Page 1019 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

Doth this become your place, your time and business?
You should have been well on your way to York. [65]
Stand from him, fellow. Wherefore hang’st upon him?

HOSTESS
O my most worshipful lord, an’t please your grace, I am a poor widow of
Eastcheap, and he is arrested at my suit.

CHIEF JUSTICE
For what sum? [70]

HOSTESS
It is more than for some, my lord; it is for all, all I have. He hath eaten me
out of house and home; he hath put all my substance into that fat belly of
his. But I will have some of it out again, or I will ride thee o’ nights like the

mare. [75]

FALSTAFF

I think I am as like to ride the mare, if I have any vantage of ground to get
up.

CHIEF JUSTICE
How comes, this, Sir John? Fie! what man of good temper would endure this
tempest of exclamation? Are you not ashamed to enforce a poor widow to
[80] so rough a course to come by her own?

FALSTAFF
What is the gross sum that I owe thee?

HOSTESS
Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. Thou didst
swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin chamber, at the
round table, [85] by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Wheeson week,

when the prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of
Windsor, thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry
me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife [90]
Keech, the butcher’s wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? Coming