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Summary
In the Garter Inn, Falstaff tells Pistol that he won’t lend him any money. Falstaff says he’s already done enough for Pistol by bailing him out of trouble, and still Pistol wouldn’t deliver Falstaff’s letters. He tells Pistol that he gets cash by lying and cheating, while Pistol is poor because he insists on maintaining some honor.
Mistress Quickly arrives to speak to Falstaff. She draws him aside and tells him that Mistress Ford has had many noble suitors over the years, yet she chooses Falstaff. She reports that Ford will be out of the house between ten and eleven the next day. Quickly mentions how jealous Ford is and repeats the hour when Falstaff may visit. Then she adds that Mistress Page sends word that her husband is often at home, but that she hopes a time may come when Falstaff may visit her, too. Mistress Page also asks Falstaff to send his page, Robin, to her. He gives Mistress Quickly some money and sends Robin away with her.
Bardolph enters with news that a man named Brook wants to speak to Falstaff. Ford enters, disguised as Brook, and asks Falstaff for his help. He offers money to Falstaff in return for help in wooing Mistress Ford for himself. He says that he has loved her for a long time, but that he has been unable to get her to pay any attention to him. She has always behaved honestly, but he wonders if there are vulnerabilities in her virtuous temperament. He compliments Falstaff and his power over women and asks him if he will seduce Mistress Ford. Falstaff asks Brook if he really wants him to seduce her, but Brook explains that if she falls first to Falstaff, then she can no longer use her honesty as an excuse to scorn him, and she will have to succumb to his amorous advances.
Falstaff accepts Brook’s money and tells him that he already has a plan to visit her between ten and eleven the next morning. Brook asks him if he knows what Ford looks like, but Falstaff says he doesn’t. He urges Brook to come to him the next day to hear about his visit with Mistress Ford, and he departs. Alone, Ford speaks angrily of his wife, who has already made a date with Falstaff. He can barely wait for the next morning, when he will catch his wife in the act, be avenged on Falstaff, and prove to Page that his jealousy was valid all along.
Meanwhile, Caius waits in a field for Evans to arrive. The Host of the Garter enters, accompanied by Shallow, Page, and Slender. They have come to see the duel, so they are disappointed to discover that Evans is nowhere to be seen. Shallow says that Evans is smart not to have come. As a clergyman, he heals souls, and Caius heals bodies, so it would go against both men’s professions to fight.
The Host takes Shallow, Page, and Slender aside and instructs them to go to the nearby town of Frogmore, where Evans is staying. Meanwhile, he says he’ll lure the doctor there. The three men exit, and the Host turns his attention back to Caius. He promises that he will bring Caius back to Windsor by a route that will pass a farmhouse where Anne is dining, and he can woo her there. Caius, delighted, goes with the Host.
Analysis
The intrigues compound quickly in these scenes, as plots and counterplots begin to come up against each other and create tense and amusing dramatic irony. The key dramatic irony revolves around Falstaff, who is doubly deceived in scene 2—first by Mistress Quickly, and second by Ford. When Mistress Quickly arrives to arrange a covert meeting between Mistress Ford and Falstaff, we are aware that this is a trick. However, Falstaff believes that his plan to dupe Mistress Ford and get her money is well on its way. His bravado soon gets him into trouble with Ford, who has come in disguise, intending to hire Falstaff to seduce his wife. Ford’s initial goal is simply to test his wife’s fidelity. However, when Falstaff expresses playful contempt for Ford, calling him a cuckold and relaying that he already has a date with Mistress Ford the next day, he inadvertently exacerbates the very jealousy that has caused Ford to make this arrangement in the first place. As a result, Ford’s plan now has a second point: not just to prove that he was right to distrust his wife, but also to get revenge on Falstaff.
Meanwhile, as the tangled skein of schemes against Falstaff gets more complicated, there’s another conspiracy at work. When the Host shows up with Page and Justice Shallow to watch the duel between Caius and Evans, they are evidently disappointed to find that both combatants aren’t present. Though they make a show of telling Caius that it’s better for the fight not to happen, since violence goes against the professional ethics of both men involved, they seem eager to witness some kind of conflict. Perhaps they simply want to hear the two men argue in their ridiculous accents. Regardless of the reason, the Host contrives a plot to have the other men sniff out Evans in a nearby town while he pretends to lead Caius to a place where his beloved, Anne Page, is dining. Of course, the Host really means to bring Caius before Evans and thereby ensure his own entertainment. In the meantime, the Host amuses himself by making fun of Caius’s poor English, using various insults but telling the Frenchmen they are terms of honor. Though the Host’s slang will likely be unfamiliar to modern readers, Shakespeare’s audiences would have been hugely amused.
