The Merry Wives of Windsor

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[Enter FALSTAFF disguised as Herne]
FALSTAFF	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	5
	a beast. You were also, Jupiter, a swan for the love
	of Leda. O omnipotent Love! how near the god drew
	to the complexion of a goose! A fault done first in
	the form of a beast. O Jove, a beastly fault! And
	then another fault in the semblance of a fowl; think	10
	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, i' the
	forest. Send me a cool rut-time, Jove, or who can
	blame me to piss my tallow? Who comes here? my	15
	doe?
[Enter MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE]
MISTRESS FORD	Sir John! art thou there, my deer? my male deer?
FALSTAFF	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	20
	there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.
MISTRESS FORD	Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.
FALSTAFF	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.	25
	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]
MISTRESS PAGE	Alas, what noise?
MISTRESS FORD	Heaven forgive our sins	30
FALSTAFF	What should this be?
MISTRESS PAGE	Away, away!
[They run off]
FALSTAFF	I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the
	oil that's in me should set hell on fire; he would
	never else cross me thus.	35
[ Enter SIR HUGH EVANS, disguised as before; PISTOL, as Hobgoblin; MISTRESS QUICKLY, ANNE PAGE, and others, as Fairies, with tapers ]
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Fairies, black, grey, 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 oyes.	40
PISTOL	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.	45
FALSTAFF	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]
SIR HUGH EVANS	Where's Bede? Go you, and where you find a maid
	That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said,
	Raise up the organs of her fantasy;	50
	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.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	About, about;
	Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out:	55
	Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room:
	That it may stand till the perpetual doom,
	In state as wholesome as in state 'tis fit,
	Worthy the owner, and the owner it.
	The several chairs of order look you scour	60
	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,
	Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring:	65
	The expressure that it bears, green let it be,
	More fertile-fresh than all the field to see;
	And 'Honi soit qui mal y pense' write
	In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue and white;
	Let sapphire, pearl and rich embroidery,	70
	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.	75
SIR HUGH EVANS	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.
FALSTAFF	Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he	80
	transform me to a piece of cheese!
PISTOL	Vile worm, thou wast o'erlook'd even in thy birth.
MISTRESS QUICKLY	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,	85
	It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.
PISTOL	A trial, come.
SIR HUGH EVANS	Come, will this wood take fire?
[They burn him with their tapers]
FALSTAFF	Oh, Oh, Oh!
MISTRESS QUICKLY	Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!	90
	About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme;
	And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.
SONG.
	Fie on sinful fantasy!
	Fie on lust and luxury!
	Lust is but a bloody fire,	95
	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;	100
	Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,
	Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out.
[ During this song they pinch FALSTAFF. DOCTOR CAIUS comes one way, and steals away a boy in green; SLENDER another way, and takes off a boy in white; and FENTON comes and steals away ANN PAGE. A noise of hunting is heard within. All the Fairies run away. FALSTAFF pulls off his buck's head, and rises ]
[Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE, and MISTRESS FORD]
PAGE	Nay, do not fly; I think we have watch'd you now
	Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn?
MISTRESS PAGE	I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher	105
	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 cuckoldly knave; here are his	110
	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.	115
MISTRESS 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.
FALSTAFF	I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass.
FORD	Ay, and an ox too: both the proofs are extant.	120
FALSTAFF	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	125
	rhyme and reason, that they were fairies. See now
	how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when 'tis upon
	ill employment!
SIR HUGH EVANS	Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your
	desires, and fairies will not pinse you.	130
FORD	Well said, fairy Hugh.
SIR HUGH EVANS	And leave your jealousies too, I pray you.
FORD	I will never mistrust my wife again till thou art
	able to woo her in good English.
FALSTAFF	Have I laid my brain in the sun and dried it, that	135
	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.
SIR HUGH EVANS	Seese is not good to give putter; your belly is all putter.	140
FALSTAFF	'Seese' and 'putter'! have I lived to stand at the
	taunt of one that makes fritters of English? This
	is enough to be the decay of lust and late-walking
	through the realm.
MISTRESS PAGE	Why Sir John, do you think, though we would have the	145
	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?
MISTRESS PAGE	A puffed man?	150
PAGE	Old, cold, withered and of intolerable entrails?
FORD	And one that is as slanderous as Satan?
PAGE	And as poor as Job?
FORD	And as wicked as his wife?
SIR HUGH EVANS	And given to fornications, and to taverns and sack	155
	and wine and metheglins, and to drinkings and
	swearings and starings, pribbles and prabbles?
FALSTAFF	Well, I am your theme: you have the start of me; I
	am dejected; I am not able to answer the Welsh
	flannel; ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me: use	160
	me as you will.
FORD	Marry, sir, we'll bring you to Windsor, to one
	Master Brook, that you have cozened of money, to
	whom you should have been a pander: over and above
	that you have suffered, I think to repay that money	165
	will be a biting affliction.
PAGE	Yet be cheerful, knight: thou shalt eat a posset
	to-night at my house; where I will desire thee to
	laugh at my wife, that now laughs at thee: tell her
	Master Slender hath married her daughter.	170
MISTRESS PAGE	[Aside] Doctors doubt that: if Anne Page be my
	daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius' wife.
[Enter SLENDER]
SLENDER	Whoa ho! ho, father Page!
PAGE	Son, how now! how now, son! have you dispatched?
SLENDER	Dispatched! I'll make the best in Gloucestershire	175
	know on't; would I were hanged, la, else.
PAGE	Of what, son?
SLENDER	I came yonder at Eton to marry Mistress Anne Page,
	and she's a great lubberly boy. If it had not been
	i' the church, I would have swinged him, or he	180
	should have swinged me. If I did not think it had
	been Anne Page, would I might never stir!--and 'tis
	a postmaster's boy.
PAGE	Upon my life, then, you took the wrong.
SLENDER	What need you tell me that? I think so, when I took	185
	a boy for a girl. If I had been married to him, for
	all he was in woman's apparel, I would not have had
	him.
PAGE	Why, this is your own folly. Did not I tell you how
	you should know my daughter by her garments?	190
SLENDER	I went to her in white, and cried 'mum,' and she
	cried 'budget,' as Anne and I had appointed; and yet
	it was not Anne, but a postmaster's boy.
MISTRESS PAGE	Good George, be not angry: I knew of your purpose;
	turned my daughter into green; and, indeed, she is	195
	now with the doctor at the deanery, and there married.
[Enter DOCTOR CAIUS]
DOCTOR CAIUS	Vere is Mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened: I ha'
	married un garcon, a boy; un paysan, by gar, a boy;
	it is not Anne Page: by gar, I am cozened.
MISTRESS PAGE	Why, did you take her in green?	200
DOCTOR CAIUS	Ay, by gar, and 'tis a boy: by gar, I'll raise all Windsor.
[Exit]
FORD	This is strange. Who hath got the right Anne?
PAGE	My heart misgives me: here comes Master Fenton.
[Enter FENTON and ANNE PAGE]
	How now, Master Fenton!
ANNE PAGE	Pardon, good father! good my mother, pardon!	205
PAGE	Now, mistress, how chance you went not with Master Slender?
MISTRESS PAGE	Why went you not with master doctor, maid?
FENTON	You do amaze her: hear the truth of it.
	You would have married her most shamefully,
	Where there was no proportion held in love.	210
	The truth is, she and I, long since contracted,
	Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us.
	The offence is holy that she hath committed;
	And this deceit loses the name of craft,
	Of disobedience, or unduteous title,	215
	Since therein she doth evitate and shun
	A thousand irreligious cursed hours,
	Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.
FORD	Stand not amazed; here is no remedy:
	In love the heavens themselves do guide the state;	220
	Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.
FALSTAFF	I am glad, though you have ta'en a special stand to
	strike at me, that your arrow hath glanced.
PAGE	Well, what remedy? Fenton, heaven give thee joy!
	What cannot be eschew'd must be embraced.	225
FALSTAFF	When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chased.
MISTRESS PAGE	Well, I will muse no further. Master Fenton,
	Heaven give you many, many merry days!
	Good husband, let us every one go home,
	And laugh this sport o'er by a country fire;	230
	Sir John and all.
FORD	Let it be so. Sir John,
	To Master Brook you yet shall hold your word
	For he tonight shall lie with Mistress Ford.
[Exeunt]