Mrs Page. What’s the matter, woman?
Mrs Ford. O woman, if it were not for one trifling respect, 40 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.
45 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 II. 1.
50 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 55 more adhere and keep [place] together than the [Hundredth] [Psalm] to the [tune] of ‘Green Sleeves.’ 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 60 hope, till the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease. Did you ever hear the like?
Mrs Page. Letter for letter, but that the name of Page and Ford differs! To thy great comfort in this mystery of ill opinions, here’s the twin-brother of thy letter: 65 but let thine inherit first; for, I protest, mine never shall. I warrant he hath a thousand of these letters, writ with blank space for different names,—[sure], more,—and these are of the second edition: he will print them, out of doubt; for he cares not what he puts into the press, when he would 70 put us two. I had rather be a giantess, and lie under Mount Pelion. Well, I will find you twenty lascivious turtles ere one chaste man.
Mrs Ford. Why, this is the very same; the very hand, the very words. What doth he think of us?
II. 1.
75 Mrs Page. Nay, I know not: it makes me almost ready to wrangle with mine own honesty. I’ll entertain myself like one that I am not acquainted withal; for, sure, unless he [know] some [strain] in me, that I know not myself, he would never have boarded me in this fury.
80 Mrs Ford. ‘Boarding,’ call you it? I’ll be sure to keep him above deck.