[Enter Falstaff.]
Fal. ‘Have I caught’ thee, ‘my heavenly jewel?’ Why, now let me die, for I have lived long enough: this is the period of [my] ambition: O this blessed hour!
Mrs Ford. O sweet Sir John!
40 Fal. Mistress Ford, I cannot cog, I cannot prate, [Mistress] Ford. Now shall I sin in my wish: I would thy husband were dead: I’ll speak it before the best lord; I would make thee my lady.
Mrs Ford. I your lady, Sir John! alas, I should be a 45 pitiful lady!
Fal. Let the court of France show me such another. I see how thine eye would emulate the diamond: thou hast the right arched beauty of the brow that becomes the ship-tire, the [tire-valiant], or any [tire of Venetian admittance].
III. 3.
50 Mrs Ford. A plain kerchief, Sir John: my brows become nothing else; nor that well neither.
Fal. [By the Lord, thou art a traitor] to say so: thou wouldst make an absolute courtier; and the firm [fixture] of thy foot would give an excellent motion to thy gait in a semi-circled 55 farthingale. I see what thou wert, if Fortune thy [foe were not, Nature] thy friend. Come, thou canst not hide it.
Mrs Ford. Believe me, there’s no such thing in me.
Fal. What made me love thee? let that [persuade thee there’s] something extraordinary in thee. Come, I cannot 60 cog, and say thou art this and that, like a many of these lisping hawthorn-buds, that come like women in men’s apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in [simple] time; I cannot: but I love thee; none but thee; and thou deservest it.