SCENE II. Windsor Park.

Enter PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER.

Page. Come, come; we'll couch i' the castle-ditch, till we see the light of our fairies.-Remember, son Slender, my daughter.

Slen. Ay, forsooth; I have spoke with her, and we have a nay-word how to know one another. I come to her in white, and cry, mum; she cries, budget; and by that we know one another.

Shal. That's good, too: But what needs either your mum, or her budget? the white will decipher her well enough. It hath struck ten o'clock.

Page. The night is dark; light and spirits will become it well. Heaven prosper our sport! No man means evil but the devil, and we shall know him by his horns. Let's away; follow me.

SCENE III. The Street in Windsor.

[Exeunt.

Enter MRS. PAGE, MRS. FORD, and DR. CAIUS. Mrs.

Page. Master doctor, my daughter is in green; when you see your time, take her by the hand, away with her to the deanery, and despatch it quickly: Go before into the park; we two must go together.

Caires. I know vat I have to do: Adieu.

Mrs.

Page. Fare you well, sir. [Exit CAIUS.] My husband will not rejoice so much at the abuse of Falstaff, as he will chafe at the doctor's marrying my daughter: but tis no matter; better a little chiding, than a great deal of

heart-break.

Mrs. Ford. Where is Nan now, and her troop of fairies? and the Welsh devil, Hugh?

Mrs. Page. They are all couched in a pit hard by Herne's oak, with obscured lights; which, at the very instant of Falstaff's and our meeting, they will at once display to the night.

Mrs. Ford. That cannot choose but amaze him.

Mrs. Page. If he be not amazed, he will be mocked; if he be amazed, he will every way be mocked.

Mrs. Ford. We'll betray him finely.

Mrs. Page. Against such lewdsters, and their lechery, Those that betray them do no treachery.

Mrs. Ford. The hour draws on: To the oak, to the oak!

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV. Windsor Park.

Enter SIR HUGH EVANS and Fairies.

Eva. Trib, trib, fairies; come; and remember your parts: be pold, I pray you; follow me into the pit; and when I give the watch'ords, do as I pid you: Come, come; trib, trib. [Exeunt.

SCENE V. Another Part of the Park.

Enter FALSTAFF disguised, with a buck's head on. Fal. The Windsor bell hath struck twelve; the minute draws on: Now, the hot-blooded gods assist me :- Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa; love set on thy horns O powerful love! that, in some respects, makes a beast a man; in some other, a man a beast. You were also, Jupiter, a swan, for the love of Leda; -0- omnipotent love! how near the god drew to the complexion of a goose! A fault done first in the form of a beast; -0 Jove, a beastly fault! and then another fault in the semblance of a fowl; think on't, Jove; a foul fault. — When gods have hot backs, what shall poor men do? For me, I am here a Windsor stag; and the fattest, I think, i̇' the forest: send me a cool rut-time, Jove, or who can blame me to piss my tallow? Who comes here? my doe?

Enter MRS. FORD and MRS. PAGE.

Mrs. Ford. Sir John? art thou there, my deer? my male deer?

Fal. My doe with the black scut?-Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Green Sleeves; hail kissing-comfits, and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.

[Embracing her. Mrs. Ford. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart. Fal. Divide me like a bribe-buck, each a haunch: I will keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow of this walk, and my horns I bequeath your husbands. Am I a woodman? ha! Speak I like Herne the hunter? - Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience; he makes restitution. As I am a true spirit, welcome! [Noise within.

Mrs. Page. Alas! What noise?
Mrs. Ford. Heaven forgive our sins!
Fal What should this be?

Mrs. Ford.

Mre. Page.} Away, away!

[They run off.

Fal. I think, the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that is in me should set hell on fire; he would never else cross me thus.

Enter SIR HUGH EVANS, like a satyr; MRS. QUICKLY, and PISTOL; ANNE PAGE, as the Fairy Queen, attended by her brothers and others, dressed like fairies, with waxen tapers on their heads.

Quick. Fairies, black, gray, green, and white,
You moonshine revellers, and shades of night,
You orphan-heirs of fixed destiny,

Attend your office, and your quality.
Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy o-yes.

Pist. Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys. Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap:

Where fires thou find'st unraked, and hearths unswept,
There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry:
Our radiant queen hates sluts, and sluttery.

Fal. They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die: I'll wink and couch: No man their works must eye.

[Lies down upon his face. Eva. Where's Pede?-Go you, and where you find a maid, That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said, Raise up the organs of her fantasy,

Sleep she as sound as careless infancy;

But those as sleep, and think not on their sins,
Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins.
Quick. About, about;

Search Windsor castle, 'elves, within and out:
Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room;
may stand till the perpetual doom,

That it

In state

as wholesome, as in state 'tis fit;
Worthy the owner, and the owner it.
The several chairs of order look you scour
With juice of balm, and every precious flower:
Each fair instalment, coat, and several crest,
With loyal blazon, evermore be blest!

And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,
the Garter's compass, in a ring:

Like to

The

expressure that it bears, green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see;
And Hony soit qui mal y pense write,
In and white;
Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,
Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee;
Fairies use flowers for their charactery.

Away; disperse: But, till 'tis one o'clock,
Our dance of custom round about the oak
Of Herne the hunter, let us not forget.

Eva. Pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves in order set;

And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be,

To guide our measure round about the tree.
But, stay; I smell a man of middle earth.

Fal. Heaven defend me from that Welsh fairy! lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!

Pist. Vile worm, thou wast o'erlook'd even in thy birth. Quick. With trial fire touch me his finger-end:

If he be chaste, the flame will back descend,

And turn him to no pain; but if he start,

It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.

Pist. A trial, come.

Eva. Come, will this wood take fire?

Fal. Oh, oh, oh!

[They burn him with their tapers.

Quick. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire! About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme;

And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.

Eva. It is right; indeed he is full of lecheries and iniquity.

SONG.

Fie on sinful fantasy!
Fie on lust and luxury!
Lust is but a bloody fire,

Kindled with unchaste desire.
Fed in heart; whose flames aspire,

As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.
Pinch him, fairies, mutually;

Pinch him for his villany;

Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,
Till candles, and starlight, and moonshine be out.

During this song the fairies pinch Falstaff. Doctor Caius comes one way, and steals away a fairy in green; Slender another way, and takes off a fairy in white; and Fenton comes, and steals away Mrs. Anne Page. A noise of hunting is made within. All the fairies run away. Falstaff pulls off his buck's head, and rises.

Enter PAGE, FORD, MRS. PAGE, and MRS. FORD. They lay hold on him.

Page. Nay, do not fly: I think we have watched you now; Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn?

Mrs. Page. I pray you, come; hold up the jest no
higher :-

Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives?
See you these, husband? do not these fair yokes
Become the forest better than the town?

Ford. Now, sir, who's a cuckold now?-Master Brook, Falstaff's a knave, a cuckoldy knave; here are his horns, master Brook: And, master Brook, he hath enjoyed nothing of Ford's but his buck-basket, his cudgel, and twenty pounds of money, which must be paid to master Brook: his horses are arrested for it, master Brook.

Mrs. Ford. Sir John, we have had ill luck; we could never meet. I will never take you for my love again, but I will always count you my deer.

Fal. I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass. Ford. Ay, and an ox too; both the proofs are extant. Fal. And these are not fairies? I was three or four times in the thought, they were not fairies: and yet the guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprise of my powers, drove the grossness of the foppery into a received belief, in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and reason, that they were fairies. See now, how wit may be made a Jack-a-lent, when 'tis upon ill employment!

Eva. Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you.

Ford. Well said, fairy Hugh.

Eva. And leave you your jealousies too, I pray you.

Ford.

I will never mistrust my wife again, till thou art able to woo her in good English.

Fal.

Have I laid my brain in the sun, and dried it, that it wants matter to prevent so gross o'erreaching as this? Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? Shall I have a coxcomb of frize? 'tis time I were choked with a piece of toasted

cheese

Eva.

putter. Fal

Seese is not good to give putter; your pelly is all

taunt of one that makes fritters of English? This is enough Seese and putter! Have I lived to stand at the to be the decay of lust and late walking through the realm. Mrs. Page. Why, Sir John, do you think, though we Would have thrust virtue out of our hearts by the head and shoulders, and have given ourselves without scruple to hell, that ever the devil could have made you our delight? Ford. What, a hodge-pudding? a bag of flax?