Merry Wives Of Windsor Quotes

Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.

Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.

Why, then the world ’s mine oyster, Which I with sword will open.

I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that's in me should set hell on fire.

Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.

In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue and white; Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery, Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee; Fairies use flower for their charactery.

I will find you twenty lascivious turtles ere one chaste man.

...it occurred to me, not for the first time, what a remarkably small world Britain is. That is its glory, you see--that it manages at once to be intimate and small scale, and at the same time packed to bursting with incident and interest. I am constantly filled with admiration at this--at the way you can wander through a town like Oxford and in the space of a few hundred yards pass the home of Christopher Wren, the buildings where Halley found his comet and Boyle his first law, the track where Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile, the meadow where Lewis Carroll strolled; or how you can stand on Snow's Hill at Windsor and see, in a single sweep, Windsor Castle, the playing fields of Eton, the churchyard where Gray wrote his "Elegy," the site where The Merry Wives of Windsor was performed. Can there anywhere on earth be, in such a modest span, a landscape more packed with centuries of busy, productive attainment?

if money go before, all ways do lie open.

I assure thee: setting the attractions of my good parts aside I have no other charms.

Here will be an old abusing of God’s patience and the king’s English.

If it really was Queen Elizabeth who demanded to see Falstaff in a comedy, then she showed herself a very perceptive critic. But even in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff has not and could not have found his true home because Shakespeare was only a poet. For that he was to wait nearly two hundred years till Verdi wrote his last opera. Falstaff is not the only case of a character whose true home is the world of music; others are Tristan, Isolde and Don Giovanni.

Master Brook, I will first make bold with your money

he cares not what he puts into the press, when he would put us two: I had rather be a giantess and lie under Mount Pelion. 

setting the attractions of my good parts aside I have no other charms

What say you to young Master Fenton? he capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May: he will carry't, he will carry't; 'tis in his buttons; he will carry't.

Sir John, To Master Brook you yet shall hold your word; For he to-night shall lie with Mistress Ford.

for they say, if money go before, all ways do lie open.

What a damned Epicurean rascal is this!

What, the sword and the word! do you study them both, master parson?

Disarm them, and let them question: let them keep their limbs whole and hack our English.

The hour draws on. To the oak, to the oak!

And given to fornications, and to taverns and sack and wine and metheglins, and to drinkings and swearings and starings, pribbles and prabbles?

When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chased.

You do amaze her: hear the truth of it. You would have married her most shamefully, Where there was no proportion held in love. The truth is, she and I, long since contracted, Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us. The offence is holy that she hath committed; And this deceit loses the name of craft, Of disobedience, or unduteous title, Since therein she doth evitate and shun A thousand irreligious cursed hours, Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.

setting the attractions of my good parts aside I have no other charms.—William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

You Banbury cheese!

See the hell of having a false woman! My bed shall be abused, my coffers ransacked, my reputation gnawn at; and I shall not only receive this villainous wrong, but stand under the adoption of abominable terms, and by him that does me the wrong.Shakesp.Merry Wives of Windsor.2. The

why, then, the world's mine oyster.

ANTHROPOPHAGINIAN  (ANTHROPOPHAGI'NIAN)   n.s.A ludicrous word, formed by Shakespeare from anthropophagi, for the sake of a formidable sound. Go, knock, and call; he’ll speak like an anthropophaginian unto thee; knock, I say.Shakesp.Merry Wives of Windsor.

Damson plums were a favorite Elizabethan fruit and “eaten before dyner, be good to provoke a mans appetyde.” They were also popular dried into prunes. It is unclear why, perhaps because they allegedly inflamed men’s appetites, but stewed prunes were a favorite dish at Elizabethan brothels and also were a synonym for prostitutes. Shakespeare mentions prunes in that context in King Henry IV, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Measure for Measure.

Oyster Stew SERVES 4 Why, then the world’s mine oyster, Which I with sword will open. THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, 2.2 THE ORIGINAL RECIPE calls for “slic’t nutmeg,” a sophisticated touch to add flavor to a dish. Nutmeg, one of the most common spices in Elizabethan recipes, became so popular that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ladies and gentlemen carried small personal silver nutmeg graters with them to dinner parties.

there is no fear of Got in a riot

now shall the devil be shamed.

Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!

Lust is but a bloody fire

shelvy, meaning ‘of different levels’ (The Merry Wives of Windsor, III. v). 6.