Page (Mr.), a gentleman living at Windsor. When Sir John Falstaff made love to Mrs. Page, Page himself assumed the name of Brooke, to outwit the knight. Sir John told the supposed Brooke his whole “course of wooing,” and how nicely he was bamboozling the husband. On one occasion, he says, “I was carried out in a buck-basket of dirty linen before the very eyes of Page, and the deluded husband did not know it.” Of course, Sir John is thoroughly outwitted and played upon, being made the butt of the whole village.
Mrs. Page, wife of Mr. Page of Windsor. When Sir John Falstaff made love to her, she joined with Mrs. Ford to dupe him and punish him.
Anne Page, daughter of the above, in love with Fenton. Slender calls her “the sweet Anne Page.”
William Page, Anne’s brother, a schoolboy.—Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor (1595).
Page (Sir Francis), called “The Hanging Judge” (1661-1741).
Slander and poison dread from Delia’s rage;
Hard words or hanging if your judge be Page.
Pope.
Page (Ruth). A dainty little miss, bright, happy and imaginative, called sometimes “Teenty-Taunty.” Her head is full of fairy-lore, and when she tumbles into the water one day, she dreams in her swoon of Fairy-Land and the wonders thereof, of a bunch of forget-me-nots she was to keep alive if she would have her mother live, and so many other marvellous things, that her distressed father opines that “the poor child would be rational enough, if she had not read so many fairy-books.”—John Neal, Goody Gracious and the Forget-me-not (183-).
Paget (The Lady), one of the ladies of the bedchamber in Queen Elizabeth’s court.—Sir W. Scott, Kenilworth (time, Elizabeth).
Paine (Squire). “Hard-headed, hard fe’tured Yankee,” whose conversion to humanity and Christianity is effected by Roxanna Keep.
She “drilled the hole, an’ put in the powder of the Word, an’ tamped it down with some pretty stiff facts ... but the Lord fired the blast Himself.”—Rose Terry Cooke, Somebody’s Neighbors (1881).