Fal. No, Master Brook; but the peaking Cornuto her husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual ’larum of 65 jealousy, comes [me] in the instant of our encounter, after we had embraced, kissed, protested, and, as it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of his companions, thither provoked and instigated by his distemper, and, forsooth, to search his house for his wife’s 70 love.
Ford. What, while you were there?
Fal. While I was there.
Ford. And did he search for you, and could not find you?
III. 5.
75 Fal. You shall hear. As good luck would have it, comes in one Mistress Page; gives intelligence of Ford’s approach; and, [in] her invention and Ford’s wife’s [distraction], they conveyed me into a buck-basket.
Ford. A buck-basket!
80 Fal. [By the Lord], a buck-basket!—rammed me in with foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins; that, Master Brook, there was the rankest compound of villanous [smell] that ever offended nostril.
Ford. And how long lay you there?
85 Fal. Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have suffered to bring this woman to evil for your good. Being thus crammed in the basket, a couple of Ford’s knaves, his hinds, were called forth by their mistress to carry me in the name of foul clothes to Datchet-lane: they took me on their 90 shoulders; met the jealous knave their master in the door, who asked them once or twice what they had in their basket: I quaked for fear, lest the lunatic knave would have searched it; but fate, ordaining he should be a cuckold, held his hand. Well: on went he for a search, and 95 away went I for foul clothes. But mark the sequel, Master Brook: I suffered the pangs of three [several] deaths; first, an intolerable fright, to be detected with a jealous rotten bell-wether; next, to be compassed, like a good bilbo, in the circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head; III. 5.
100 and then, to be stopped in, like a strong distillation, with stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease: think of that,—a man of my kidney,—think of that,—that am as subject to heat as butter; a man of continual dissolution and thaw: it was a miracle to scape suffocation. And in 105 the height of this bath, when I was more than half stewed [in] grease, like a Dutch dish, to be thrown into the Thames, and cooled, glowing hot, in that [surge], like a horse-shoe; think of that,—hissing hot,—think of that, Master Brook.
Ford. In good sadness, sir, I am sorry that for my sake 110 you [have suffered] all this. My suit, then, is desperate; you’ll undertake her no more?