and Jealousies
As the servants are about to exit the house with the buck-basket, Master Ford – along with Page, Caius, and Evans – arrives (at line 125). Ford asks his wife about the basket, and Mistress Ford sarcastically suggests that he should do the buck- washing himself. Ford responds by saying, “I would I could wash myself of the buck!” (132). The word would means wish, and the word buck in this instance refers to a male deer. Ford is specifically referring to the horns of the buck. Thus he is saying that he wishes he could wash away the horns from his head. He of course means the horns of a cuckold. He is convinced that his wife has already made him a cuckold by having sexual relations with Falstaff.
Master Ford then directs his companions to help him search the house for the male intruder.
Mistress Ford is pleased by the double success of her scheme: (1) Falstaff will end up in the ditch and (2) she will have tricked her husband. Regarding Falstaff, Mistress Ford comments to Mistress Page, “I am half afraid he will have need of washing, so throwing him into the water will do him a benefit” (153-54). She is saying that the fat knight was so frightened that he probably urinated in his pants. Mistress Ford, though, does wonder why her husband is so suspicious at that time and why he so opportunely arrived just at the moment when the rendezvous was taking place. Both wives, though, are well aware that the stubborn knight will not have