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Indeed, I am in the waist two yards about, but I am now about no waste; I am about thrift. Briefly, I do mean to make love to Ford’s wife. I spy entertainment in her. She discourses; she carves; she gives the leer of invitation. I can construe the action of her familiar style; and the hardest voice of her behavior, to be Englished rightly, is “I am Sir John Falstaff’s.” (1.3.39–46)
Falstaff speaks these words to Pistol and Nym, whom he is trying to convince to deliver letters of seduction to both Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. The quote demonstrates the knight’s punning wit as well as his comically limited self-awareness. He begins by making a joke about the size of his “waist,” then makes a turn to indicate that from now on he’s going to avoid all “waste.” Amusingly, though his need for “thrift” relates to his lack of cash, Falstaff’s plan seems invested not in getting financial returns but rather sexual rewards.
Have I lived to be carried in a basket like a barrow of butcher’s offal, and to be thrown in the Thames? Well, if I be served such another trick, I’ll have my brains ta’en out and buttered, and give them to a dog for a New Year’s gift. ’Sblood, the rogues slighted me into the river with as little remorse as they would have drowned a blind bitch’s puppies, fifteen i’ th’ litter! And you may know by my size that I have a kind of alacrity in sinking; if the bottom were as deep as hell, I should down. (3.5.4–12)
Upon returning to the Garter Inn after having been dumped into the Thames with Mistress Ford’s washing, Falstaff gives this account of his misadventure. Curiously, he narrates the story with no audience present. Perhaps he’s addressing the soliloquy to the audience, or perhaps he is simply amusing himself by transforming the harrowing experience into a quasi-boastful tale. Either way, he showcases his delightful capacity to turn his humiliation into exaggerated and hugely amusing stories.
I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that’s in me should set hell on fire. He would never else cross me thus. (5.5.37–39)
Falstaff utters these words to himself just as the fairies and goblins come out from their hiding place and Mistresses Ford and Page abandon him to the supernatural host. These words indicate that Falstaff is truly afraid in this moment, demonstrating a cowardice that is humorously unfit for a knight. The moment is also comical considering the swagger he’s just affected with the Mistresses, claiming boldly that his sexual appetite is big enough to accommodate them both. He has thus quickly transformed from a strutting buck into a cowering fool. Yet in his trademark way, Falstaff laces his fear with wit, trying to convince himself that the fairy presence mustn’t be the work of the devil. After all, if he were to be damned, then all the flammable “oil” in his fat paunch “should set hell on fire.”
