payment page
HOST A word, Monsieur Mockwater.
CAIUS “Mockvater”? Vat is dat?
HOST “Mockwater,” in our English tongue, is “valor,” bully. (2.3.57–61)
Caius, the French doctor, wishes to have a duel with Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh parson, because the latter attempted to help someone else marry the woman Caius loves. Others intervene to prevent this duel from happening. But though they don’t want to see any blood spilled, they are excited by the prospect of listening to these two foreigners argue in their thickly accented speech. Both Evans and Caius are consistently mocked for the way they talk. Caius, especially, is mocked for his lack of understanding. Thus it is that in this exchange the Host openly insults the doctor and pretends that he’s praising the man.
SIR HUGH What is your genitive case plural, William?
WILLIAM Genitive case?
SIR HUGH Ay.
WILLIAM Genitive: horum, harum, horum.
MISTRESS QUICKLY Vengeance of Ginny’s case! Fie on her! Never name her, child, if she be a whore.
SIR HUGH For shame, ‘oman!
MISTRESS QUICKLY You do ill to teach the child such words.—He teaches him to hick and to hack, which they’ll do fast enough for themselves, and to call “whorum.”—Fie upon you! (4.1.57–67)
In the opening scene of act 4, Sir Hugh Evans quizzes the young William Page on his Latin lessons. As the two work through various declensions, the uneducated Mistress Quickly listens in. She consistently mishears the words as versions of English, and here she expresses her shock at what she thinks she’s hearing. She misunderstands the grammatical term “genitive case” as a reference to a woman named Ginny’s vagina. She also mishears the Latin horum (masculine and neuter forms for “of these”) as “whorum.” Amusingly, Evans must calm the agitated Mistress Quickly, who condemns him for teaching a young man such apparently foul language.
SIR HUGH Seese is not good to give to putter. Your belly is all putter.
FALSTAFF “Seese” and “putter”? Have I lived to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of English? This is enough to be the decay of lust and late walking through the realm. (5.5.148–53)
Like Doctor Caius, Sir Hugh Evans suffers throughout the play from near-constant mockery of his Welsh accent. In this exchange, Evans demonstrates two common mistakes in his pronunciation of English: he substitutes s for ch, saying “seese” instead of “cheese,” and he also substitutes p for b, saying “putter” instead of “butter.” Falstaff, who is freshly chastened and perhaps eager to displace some of his humiliation onto someone else, mocks Evans for his confusion. Two of Falstaff’s greatest loves are food and language, both of which have been disgraced by Evans, whom he says “makes fritters of English.” The harm Evans has done to the words cheese and butter is apparently cause for despair.
