At the Garter Inn Falstaff tells Mistress Quickly that he will meet – for the third time – with Mistress Ford. The old knight hopes that three will be his lucky number. Mistress Quickly then tells Falstaff that she will help him find some horns and a costume so that he will look like Herne the Hunter.
After Mistress Quickly exits, Master Ford (again disguised as Master Brooke) enters the inn. Falstaff reports how he was disguised as the fat woman of Brentford and beaten most vigorously by Ford. In order to salvage some sense of his honor, the old knight states that if he had not been in disguise, he would have had no fear of Master Ford:
For in the shape of a man, Master Brooke, I fear not Goliath with a weaver’s beam, because I know also life is a shuttle. (19-21)
A weaver’s beam was the name given to a huge spear that the Biblical character Goliath supposedly used in his fight against David (see 1 Samuel 17:7 in the Old Testament). The witty knight uses another quote from the Bible to note the brevity of life: “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle” (see Job 7:6 in the Old Testament). The expression that “life is a shuttle” means that life is short. The days and years fly by swiftly just as the weaver’s shuttle moves