William Shakespeare - Ultimate Collection: Complete Plays & Poetry in One Volume. William ShakespeareЧитать онлайн книгу.
this is, beyond our element. We know nothing. Come down, you witch, you hag you; come down, I say!
MRS. FORD
Nay, good sweet husband! Good gentlemen, let him not strike the old woman.
[Re-enter FALSTAFF in woman’s clothes, led by MISTRESS PAGE.]
MRS. PAGE
Come, Mother Prat; come, give me your hand.
FORD
I’ll prat her. — [Beats him.] Out of my door, you witch, you rag, you baggage, you polecat, you ronyon! Out, out! I’ll conjure you, I’ll fortune-tell you.
[Exit FALSTAFF.]
MRS. PAGE
Are you not ashamed? I think you have killed the poor woman.
MRS. FORD
Nay, he will do it. ‘Tis a goodly credit for you.
FORD
Hang her, witch!
EVANS. By yea and no, I think the ‘oman is a witch indeed; I like not when a ‘oman has a great peard; I spy a great peard under her muffler.
FORD
Will you follow, gentlemen? I beseech you follow; see but the issue of my jealousy; if I cry out thus upon no trail, never trust me when I open again.
PAGE
Let’s obey his humour a little further. Come, gentlemen.
[Exeunt FORD, PAGE, SHALLOW, CAIUS, and EVANS.]
MRS. PAGE
Trust me, he beat him most pitifully.
MRS. FORD
Nay, by the mass, that he did not; he beat him most unpitifully methought.
MRS. PAGE
I’ll have the cudgel hallowed and hung o’er the altar; it hath done meritorious service.
MRS. FORD
What think you? May we, with the warrant of womanhood and the witness of a good conscience, pursue him with any further revenge?
MRS. PAGE. The spirit of wantonness is sure scared out of him; if the devil have him not in fee-simple, with fine and recovery, he will never, I think, in the way of waste, attempt us again.
MRS. FORD
Shall we tell our husbands how we have served him?
MRS. PAGE
Yes, by all means; if it be but to scrape the figures out of your husband’s brains. If they can find in their hearts the poor unvirtuous fat knight shall be any further afflicted, we two will still be the ministers.
MRS. FORD
I’ll warrant they’ll have him publicly shamed; and methinks there would be no period to the jest, should he not be publicly shamed.
MRS. PAGE
Come, to the forge with it then; shape it. I would not have things cool.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE III. A room in the Garter Inn
[Enter HOST and BARDOLPH.]
BARDOLPH
Sir, the Germans desire to have three of your horses; the Duke himself will be tomorrow at court, and they are going to meet him.
HOST
What duke should that be comes so secretly? I hear not of him in the court. Let me speak with the gentlemen; they speak English?
BARDOLPH
Ay, sir; I’ll call them to you.
HOST
They shall have my horses, but I’ll make them pay; I’ll sauce them; they have had my house a week at command; I have turned away my other guests. They must come off; I’ll sauce them. Come.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE IV. A room in Ford’s house
[Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD, and SIR HUGH EVANS.]
EVANS
‘Tis one of the best discretions of a ‘oman as ever I did look upon.
PAGE
And did he send you both these letters at an instant?
MRS. PAGE
Within a quarter of an hour.
FORD
Pardon me, wife. Henceforth, do what thou wilt;
I rather will suspect the sun with cold
Than thee with wantonness: now doth thy honour stand,
In him that was of late an heretic,
As firm as faith.
PAGE
‘Tis well, ‘tis well; no more.
Be not as extreme in submission
As in offence;
But let our plot go forward: let our wives
Yet once again, to make us public sport,
Appoint a meeting with this old fat fellow,
Where we may take him and disgrace him for it.
FORD
There is no better way than that they spoke of.
PAGE
How? To send him word they’ll meet him in the park at midnight? Fie, fie! he’ll never come!
EVANS
You say he has been thrown in the rivers; and has been grievously peaten as an old ‘oman; methinks there should be terrors in him, that he should not come; methinks his flesh is punished; he shall have no desires.
PAGE
So think I too.
MRS. FORD
Devise but how you’ll use him when he comes,
And let us two devise to bring him thither.
MRS. PAGE
There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter,
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg’d horns;
And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner:
You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know
The superstitious idle-headed eld
Received, and did deliver to our age,
This tale of Herne the hunter for a truth.
PAGE
Why, yet there want not many that do fear
In deep of night to walk by this Herne’s oak.
But what of this?
MRS. FORD
Marry, this is our device;
That Falstaff at that oak shall meet with us,
Disguis’d, like Herne, with huge horns on his head.
PAGE
Well, let it not be doubted but he’ll come,
And in this shape. When you have brought him thither,
What shall be done with him? What is your plot?
MRS. PAGE
That likewise have we thought upon, and thus:
Nan Page my daughter, and my little son,
And three or four more of their