couple of Ford's
84   knaves, his hinds, were called forth by their
85   mistress to carry me in the name of foul clothes to
86   Datchet-lane: they took me on their shoulders; met
87   the jealous knave their master in the door, who
88   asked them once or twice what they had in their
89   basket: I quaked for fear, lest the lunatic knave
90   would have searched it; but fate, ordaining he
91   should be a cuckold, held his hand. Well: on went he
92   for a search, and away went I for foul clothes. But
93   mark the sequel, Master Brook: I suffered the pangs
94   of three several deaths; first, an intolerable
95   fright, to be detected with a jealous rotten
96   bell-wether; next, to be compassed, like a good
97   bilbo, in the circumference of a peck, hilt to
98   point, heel to head; and then, to be stopped in,
99   like a strong distillation, with stinking clothes
100  that fretted in their own grease: think of that,--a
101  man of my kidney,--think of that,--that am as subject
102  to heat as butter; a man of continual dissolution
103  and thaw: it was a miracle to scape suffocation.
104  And in the height of this bath, when I was more than
105  half stewed in grease, like a Dutch dish, to be
106  thrown into the Thames, and cooled, glowing hot,
107  in that surge, like a horse-shoe; think of
108  that,--hissing hot,--think of that, Master Brook.

109  In good sadness, I am sorry that for my sake you
110  have sufferd all this. My suit then is desperate;
111  you'll undertake her no more?

112  Master Brook, I will be thrown into Etna, as I have
113  been into Thames, ere I will leave her thus. Her
114  husband is this morning gone a-birding: I have
115  received from her another embassy of meeting; 'twixt
116  eight and nine is the hour, Master Brook.

117  'Tis past eight already, sir.

118  Is it? I will then address me to my appointment.
119  Come to me at your convenient leisure, and you shall
120  know how I speed; and the conclusion shall be
121  crowned with your enjoying her. Adieu. You shall
122  have her, Master Brook; Master Brook, you shall
123  cuckold Ford.

124  Hum! ha! is this a vision? is this a dream? do I
125  sleep? Master Ford awake! awake, Master Ford!
126  there's a hole made in your best coat, Master Ford.
127  This 'tis to be married! this 'tis to have linen
128  and buck-baskets! Well, I will proclaim myself
129  what I am: I will now take the lecher; he is at my
130  house; he cannot 'scape me; 'tis impossible he
131  should; he cannot creep into a halfpenny purse,
132  nor into a pepper-box: but, lest the devil that
133  guides him should aid him, I will search
134  impossible places. Though what I am I cannot avoid,
135  yet to be what I would not shall not make me tame:
136  if I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go
137  with me: I'll be horn-mad.