A Room in the Garter Inn.
 Enter FALSTAFF.

Falstaff	Bardolph, I say!

                             Enter BARDOLPH.

Bardolph	Here, sir.

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

                     Re-enter BARDOLPH with the sack.

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

Falstaff	Come, let me pour in some sack to the Thames water, for my 
	belly's as cold as if I had swallowed snowballs for pills 
	to cool the reins. Call her in.

Bardolph	Come in, woman!

                         Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY.

Quickly	By your leave; I cry you mercy. Give your worship good 
	morrow.

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

Bardolph	With eggs, sir?

Falstaff	Simple of itself; I'll no pullet-sperm in my brewage.
												[Exit BARDOLPH.
	How now?

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

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

Quickly	Alas the day, good heart! That was not her fault. She does 
	so take on with her men; they mistook their erection.

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

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

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

Quickly	I will tell her.

Falstaff	Do so. Between nine and ten, sayst thou?

Quickly	Eight and nine, sir.

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

Quickly	Peace be with you, sir.
												[Exit.

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

                      Enter FORD disguised as Brook.

Ford	Bless you, sir!

Falstaff	Now, Master Brook, you come to know what hath passed 
	between me and Ford's wife?

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

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

Ford	And sped you, sir?

Falstaff	Very ill-favouredly, Master Brook.

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

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

Ford	What, while you were there?

Falstaff	While I was there.

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

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

Ford	A buck-basket?

Falstaff	Yes, a buck-basket! Rammed me in with foul shirts and 
	smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins, that, 
	Master Brook, there was the rankest compound of villainous 
	smell that ever offended nostril.

Ford	And how long lay you there?

Falstaff	Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have suffered to 
	bring this woman to evil, for your good. Being thus 
	crammed in the basket, a couple of Ford's knaves, his 
	hinds, were called forth by their mistress to carry me in 
	the name of foul clothes to Datchet Lane. They took me on 
	their shoulders, met the jealous knave their master in the 
	door, who asked them once or twice what they had in their 
	basket. I quaked for fear lest the lunatic knave would 
	have searched it, but fate, ordaining he should be a 
	cuckold, held his hand. Well, on went he for a search, and 
	away went I for foul clothes. But mark the sequel, Master 
	Brook: I suffered the pangs of three several deaths. 
	First, an intolerable fright, to be detected with a 
	jealous rotten bell-wether. Next, to be compassed like a 
	good bilbo in the circumference of a peck, hilt to point, 
	heel to head. And then, to be stopped in, like a strong 
	distillation, with stinking clothes that fretted in their 
	own grease. Think of that - a man of my kidney - think of 
	that - that am as subject to heat as butter; a man of 
	continual dissolution and thaw: it was a miracle to 'scape 
	suffocation. And in the height of this bath, when I was 
	more than half stewed in grease, like a Dutch dish, to be 
	thrown into the Thames and cooled, glowing hot, in that 
	surge, like a horseshoe. Think of that - hissing hot - 
	think of that, Master Brook!

Ford	In good sadness, sir, I am sorry that for my sake you have 
	suffered all this. My suit, then, is desperate. You'll 
	undertake her no more?

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

Ford	'Tis past eight already, sir.

Falstaff	Is it? I will then address me to my appointment. Come to 
	me at your convenient leisure and you shall know how I 
	speed, and the conclusion shall be crowned with your 
	enjoying her. Adieu. You shall have her, Master Brook. 
	Master Brook, you shall cuckold Ford.
												[Exit.

Ford	Hum! Ha! Is this a vision? Is this a dream? Do I sleep? 
	Master Ford, awake! Awake, Master Ford! There's a hole 
	made in your best coat, Master Ford. This 'tis to be 
	married: this 'tis to have linen and buck-baskets! Well, I 
	will proclaim myself what I am. I will now take the 
	lecher; he is at my house. He cannot 'scape me; 'tis 
	impossible he should. He cannot creep into a halfpenny 
	purse, nor into a pepper-box; but, lest the devil that 
	guides him should aid him, I will search impossible 
	places. Though what I am I cannot avoid, yet to be what I 
	would not shall not make me tame. If I have horns to make 
	one mad, let the proverb go with me: I'll be horn-mad.
												[Exit.
