Act 1, Scene 3

A room in the Garter Inn.

[Enter FALSTAFF, HOST, BARDOLPH, NYM, PISTOL, and ROBIN.]
Sir John Falstaff
246 Mine host of the Garter!
Host of the Garter
247 What says my bully rook? Speak scholarly and wisely.
Sir John Falstaff
248 Truly, mine host, I must turn away some of my followers.
Host of the Garter
249 Discard, bully Hercules; cashier; let them wag; trot, trot.
Sir John Falstaff
250 I sit at ten pounds a week.
Host of the Garter
251 Thou'rt an emperor, Caesar, Keiser, and Pheazar. I will entertain
252 Bardolph; he shall draw, he shall tap; said I well, bully Hector?
Sir John Falstaff
253 Do so, good mine host.
Host of the Garter
254 I have spoke; let him follow.
[To BARDOLPH]
Host of the Garter
255 Let me see thee froth and
256 lime. I am at a word; follow.
[Exit.]
Sir John Falstaff
257 Bardolph, follow him. A tapster is a good trade; an old cloak makes
258 a new jerkin; a withered serving-man a fresh tapster. Go; adieu.
Bardolph
259 It is a life that I have desired; I will thrive.
Pistol
260 O base Hungarian wight! Wilt thou the spigot wield?
[Exit BARDOLPH.]
Nym
261 He was gotten in drink. Is not the humour conceited?
Sir John Falstaff
262 I am glad I am so acquit of this tinder-box: his thefts were too open;
263 his filching was like an unskilful singer—he kept not time.
Nym
264 The good humour is to steal at a minim's rest.
Pistol
265 'Convey' the wise it call. 'Steal!' foh! A fico for the phrase!
Sir John Falstaff
266 Well, sirs, I am almost out at heels.
Pistol
267 Why, then, let kibes ensue.
Sir John Falstaff
268 There is no remedy; I must cony-catch; I must shift.
Pistol
269 Young ravens must have food.
Sir John Falstaff
270 Which of you know Ford of this town?
Pistol
271 I ken the wight; he is of substance good.
Sir John Falstaff
272 My honest lads, I will tell you what I am about.
Pistol
273 Two yards, and more.
Sir John Falstaff
274 No quips now, Pistol. Indeed, I am in the waist two yards about; but
275 I am now about no waste; I am about thrift. Briefly, I do mean to
276 make love to Ford's wife; I spy entertainment in her; she discourses,
277 she carves, she gives the leer of invitation; I can construe the
278 action of her familiar style; and the hardest voice of her behaviour,
279 to be Englished rightly, is 'I am Sir John Falstaff's.'
Pistol
280 He hath studied her will, and translated her will out of honesty into
281 English.
Nym
282 The anchor is deep; will that humour pass?
Sir John Falstaff
283 Now, the report goes she has all the rule of her husband's purse; he
284 hath a legion of angels.
Pistol
285 As many devils entertain; and 'To her, boy,' say I.
Nym
286 The humour rises; it is good; humour me the angels.
Sir John Falstaff
287 I have writ me here a letter to her; and here another to Page's wife,
288 who even now gave me good eyes too, examined my parts with most
289 judicious oeillades; sometimes the beam of her view gilded my foot,
290 sometimes my portly belly.
Pistol
291 Then did the sun on dunghill shine.
Nym
292 I thank thee for that humour.
Sir John Falstaff
293 O! she did so course o'er my exteriors with such a greedy intention
294 that the appetite of her eye did seem to scorch me up like a
295 burning-glass. Here's another letter to her: she bears the purse
296 too; she is a region in Guiana, all gold and bounty. I will be
297 cheator to them both, and they shall be exchequers to me; they shall
298 be my East and West Indies, and I will trade to them both. Go, bear
299 thou this letter to Mistress Page; and thou this to Mistress Ford.
300 We will thrive, lads, we will thrive.
Pistol
301 Shall I Sir Pandarus of Troy become,
302 And by my side wear steel? then Lucifer take all!
Nym
303 I will run no base humour. Here, take the humour-letter; I will keep
304 the haviour of reputation.
[To ROBIN]
Sir John Falstaff
305 Hold, sirrah; bear you these letters tightly;
306 Sail like my pinnace to these golden shores.
307 Rogues, hence, avaunt! vanish like hailstones, go;
308 Trudge, plod away o' hoof; seek shelter, pack!
309 Falstaff will learn the humour of this age;
310 French thrift, you rogues; myself, and skirted page.
[Exeunt FALSTAFF and ROBIN.]
Pistol
311 Let vultures gripe thy guts! for gourd and fullam holds,
312 And high and low beguile the rich and poor;
313 Tester I'll have in pouch when thou shalt lack,
314 Base Phrygian Turk!
Nym
315 I have operations in my head which be humours of revenge.
Pistol
316 Wilt thou revenge?
Nym
317 By welkin and her star!
Pistol
318 With wit or steel?
Nym
319 With both the humours, I:
320 I will discuss the humour of this love to Page.
Pistol
321 And I to Ford shall eke unfold
322 How Falstaff, varlet vile,
323 His dove will prove, his gold will hold,
324 And his soft couch defile.
Nym
325 My humour shall not cool: I will incense Page to deal with poison;
326 I will possess him with yellowness, for the revolt of mine is
327 dangerous: that is my true humour.
Pistol
328 Thou art the Mars of malcontents; I second thee; troop on.
[Exeunt.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 247archaic vocab
“bully rook? Speak scholarly and wisely”
The Host calls everyone 'bully' as a term of hearty affection (roughly 'fine fellow'), with no connection to modern bullying. A 'rook' is a cheat or swindler, but here used almost admiringly, as a term of swaggering comradeship. 'Speak scholarly and wisely' is mock-pompous encouragement, the Host performing a kind of comic ceremony around ordinary conversation.
TLN 249archaic vocab
“Discard, bully Hercules; cashier; let them wag”
'Cashier' means to dismiss a soldier from service, not to operate a cash register. The Host fires off three synonyms for sacking followers — 'discard,' 'cashier,' 'let them wag' (let them go) — in his usual style of rapid comic extravagance. Calling Falstaff 'bully Hercules' pairs the world's strongest mythological hero with a fat, broke knight who is struggling to pay his inn bill.
TLN 251wordplay
“emperor, Caesar, Keiser, and Pheazar”
The Host strings together four words for 'ruler' as comic flattery for Falstaff, who is spending ten pounds a week at his inn. 'Caesar' is the Roman title; 'Keiser' is the German form (Kaiser, as in the Holy Roman Emperor); 'Pheazar' appears to be the Host's garbled version of 'vizier' (an Islamic minister of state) or simply a nonsense rhyme-word. The joke is the absurd escalation: innkeeper hails broke knight as the greatest rulers in the world.
TLN 255historical topical
“froth and lime”
The Host instructs Bardolph in the two classic tricks of a dishonest tapster (under-bartender): 'froth' means to fill the cup with foam so it looks full when it is not, and 'lime' means to adulterate ale or wine with lime (calcium powder) to make cheap liquor appear stronger. Both were notorious frauds in Elizabethan taverns and subject to trade regulations.
TLN 265wordplay
“'Convey' the wise it call. 'Steal!' foh! A fico for the phrase”
Pistol objects to the blunt word 'steal': the genteel euphemism is to 'convey' (carry away, transfer). 'A fico for the phrase' means 'damn the word' — a 'fico' (Italian for 'fig') was an obscene hand gesture made by thrusting the thumb between two fingers, used to express contempt. The joke is about the Elizabethan habit of using polite language to disguise theft.
TLN 284wordplay
“hath a legion of angels”
An 'angel' was a gold coin worth about ten shillings, one of the most common gold denominations in Elizabethan England (named for the image of St. Michael the Archangel on its face). A 'legion' invokes a Roman military unit of thousands, so Falstaff is saying Ford has thousands of gold coins. The double meaning — heavenly beings and hard cash — is the whole point: Falstaff has found a man rich enough to be worth seducing his wife.
TLN 288archaic vocab
“examined my parts with most judicious oeillades”
'Oeillades' (pronounced approximately 'uh-yahds') is a French word for amorous glances or ogling looks — from French oeil, 'eye.' Falstaff claims Mistress Page's glances at him were not random but deliberate and expert ('judicious'). The word is a fashionable French affectation in a play set in a very English provincial town, suggesting Falstaff's delusions of continental sophistication.
TLN 296historical topical
“she is a region in Guiana, all gold and bounty”
Guiana (in northern South America) was the location of 'El Dorado,' a legendary city of gold that English explorers were obsessively seeking in the 1590s. Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition of 1595, and his book The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana (1596), had made Guiana a byword for fabulous wealth just waiting to be exploited. Falstaff compares Mistress Ford and Mistress Page to this golden territory — to be 'traded to' for profit, not for love.
TLN 301historical topical
“Shall I Sir Pandarus of Troy become”
Pandarus was the uncle of Cressida in the medieval Troy legend (Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde) who arranged the lovers' secret meetings — and whose name entered English as 'pander,' meaning a go-between for illicit sex. Pistol is refusing to carry Falstaff's love-letters on the grounds that doing so would make him a pimp. The phrase 'wear steel' (carry a sword) signals that a soldier degrades himself by acting as a procurer.
historical Pandarus and the word 'pander'
TLN 311historical topical
“gourd and fullam holds, And high and low beguile the rich and poor”
'Gourd' and 'fullam' are names for types of loaded dice used to cheat at gambling. 'High' and 'low' are two grades of the same fraud: 'high men' were dice loaded to throw high numbers, 'low men' to throw low. Pistol is saying that dishonesty and loaded dice profit the swindler while Falstaff takes the money and runs — and while Pistol himself will have a tester (a sixpenny coin) when Falstaff is broke again.
TLN 326archaic vocab
“possess him with yellowness, for the revolt of mine is dangerous”
'Yellowness' is Nym's term for jealousy — yellow was the color conventionally associated with jealousy and envy in Elizabethan writing (compare 'the green-eyed monster' for jealousy in Othello). Nym plans to 'possess' (fill, infect) Master Page with jealous suspicion of his wife. 'The revolt of mine is dangerous' means 'my turning against Falstaff is a dangerous thing' — a typically tangled piece of Nym's 'humour'-speak.