Act 3, Scene 5

A room in the Garter Inn.

[Enter FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH.]
Sir John Falstaff
1394 Bardolph, I say,—
Bardolph
1395 Here, sir.
Sir John Falstaff
1396 Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in 't.
[Exit BARDOLPH.]
Sir John Falstaff
1397 Have I lived to be carried in a basket, and to be thrown in the
1398 Thames like a barrow of butcher's offal? Well, if I be served such
1399 another trick, I'll have my brains ta'en out and buttered, and give
1400 them to a dog for a new year's gift. The rogues slighted me into
1401 the river with as little remorse as they would have drowned a blind
1402 bitch's puppies, fifteen i' the litter; and you may know by my size
1403 that I have a kind of alacrity in sinking; if the bottom were as
1404 deep as hell I should down. I had been drowned but that the shore
1405 was shelvy and shallow; a death that I abhor, for the water swells
1406 a man; and what a thing should I have been when had been swelled!
1407 I should have been a mountain of mummy.
[Re-enter BARDOLPH, with the sack.]
Bardolph
1408 Here's Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with you.
Sir John Falstaff
1409 Come, let me pour in some sack to the Thames water; for my belly's
1410 as cold as if I had swallowed snowballs for pills to cool the reins.
1411 Call her in.
Bardolph
1412 Come in, woman.
[Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY.]
Mistress Quickly
1413 By your leave. I cry you mercy. Give your worship good morrow.
Sir John Falstaff
1414 Take away these chalices. Go, brew me a pottle of sack finely.
Bardolph
1415 With eggs, sir?
Sir John Falstaff
1416 Simple of itself; I'll no pullet-sperm in my brewage.
[Exit BARDOLPH.]
Sir John Falstaff
1417 How now!
Mistress Quickly
1418 Marry, sir, I come to your worship from Mistress Ford.
Sir John Falstaff
1419 Mistress Ford! I have had ford enough; I was thrown into the ford;
1420 I have my belly full of ford.
Mistress Quickly
1421 Alas the day! good heart, that was not her fault: she does so take
1422 on with her men; they mistook their erection.
Sir John Falstaff
1423 So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman's promise.
Mistress Quickly
1424 Well, she laments, sir, for it, that it would yearn your heart to
1425 see it. Her husband goes this morning a-birding; she desires you
1426 once more to come to her between eight and nine; I must carry her
1427 word quickly. She'll make you amends, I warrant you.
Sir John Falstaff
1428 Well, I will visit her. Tell her so; and bid her think what a man
1429 is; let her consider his frailty, and then judge of my merit.
Mistress Quickly
1430 I will tell her.
Sir John Falstaff
1431 Do so. Between nine and ten, sayest thou?
Mistress Quickly
1432 Eight and nine, sir.
Sir John Falstaff
1433 Well, be gone; I will not miss her.
Mistress Quickly
1434 Peace be with you, sir.
[Exit.]
Sir John Falstaff
1435 I marvel I hear not of Master Brook; he sent me word to stay within.
1436 I like his money well. O! here he comes.
[Enter FORD disguised.]
Ford
1437 Bless you, sir!
Sir John Falstaff
1438 Now, Master Brook, you come to know what hath passed between me
1439 and Ford's wife?
Ford
1440 That, indeed, Sir John, is my business.
Sir John Falstaff
1441 Master Brook, I will not lie to you: I was at her house the hour
1442 she appointed me.
Ford
1443 And how sped you, sir?
Sir John Falstaff
1444 Very ill-favouredly, Master Brook.
Ford
1445 How so, sir? did she change her determination?
Sir John Falstaff
1446 No. Master Brook; but the peaking cornuto her husband, Master Brook,
1447 dwelling in a continual 'larum of jealousy, comes me in the instant
1448 of our encounter, after we had embraced, kissed, protested, and, as
1449 it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a
1450 rabble of his companions, thither provoked and instigated by his
1451 distemper, and, forsooth, to search his house for his wife's love.
Ford
1452 What! while you were there?
Sir John Falstaff
1453 While I was there.
Ford
1454 And did he search for you, and could not find you?
Sir John Falstaff
1455 You shall hear. As good luck would have it, comes in one Mistress
1456 Page; gives intelligence of Ford's approach; and, in her invention
1457 and Ford's wife's distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket.
Ford
1458 A buck-basket!
Sir John Falstaff
1459 By the Lord, a buck-basket! rammed me in with foul shirts and
1460 smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins, that, Master Brook,
1461 there was the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever
1462 offended nostril.
Ford
1463 And how long lay you there?
Sir John Falstaff
1464 Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have suffered to bring
1465 this woman to evil for your good. Being thus crammed in the basket,
1466 a couple of Ford's knaves, his hinds, were called forth by their
1467 mistress to carry me in the name of foul clothes to Datchet-lane;
1468 they took me on their shoulders; met the jealous knave their
1469 master in the door; who asked them once or twice what they had in
1470 their basket. I quaked for fear lest the lunatic knave would have
1471 searched it; but Fate, ordaining he should be a cuckold, held his
1472 hand. Well, on went he for a search, and away went I for foul
1473 clothes. But mark the sequel, Master Brook: I suffered the pangs
1474 of three several deaths: first, an intolerable fright to be
1475 detected with a jealous rotten bell-wether; next, to be compassed
1476 like a good bilbo in the circumference of a peck, hilt to
1477 point, heel to head; and then, to be stopped in, like a strong
1478 distillation, with stinking clothes that fretted in their own
1479 grease: think of that; a man of my kidney, think of that, that am
1480 as subject to heat as butter; a man of continual dissolution and
1481 thaw: it was a miracle to 'scape suffocation. And in the height
1482 of this bath, when I was more than half stewed in grease, like
1483 a Dutch dish, to be thrown into the Thames, and cooled, glowing
1484 hot, in that surge, like a horse-shoe; think of that, hissing hot,
1485 think of that, Master Brook!
Ford
1486 In good sadness, sir, I am sorry that for my sake you have suffered
1487 all this. My suit, then, is desperate; you'll undertake her no more.
Sir John Falstaff
1488 Master Brook, I will be thrown into Etna, as I have been into
1489 Thames, ere I will leave her thus. Her husband is this morning
1490 gone a-birding; I have received from her another embassy of
1491 meeting; 'twixt eight and nine is the hour, Master Brook.
Ford
1492 'Tis past eight already, sir.
Sir John Falstaff
1493 Is it? I will then address me to my appointment. Come to me at
1494 your convenient leisure, and you shall know how I speed, and the
1495 conclusion shall be crowned with your enjoying her: adieu. You
1496 shall have her, Master Brook; Master Brook, you shall cuckold Ford.
[Exit.]
Ford
1497 Hum! ha! Is this a vision? Is this a dream? Do I sleep? Master Ford,
1498 awake; awake, Master Ford. There's a hole made in your best coat,
1499 Master Ford. This 'tis to be married; this 'tis to have linen and
1500 buck-baskets! Well, I will proclaim myself what I am; I will now
1501 take the lecher; he is at my house. He cannot scape me; 'tis
1502 impossible he should; he cannot creep into a half-penny purse, nor
1503 into a pepper box; but, lest the devil that guides him should aid
1504 him, I will search impossible places. Though what I am I cannot
1505 avoid, yet to be what I would not, shall not make me tame; if I
1506 have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go with me; I'll be
1507 horn-mad.
[Exit.]

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Notes

TLN 1396archaic vocab
“quart of sack; put a toast in 't”
'Sack' was a sweet, strong fortified wine imported from Spain or the Canary Islands, Falstaff's habitual drink throughout the Henry IV plays. Putting a 'toast' in it literally means dropping a piece of toasted bread into the wine — a common Elizabethan custom that warmed and flavoured the drink, and gave English the word 'toast' (as in raising a toast).
TLN 1407archaic vocab
“a mountain of mummy”
'Mummy' here does not mean an Egyptian wrapped corpse in the modern sense but a pulpy, decomposed mass — specifically the soft, saturated flesh of a drowned and bloated body. Falstaff imagines that if he had been swelled by Thames water he would have become a vast, sodden heap of rotting flesh.
TLN 1410archaic vocab
“pills to cool the reins”
'Reins' is an archaic word for the kidneys — not the straps on a horse. In Elizabethan humoral medicine the kidneys were thought to be the seat of bodily heat and passion; cooling them with medicine (or snow) was a standard remedy for fever or excessive desire. Falstaff is saying the Thames water chilled him to his core, as if he had taken snowballs as medicine for a kidney ailment.
TLN 1414archaic vocab
“brew me a pottle of sack finely”
A 'pottle' is half a gallon (two quarts) — so Falstaff is ordering a large hot drink. 'Brew' in this context means to warm and mix the wine, usually with spices. He has already demanded a quart on the cold; now he wants twice as much, mulled. When Bardolph asks about eggs, Falstaff refuses: 'Simple of itself' means plain, unmixed; 'no pullet-sperm in my brewage' is a crude rejection of eggs (newly laid eggs were called 'pullet-sperm') as an additive.
TLN 1422archaic vocab
“they mistook their erection”
Mistress Quickly means 'direction' — she uses 'erection' as a malapropism for the word she wants. A malapropism is the comical substitution of a wrong word for a similar-sounding right one. Here Quickly intends to say the servants misdirected themselves (took the basket to the wrong place at the wrong time). Falstaff immediately turns her blunder into a sexual quip: he also 'mistook his erection' by trusting a foolish woman.
TLN 1446archaic vocab
“the peaking cornuto her husband”
'Peaking' means sneaking or skulking — moving about furtively. 'Cornuto' is Italian for 'horned one', a term for a cuckold (a man whose wife is unfaithful), derived from the traditional image of invisible horns growing from a deceived husband's head. Falstaff is calling Ford a sneaking, jealous cuckold — not knowing he is speaking to Ford himself in disguise.
historical The cuckold's horns
TLN 1457archaic vocab
“conveyed me into a buck-basket”
A buck-basket was a large wicker basket used to carry dirty linen to be 'bucked' — soaked in a lye solution made from wood-ash and water as part of the Elizabethan laundry process. The word has no connection to male deer; 'buck' here comes from the Old English/German word for the lye wash itself. The basket was typically full of soiled shirts, smocks, and stockings, which is exactly what Falstaff was rammed in with.
TLN 1476archaic vocab
“like a good bilbo in the circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head”
A 'bilbo' is a long, extremely flexible sword made in Bilbao, Spain, celebrated for its ability to bend into a circle without breaking. A 'peck' is a dry measure equal to two gallons — a roughly circular container. Falstaff is picturing himself curled inside the laundry basket like one of those bent swords, folded head to heel into the tightest possible space. The comparison is precise and comic: even a renowned flexible blade would barely fit.
TLN 1479archaic vocab
“a man of my kidney, think of that, that am as subject to heat as butter”
'Kidney' here means temperament or constitution — 'a man of my kidney' means a man of my kind or character. The word comes from Elizabethan humoral medicine, where the kidneys were thought to generate bodily heat and determine a person's nature. Falstaff uses it to stress that he, being a particularly hot-tempered (and fat, and sweating) person, was in special danger of melting in the hot laundry basket.
TLN 1488classical allusion
“I will be thrown into Etna, as I have been into Thames”
Etna (now Etna) is the large active volcano on the island of Sicily. The classical tradition, following Virgil and others, placed Vulcan's forge inside it and associated it with fire, brimstone, and spectacular eruption. Falstaff uses it as the most extreme image of a fiery death imaginable — he would accept being thrown into a live volcano before he gives up his pursuit of Mistress Ford.
TLN 1498archaic vocab
“There's a hole made in your best coat”
'A hole in your coat' was a proverbial phrase meaning your reputation has been damaged or a fault found in you — the coat is an emblem of good standing, and a hole is a public disgrace. Ford, now knowing Falstaff is at his house right now, mutters this to himself: his own honour has been compromised, and his jealous schemes have made things worse. He is alone on stage and talking himself into action.
TLN 1505wordplay
“if I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go with me; I'll be horn-mad”
Ford is playing on two senses of 'horn-mad'. The primary meaning is the rage of a cuckold ('horns' was the standard Elizabethan emblem of a man whose wife was unfaithful — invisible horns were said to grow on his head). The secondary meaning is simply as mad as a horned bull or a cornered stag — dangerously, charging mad. Ford accepts both: if he is to be a cuckold, at least let him be raging with it.
historical The cuckold's horns