that which we will do,
Wives may be merry, and yet honest too:
We do not act that often jest and laugh;
'Tis old, but true, Still swine eat all the draff.
Go, sirs, take the basket again on your shoulders:
your master is hard at door; if he bid you set it
down, obey him: quickly, dispatch.
Come, come, take it up.
Pray heaven it be not full of knight again.
I hope not; I had as lief bear so much lead.
Ay, but if it prove true, Master Page, have you any
way then to unfool me again? Set down the basket,
villain! Somebody call my wife. Youth in a basket!
O you panderly rascals! there's a knot, a ging, a
pack, a conspiracy against me: now shall the devil
be shamed. What, wife, I say! Come, come forth!
Behold what honest clothes you send forth to bleaching!
Why, this passes, Master Ford; you are not to go
loose any longer; you must be pinioned.
Why, this is lunatics! this is mad as a mad dog!
Indeed, Master Ford, this is not well, indeed.
So say I too, sir.
Come hither, Mistress Ford; Mistress Ford the honest
woman, the modest wife, the virtuous creature, that
hath the jealous fool to her husband! I suspect
without cause, mistress, do I?
Heaven be my witness you do, if you suspect me in
any dishonesty.
Well said, brazen-face! hold it out. Come forth, sirrah!
This passes!
Are you not ashamed? let the clothes alone.
I shall find you anon.
'Tis unreasonable! Will you take up your wife's
clothes? Come away.
Empty the basket, I say!
Why, man, why?
Master Page, as I am a man, there was one conveyed
out of my house yesterday in this basket: why may
not he be there again? In my house I am sure he is:
my intelligence is true; my jealousy is reasonable.
Pluck me out all the linen.
If you find a man there, he shall die a flea's death.
Here's no man.
By my fidelity, this is not well, Master Ford; this
wrongs you.
Master Ford, you must pray, and not follow the
imaginations of your own heart: this is jealousies.
Well, he's not here I seek for.
No, nor nowhere else but in your brain.
Help to search my house this one time. If I find
not what I seek, show no colour for my extremity; let
me for ever be your table-sport; let them say of