Читать книгу The Merry Wives of Windsor - William Shakespeare - Страница 9

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[Enter MISTRESS PAGE, with a letter.]

MRS. PAGE

What! have I scaped love-letters in the holiday-time of my beauty, and am I now a subject for them? Let me see.

"Ask me no reason why I love you; for though Love use Reason for his precisian, he admits him not for his counsellor. You are not young, no more am I; go to, then, there's sympathy: you are merry, so am I; ha! ha! then there's more sympathy; you love sack, and so do I; would you desire better sympathy? Let it suffice thee, Mistress Page, at the least, if the love of soldier can suffice, that I love thee. I will not say, pity me: 'tis not a soldier-like phrase; but I say, Love me. By me,

Thine own true knight,

By day or night,

Or any kind of light,

With all his might,

For thee to fight,

JOHN FALSTAFF."

What a Herod of Jewry is this! O wicked, wicked world! One that is well-nigh worn to pieces with age to show himself a young gallant. What an unweighed behaviour hath this Flemish drunkard picked, with the devil's name! out of my conversation, that he dares in this manner assay me? Why, he hath not been thrice in my company! What should I say to him? I was then frugal of my mirth:—Heaven forgive me! Why, I'll exhibit a bill in the parliament for the putting down of men. How shall I be revenged on him? for revenged I will be, as sure as his guts are made of puddings.

[Enter MISTRESS FORD.]

MRS. FORD

Mistress Page! trust me, I was going to your house.

MRS. PAGE

And, trust me, I was coming to you. You look very ill.

MRS. FORD

Nay, I'll ne'er believe that; I have to show to the contrary.

MRS. PAGE

Faith, but you do, in my mind.

MRS. FORD

Well, I do, then; yet, I say, I could 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 hack; and so thou shouldst not alter the article of thy gentry.

MRS. FORD

We burn daylight: here, read, read; perceive how I might be knighted. I 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 "Greensleeves." 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?