show you to the contrary: O, mistress Page, give me some counsel!

Mrs. Page. What's the matter, woman?

Mrs. Ford. O woman, if it were not for one trifling respect, I could come to such honour!

Mrs. Page. Hang the trifle, woman; take the honour: What is it?-dispense with trifles;what is it?

Mrs. Ford. If I would but go to hell for an eternal moment, or so, I could be knighted.

Mrs. Page. What?-thou liest!-Sir Alice Ford! These knights will hack2; and so thou should'st not alter the article of thy gentry.

Mrs. Ford. We burn day-light3: here, read, read; -perceive how I might be knighted.-1 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 Green sleeves. 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 own grease.-Did you ever hear the like? ·

2 To hack was the appropriate term for chopping off the spurs of a knight when he was to be degraded. The meaning therefore appears to be:-" these knights will degrade you for an unqualified pretender." Another explanation has been offered; supposing this to be a covert reflection upon the prodigal distribution of the honour of knighthood by King James. "These knights will soon become so hackneyed that your honour will not be increased by becoming one."

3 A proverb applicable to superfluous actions in general.

Mrs. Page. Letter for letter; but that the name of Page and Ford differs!-To thy great comfort in this mystery of ill opinions, here's the twin-brother of thy letter: but let thine inherit first; for, I protest, mine never shall. I warrant he hath a thousand of these letters, writ with blank space for different names, (sure more), and these are of the second edition: He will print them out of doubt: for he cares not what he puts into the press, when he would put us two. I had rather be a giantess, and lie under mount Pelion. Well, I will find you twenty lascivious turtles, ere one chaste man.

Mrs. Ford. Why, this is the very same; the very hand, the very words: : What doth he think of us?

Mrs. Page. Nay, I know not: It makes me almost ready to wrangle with mine own honesty. I'll entertain myself like one that I am not acquainted withal; for, sure, unless he know some strain in me, that I know not myself, he would never have boarded me in this fury.

Mrs. Ford. Boarding, call you it? I'll be sure to keep him above deck.

Mrs. Page. So will I; if he come under my hatches, I'll never to sea again. Let's be revenged on him: let's appoint him a meeting; give him a show of comfort in his suit; and lead him on with a fine-baited delay, till he hath pawn'd his horses to mine Host of the Garter.

4 Mrs. Page, who does not seem to have been intended in any degree for a learned lady, is here without the least regard to propriety made to talk like an author about the press and printing. The translations of the Classics, as Warton judiciously observes, soon inundated our poetry with pedantic allusions to ancient fable, often introduced as incongruously as the mention of Pelion here. The nautical allusions in the succeeding passages are not more appropriate. But Shakspeare does not often err in this way.

vil

Mrs. Ford. Nay, I will consent to act any lainy against him, that may not sully the chariness 5 of our honesty. O, that my husband saw this letter! it would give eternal food to his jealousy.

Mrs. Page. Why, look, where he comes; and my good man too: he's as far from jealousy, as I am from giving him cause; and that, I hope, is an unmeasurable distance.

Mrs. Ford. You are the happier woman.

Mrs. Page. Let's consult together against this greasy knight: Come hither. [They retire.

Enter FORD, PISTOL, PAGE, and NYM.

Ford. Well, I hope it be not so.

6

Pist. Hope is a curtail dog in some affairs: Sir John affects thy wife.

Ford. Why, sir, my wife is not young.

Pist. He woos both high and low, both rich and

poor,

Both young and old, one with another, Ford:
He loves the gally-mawfry; Ford, perpend3.
Ford. Love my wife?

Pist. With liver burning hot9: Prevent, or go thou, Like Sir Acteon he, with Ring-wood at thy heels : O, odious is the name!

Ford. What name, sir?

Pist. The horn, I say: Farewell.

5 i. e. the caution which ought to attend on it.

6 A curtail dog was a common dog not meant for sport, part of the tails of such dogs being commonly cut off while they are puppies; it was a prevalent notion that the tail of a dog was necessary to him in running, hence a dog that missed his game was called a curtail, from which cur is probably derived.

7 A medley.

8 Consider.

9 The liver was anciently supposed to be the inspirer of amorous passions. Thus in an old Latin distich:

'Cor ardet, pulmo loquitur, fel commovet iras
Splen ridere facit, cogit amare jecur.'

Take heed; have open eye; for thieves do foot by

night:

Take heed, ere summer comes, or cuckoo-birds do sing.

Away, Sir corporal Nym.

Believe it, Page; he speaks sense. [Exit PISTOL. Ford. I will be patient; I will find out this.

Nym. And this is true. [To PAGE.] I like not the humour of lying. He hath wronged me in some humours; I should have borne the humoured letter to her but I have a sword, and it shall bite upon my necessity. He loves your wife; there's the short and the long. My name is corporal Nym; I speak, and I avouch. 'Tis true:-my name is Nym, and Falstaff loves your wife.-Adieu! I love not the humour of bread and cheese; and there's the humour of it. Adieu. [Exit NYM. Page. The humour of it, quoth'a! here's a fellow frights humour 10 out of his wits.

Ford. I will seek out Falstaff.

Page. I never heard such a drawling, affecting

rogue.

Ford. If I do find it, well.

10 The first folio reads-English. The abuse of this word humour by the coxcombs of the age had been admirably satirized by Ben Jonson. After a very pertinent disquisition on the real meaning and true application of the word, he concludes thus:

Asp. But that a rook by wearing a pied feather,

The cable hatband, or the three-piled ruff,

A yard of shoe-tie, or the Switzers knot
On his French garters, should affect a humour,
O'tis worse than most ridiculous.

Cor. He speaks pure truth; now if an idiot
Have but an apish or fantastic strain,

It is his humour.

Induction to Every Man Out of his Humour. Steevens quotes an Epigram from Humours Ordinarie, 1607, to the same effect.

Page. I will not believe such a Cataian11, though the priest of the town commended him for a true man. Ford. 'Twas a good sensible fellow: Well 12. Page. How now, Meg?

Mrs. Page. Whither go you, George?-Hark you. Mrs. Ford. How now, sweet Frank? why art thou melancholy?

Ford. I melancholy! I am not melancholy.Get you home, go.

Mrs. Ford. 'Faith thou hast some crotchets in thy head now.- -Will you go, mistress Page?

Mrs. Page. Have with you. You'll come to dinner, George?-Look, who comes yonder: she shall be our messenger to this paltry knight.

[Aside to MRS. FORD.

Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY.

Mrs. Ford. Trust me, I thought on her: she'll fit it.

Mrs. Page. You are come to see my daughter Anne?

Quick. Ay, forsooth; And, I pray, how does good mistress Anne?

Mrs. Page. Go in with us, and see; we have an hour's talk with you.

[Exeunt MRS. PAGE, MRS. FORD, and MRS. QUICKLY.

Page. How now, master Ford?

Ford. You heard what this knave told me; did you not?

11 i. e. a Chinese, Cataia, or Cathay, being the name given to China by the old travellers, some of whom have mentioned the dexterous thieving of the people there; hence a sharper or thief was sometimes called a Cataian.

12 This and the two preceding speeches are soliloquies of Ford, and have no connexion with what Page says, who is also making comments on what had passed without attending to Ford.