In the home of the French physician, Doctor Caius, Mistress Quickly is talking to Peter Simple, Slender’s servant. Mistress Quickly agrees to help Hugh Evans in encouraging the marriage between Slender and Anne Page.
Before Simple can exit, Doctor Caius returns home. Caius does not like Mistress Quickly to have visitors in his house when he is away. Moreover, Caius can get extremely angry. So, she hides Simple in a closet. Caius intends to leave his house again to tend to some business; but before he leaves he states, “Dere is some simples in my closet dat I will not for the varld I shall leave behind” (55-56). Like Hugh Evans, Caius is a mangler of English. He means the following: There are some simple or common medicines in my closet that I will not for the world leave behind. Of course, the humor of the line is obvious: there are both simples and Simple in the closet.
Discovering the servant, Caius immediately assumes Simple is there for some dishonest purpose; and he calls to his servant Rugby to bring him his rapier, his sword, so that he can deal with the intruder. Mistress Quickly calms the doctor down, and
Simple explains to him that he had come at the request of Hugh Evans to obtain Mistress Quickly’s help in arranging the betrothal between Slender and Anne Page.
Mistress Quickly immediately denies that she was going to help Evans: “I’ll ne’er put my finger in