FORD. Will you follow, gentlemen? I beseech you, follow; see but the issue of my jealousy: if I cry out thus upon no trail, never trust me when I open again. PAGE. Let's obey his humour a little further: Come, gentlemen. [Exeunt PAGE, FORD, SHALLOW, and Evans. MRS. PAGE. Trust me, he beat him most pitifully. MRS. FORD. Nay, by the mass, that he did not; he beat him most unpitifully, methought. MRS. PAGE. I'll have the cudgel hallowed, and hang o'er the altar; it hath done meritorious service. MRS. FORD. What think you? May we, with the warrant of womanhood, and the witness of a good conscience, pursue him with any further revenge? Hoefnagle's curious plate of Nonsuch, in Braunii Civitates Orbis Terrarum; Part V. Plate I. See likewise the bottom of the view of Shrewsbury, &c. ibid. Part VI. Plate II. where the female peasant seems to wear the same article of dress. See also a country-woman at the corner of Speed's map of England. STEEVENS. As the second stratagem, by which Falstaff escapes, is much the grosser of the two, I wish it had been practised first. It is very unlikely that Ford, having been so deceived before, and knowing that he had been deceived, would suffer him to escape in so slight a disguise. JOHNSON. 6 -cry out thus upon no trail,] The expression is taken from the hunters. Trail is the scent left by the passage of the game. To cry out, is to open or bark. JOHNSON. So, in Hamlet: "How cheerfully on the false trail they cry: STEEVENS. FORD. Will you follow, gentlemen? I beseech you, follow; see but the issue of my jealousy: if I cry out thus upon no trail, never trust me when I open again. PAGE. Let's obey his humour a little further: Come, gentlemen. [Exeunt PAGE, FORD, SHALLOW, and EVANS. MRS. PAGE. Trust me, he beat him most pitifully. MRS. FORD. Nay, by the mass, that he did not; he beat him most unpitifully, methought. MRS. PAGE. I'll have the cudgel hallowed, and hang o'er the altar; it hath done meritorious service. MRS. FORD. What think you? May we, with the warrant of womanhood, and the witness of a good conscience, pursue him with any further revenge? Hoefnagle's curious plate of Nonsuch, in Braunii Civitates Orbis Terrarum; Part V. Plate I. See likewise the bottom of the view of Shrewsbury, &c. ibid. Part VI. Plate II. where the female peasant seems to wear the same article of dress. See also a country-woman at the corner of Speed's map of England. STEEVENS. As the second stratagem, by which Falstaff escapes, is much the grosser of the two, I wish it had been practised first. It is very unlikely that Ford, having been so deceived before, and knowing that he had been deceived, would suffer him to escape in so slight a disguise. JOHNSON. 6 cry out thus upon no trail,] The expression is taken from the hunters. Trail is the scent left by the passage of the game. To cry out, is to open or bark. JOHNSON. So, in Hamlet: "How cheerfully on the false trail they cry: STEEVENS. |