William Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor

ACT IV. SCENE 5. A room in the Garter Inn.

[Enter HOST and SIMPLE.]

HOST.
What wouldst thou have, boor? What, thick-skin?
Speak, breathe, discuss; brief, short, quick, snap.

SIMPLE.
Marry, sir, I come to speak with Sir John Falstaff
from Master Slender.

HOST.
There's his chamber, his house, his castle, his
standing-bed and truckle-bed; 'tis painted about with the
story of the Prodigal, fresh and new. Go knock and call; he'll
speak like an Anthropophaginian unto thee; knock, I say.

SIMPLE.
There's an old woman, a fat woman, gone up into
his chamber; I'll be so bold as stay, sir, till she come down;
I come to speak with her, indeed.

HOST.
Ha! a fat woman? The knight may be robbed. I'll call.
Bully knight! Bully Sir John! Speak from thy lungs
military. Art thou there? It is thine host, thine Ephesian,
calls.

FALSTAFF.
[Above] How now, mine host?

HOST.
Here's a Bohemian-Tartar tarries the coming down of
thy fat woman. Let her descend, bully, let her descend;
my chambers are honourible. Fie! privacy? fie!

[Enter FALSTAFF.]

FALSTAFF.
There was, mine host, an old fat woman even
now with, me; but she's gone.

SIMPLE.
Pray you, sir, was't not the wise woman of Brainford?

FALSTAFF.
Ay, marry was it, mussel-shell: what would you with her?

SIMPLE.
My master, sir, my Master Slender, sent to her,
seeing her go thorough the streets, to know, sir, whether one
Nym, sir, that beguiled him of a chain, had the chain or no.

FALSTAFF.
I spake with the old woman about it.

SIMPLE.
And what says she, I pray, sir?