[Exit.]

First servant. 
Come, come, take it up.

Second servant. 
Pray heaven, it be not full of knight again.

First servant. 
I hope not; I had lief as bear so much lead.

[Enter ford, page, shallow, caius, and sir Hugh Evans.]

Ford.  Ay, but if it prove true, Master Page, have you any way then to unfool me again?  Set down the basket, villain!  Somebody call my wife.  Youth in a basket!  O you panderly rascals! there’s a knot, a ging, a pack, a conspiracy against me.  Now shall the devil be shamed.  What, wife, I say!  Come, come forth! behold what honest clothes you send forth to bleaching!

Page. 
Why, this passes, Master Ford! you are not to go loose any longer;
you must be pinioned.

Evans. 
Why, this is lunatics! this is mad as a mad dog.

Shallow. 
Indeed, Master Ford, this is not well, indeed.

Ford. 
So say I too, sir.—­

[Re-enter mistress ford.]

Come hither, Mistress Ford, the honest woman, the modest wife, the virtuous creature, that hath the jealous fool to her husband!  I suspect without cause, Mistress, do I?

Mrs. Ford. 
Heaven be my witness, you do, if you suspect me in any dishonesty.

Ford. 
Well said, brazen-face! hold it out.  Come forth, sirrah.

[Pulling clothes out of the basket.]

Page. 
This passes!

Mrs. Ford. 
Are you not ashamed?  Let the clothes alone.

Ford. 
I shall find you anon.

Evans. 
’Tis unreasonable.  Will you take up your wife’s clothes?  Come away.

Ford. 
Empty the basket, I say!

Mrs. Ford. 
Why, man, why?

Ford.  Master Page, as I am a man, there was one conveyed out of my house yesterday in this basket:  why may not he be there again?  In my house I am sure he is; my intelligence is true; my jealousy is reasonable.  Pluck me out all the linen.

Mrs. Ford. 
If you find a man there, he shall die a flea’s death.

Page. 
Here’s no man.

Shallow. 
By my fidelity, this is not well, Master Ford; this wrongs you.

Evans. 
Master Ford, you must pray, and not follow the imaginations of
your own heart; this is jealousies.

Ford. 
Well, he’s not here I seek for.

Page. 
No, nor nowhere else but in your brain.

[Servants carry away the basket.]

Ford.  Help to search my house this one time.  If I find not what I seek, show no colour for my extremity; let me for ever be your table-sport; let them say of me ’As jealous as Ford, that searched a hollow walnut for his wife’s leman.’  Satisfy me once more; once more search with me.