The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare (moboreader .TXT) 📕

SLENDER. How does your fallow greyhound, sir? I heard say he was outrun on Cotsall.

PAGE. It could not be judg’d, sir.

SLENDER. You’ll not confess, you’ll not confess.

SHALLOW. That he will not. ‘Tis your fault; ‘tis your fault; ‘tis a good dog.

PAGE. A cur, sir.

SHALLOW. Sir, he’s a good dog, and a fair dog. Can there be more said? He is good, and fair. Is Sir John Falstaff here?

PAGE. Sir, he is within; and I would I could do a good office between you.

EVANS. It is spoke as a Christians ought to speak.

SHALLOW. He hath wrong’d me, Master Page.

PAGE. Sir, he doth in some sort confess it.

SHALLOW. If it be confessed, it is not redressed; is not that so, Master Page? He hath wrong’d me; indeed he hath; at a word, he hath, believe me; Robert Shallow, esquire, saith he is wronged.

PAGE. Here comes Sir John.

Enter SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, BARDOLPH, NYM, and PISTOL

FALSTAFF. Now, Master Shallow, you’ll complain of me to the King?

SHALLOW. Knight, you have beaten my men, kill’d my deer, and broke open my lodge.

FALSTAFF. But not kiss’d your keeper’s daughter.

SHALLOW. Tut, a pin! this shall be answer’d.

FALSTAFF. I will answer it straight: I have done all this.

That is now answer’d.

SHALLOW. The Council shall know this.

FALSTAFF. ‘Twere better for you if it were known in counsel: you’ll be laugh’d at.

EVANS. Pauca verba, Sir John; goot worts.

FALSTAFF. Good worts! good cabbage! Slender, I broke your head; what matter have you against me?

SLENDER. Marry, sir, I have matter in my head against you; and against your cony-catching rascals, Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol. They carried me to the tavern, and made me drunk, and afterwards pick’d my pocket.

BARDOLPH. You Banbury cheese!

SLENDER. Ay, it is no matter.

PISTOL. How now, Mephostophilus!

SLENDER. Ay, it is no matter.

NYM. Slice, I say! pauca, pauca; slice! That’s my humour.

SLENDER. Where’s Simple, my man? Can you tell, cousin?

EVANS. Peace, I pray you. Now let us understand. There is three umpires in this matter, as I understand: that is, Master Page, fidelicet Master Page; and there is myself, fidelicet myself; and the three party is, lastly and finally, mine host of the Garter.

PAGE. We three to hear it and end it between them.

EVANS. Fery goot. I will make a prief of it in my notebook; and we will afterwards ork upon the cause with as great discreetly as we can.

FALSTAFF. Pistol!

PISTOL. He hears with ears.

EVANS. The tevil and his tam! What phrase is this, ‘He hears with ear’? Why, it is affectations.

FALSTAFF. Pistol, did you pick Master Slender’s purse?

SLENDER. Ay, by these gloves, did he-or I would I might never come in mine own great chamber again else!-of seven groats in mill-sixpences, and two Edward shovel-boards that cost me two shilling and two pence apiece of Yead Miller, by these gloves.

FALSTAFF. Is this true, Pistol?

EVANS. No, it is false, if it is a pickpurse.

PISTOL. Ha, thou mountain-foreigner! Sir John and master mine,

I combat challenge of this latten bilbo.

Word of denial in thy labras here!

Word of denial! Froth and scum, thou liest.

SLENDER. By these gloves, then, ‘twas he.

NYM. Be avis’d, sir, and pass good humours; I will say ‘marry trap’ with you, if you run the nuthook’s humour on me; that is the very note of it.

SLENDER. By this hat, then, he in the red face had it; for though I cannot remember what I did when you made me drunk, yet I am not altogether an ass.

FALSTAFF. What say you, Scarlet and John?

BARDOLPH. Why, sir, for my part, I say the gentleman had drunk himself out of his five sentences.

EVANS. It is his five senses; fie, what the ignorance is!

BARDOLPH. And being fap, sir, was, as they say, cashier’d; and so conclusions pass’d the careers.

SLENDER. Ay, you spake in Latin then too; but ‘tis no matter; I’ll ne’er be drunk whilst I live again, but in honest, civil, godly company, for this trick. If I be drunk, I’ll be drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with drunken knaves.

EVANS. So Got udge me, that is a virtuous mind.

FALSTAFF. You hear all these matters deni’d, gentlemen; you hear it.

Enter MISTRESS ANNE PAGE with wine; MISTRESS

FORD and MISTRESS PAGE, following PAGE. Nay, daughter, carry the wine in; we’ll drink within.

Exit ANNE PAGE

SLENDER. O heaven! this is Mistress Anne Page.

PAGE. How now, Mistress Ford!

FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford, by my troth, you are very well met; by your leave, good mistress. [Kisses her]

PAGE. Wife, bid these gentlemen welcome. Come, we have a hot venison pasty to dinner; come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.

Exeunt all but SHALLOW, SLENDER, and EVANS

SLENDER. I had rather than forty shillings I had my Book of Songs and Sonnets here.

Enter SIMPLE

How, Simple! Where have you been? I must wait on myself, must I? You have not the Book of Riddles about you, have you?

SIMPLE. Book of Riddles! Why, did you not lend it to Alice Shortcake upon Allhallowmas last, a fortnight afore Michaelmas?

SHALLOW. Come, coz; come, coz; we stay for you. A word with you, coz; marry, this, coz: there is, as ‘twere, a tender, a kind of tender, made afar off by Sir Hugh here. Do you understand me?

SLENDER. Ay, sir, you shall find me reasonable; if it be so, I shall do that that is reason.

SHALLOW. Nay, but understand me.

SLENDER. So I do, sir.

EVANS. Give ear to his motions: Master Slender, I will description the matter to you, if you be capacity of it.

SLENDER. Nay, I will do as my cousin Shallow says; I pray you pardon me; he’s a justice of peace in his country, simple though I stand here.

EVANS. But that is not the question. The question is concerning your marriage.

SHALLOW. Ay, there’s the point, sir.

EVANS. Marry is it; the very point of it; to Mistress Anne Page.

SLENDER. Why, if it be so, I will marry her upon any reasonable demands.

EVANS. But can you affection the oman? Let us command to know that of your mouth or of your lips; for divers philosophers hold that the lips is parcel of the mouth. Therefore, precisely, can you carry your good will to the maid?

SHALLOW. Cousin Abraham Slender, can you love her?

SLENDER. I hope, sir, I will do as it shall become one that would do reason.

EVANS. Nay, Got’s lords and his ladies! you must speak possitable, if you can carry her your desires towards her.

SHALLOW. That you must. Will you, upon good dowry, marry her?

SLENDER. I will do a greater thing than that upon your request, cousin, in any reason.

SHALLOW. Nay, conceive me, conceive me, sweet coz; what I do is to pleasure you, coz. Can you love the maid?

SLENDER. I will marry her, sir, at your request; but if there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another. I hope upon familiarity will grow more contempt. But if you say ‘marry her,’ I will marry her; that I am freely dissolved, and dissolutely.

EVANS. It is a fery discretion answer, save the fall is in the ord ‘dissolutely’: the ort is, according to our meaning, ‘resolutely’; his meaning is good.

SHALLOW. Ay, I think my cousin meant well.

SLENDER. Ay, or else I would I might be hang’d, la!

Re-enter ANNE PAGE

SHALLOW. Here comes fair Mistress Anne. Would I were young for your sake, Mistress Anne!

ANNE. The dinner is on the table; my father desires your worships’ company.

SHALLOW. I will wait on him, fair Mistress Anne!

EVANS. Od’s plessed will! I will not be absence at the grace.

Exeunt SHALLOW and EVANS

ANNE. Will’t please your worship to come in, sir?

SLENDER. No, I thank you, forsooth, heartily; I am very well.

ANNE. The dinner attends you, sir.

SLENDER. I am not ahungry, I thank you, forsooth. Go, sirrah, for all you are my man, go wait upon my cousin Shallow. [Exit SIMPLE] A justice of peace sometime may be beholding to his friend for a man. I keep but three men and a boy yet, till my mother be dead. But what though?

Yet I live like a poor gentleman born.

ANNE. I may not go in without your worship; they will not sit till you come.

SLENDER. I’ faith, I’ll eat nothing; I thank you as much as though I did.

ANNE. I pray you, sir, walk in.

SLENDER. I had rather walk here, I thank you. I bruis’d my shin th’ other day with playing at sword and dagger with a master of fence-three veneys for a dish of stew’d prunes -and, I with my ward defending my head, he hot my shin, and, by my troth, I cannot abide the smell of hot meat since. Why do your dogs bark so? Be there bears i’ th’

town?

ANNE. I think there are, sir; I heard them talk’d of.

SLENDER. I love the sport well; but I shall as soon quarrel at it as any man in England. You are afraid, if you see the bear loose, are you not?

ANNE. Ay, indeed, sir.

SLENDER. That’s meat and drink to me now. I have seen Sackerson loose twenty times, and have taken him by the chain; but I warrant you, the women have so cried and shriek’d at it that it pass’d; but women, indeed, cannot abide ‘em; they are very ill-favour’d rough things.

Re-enter PAGE

PAGE. Come, gentle Master Slender, come; we stay for you.

SLENDER. I’ll eat nothing, I thank you, sir.

PAGE. By cock and pie, you shall not choose, sir! Come, come.

SLENDER. Nay, pray you lead the way.

PAGE. Come on, sir.

SLENDER. Mistress Anne, yourself shall go first.

ANNE. Not I, sir; pray you keep on.

SLENDER. Truly, I will not go first; truly, la! I will not do you that wrong.

ANNE. I pray you, sir.

SLENDER. I’ll rather be unmannerly than troublesome. You do yourself wrong indeed, la! Exeunt

SCENE 2.

Before PAGE’S house

Enter SIR HUGH EVANS and SIMPLE

EVANS. Go your ways, and ask of Doctor Caius’ house which is the way; and there dwells one Mistress Quickly, which is in the manner of his nurse, or his dry nurse, or his cook, or his laundry, his washer, and his wringer.

SIMPLE. Well, sir.

EVANS. Nay, it is petter yet. Give her this letter; for it is a oman that altogether’s acquaintance with Mistress Anne Page; and the letter is to desire and require her to solicit your master’s desires to Mistress Anne Page. I pray you be gone. I will make an end of my dinner; there’s pippins and cheese to come. Exeunt

SCENE 3.

The Garter Inn

Enter FALSTAFF, HOST, BARDOLPH, NYM, PISTOL, and ROBIN

FALSTAFF. Mine host of the Garter!

HOST. What says my bully rook? Speak scholarly and wisely.

FALSTAFF. Truly, mine host, I must turn away some of my followers.

HOST. Discard, bully Hercules; cashier; let them wag; trot, trot.

FALSTAFF. I sit at ten pounds a week.

HOST. Thou’rt an emperor-Caesar, Keiser, and Pheazar. I will entertain Bardolph; he shall draw, he shall tap; said I well, bully Hector?

FALSTAFF. Do so, good mine host.

HOST. I have spoke; let him follow. [To BARDOLPH] Let me see thee froth and lime. I am at a word; follow. Exit HOST

FALSTAFF. Bardolph, follow him. A tapster is a good trade;