angry as is Mistress Page. Both Mistress Page and Mistress Ford feel that they deserve some respect and honor (as indicated in lines 39-40), and they feel that Falstaff’s letters and his requests dishonor them. Pistol and Nym earlier had felt dishonored by the knight. In that sense, the motivation for revenge is similar.
In telling Mistress Page why she is angry, Mistress Ford states, “If I would go to hell for an eternal moment or so, I could be knighted” (42-43). By being knighted Mistress Ford means that she could become an aristocrat. But the words also mean having sexual intercourse with a knight. Committing adultery is a mortal sin, and many Christians believed that committing a mortal sin would result in their soul spending eternity in hell. Neither Mistress Page nor Mistress Ford believe that the loss of her soul is worth the price of becoming an aristocrat, and most certainly neither one believes that engaging in sexual activity with John Falstaff is worth the price of her soul.
As Mistress Page reads the letter sent to her friend, Mistress Ford comments that the words Falstaff had earlier spoken – which were modest and polite – are in sharp discord with the words in the letter. And she uses the following metaphor to note the contrast of Falstaff’s words:
But they do no more adhere and keep place together than the hundred and fifty psalms to the tune of “Greensleeves.” (53-55)