Mistress Quickly

Mistress Quickly is presented as a poor widow of Eastcheap who asserts a claim through the law, but later appears in the company of Doll Tearsheet and is herself dragged in by Beadles. These brief scenes place her in contrasting positions: first pursuing an action against another person, then subject to public force herself.

Identity and Introduction

In Act II, Scene I, set on a London street, Mistress Quickly enters with Fang and his Boy, while Snare follows. She asks Fang whether he has entered the action, establishing her immediate concern with a legal proceeding. Her question gives her an active role in initiating the business rather than leaving her merely as a bystander to it.

Legal Claim and Social Position

When challenged about the man being held, Mistress Quickly addresses a lord and identifies herself as a poor widow of Eastcheap. She says that the man has been arrested at her suit. The scene thus connects her financial and social description to a formal claim: although she calls herself poor, she asserts a right to seek redress through legal process. The available passage does not specify the grounds of her action or identify the arrested man, so the claim remains defined by its procedure rather than its underlying dispute.

Doll Tearsheet and the Street Arrest

Mistress Quickly later enters with Doll Tearsheet, addressing her as a familiar companion. In a subsequent London street scene, Beadles drag Mistress Quickly and Doll into view. Quickly protests against a person she calls a knave and begins to express a wish, but the passage supplied does not reveal how the confrontation is resolved. Set beside her earlier effort to have another person arrested, her own forcible appearance creates a sharp reversal: she is first a claimant invoking legal authority and later a woman physically brought before the public.