Enter FALSTAFF in women's clothes, led by

MRS. PAGE.

Mrs. Page. Come, mother Pratt, come, give me your hand.

Ford. I'll prat her:

Out of my door, you

witch! [beats him] you rag, you baggage, you polecat, you ronyon 15! out! out! I'll conjure you, I'll fortune-tell you.

[Exit FALSTAFF. Mrs. Page. Are you not ashamed? I think have killed the poor woman.

you

Mrs. Ford. Nay, he will do it ;-Tis a goodly credit for you.

Ford. Hang her, witch!

Eva. By yea and no, I think, the 'oman is a witch indeed: I like not when a 'oman has a great peard; I spy a great peard under her muffler.

Ford. Will you follow, gentlemen? I beseech you, follow; see but the issue of my jealousy; if I cry out thus upon no trail 16, never trust me when I open again.

Page. Let's obey his humour a little further: Come, gentlemen.

[Exeunt PAGE, FORD, SHALLOW, and EVANS. Mrs. Page. Trust me, he beat him most pitifully. Mrs. Ford. Nay, by the mass that he did not; he beat him most unpitifully, methought.

Mrs. Page. I'll have the cudgel hallowed, and hang o'er the altar; it hath done meritorious service.

Mrs. Ford. What think you? May we, with the warrant of woman-hood, and the witness of a good conscience, pursue him with any further revenge

15 Means much the same as scall or scab, from Rogneuse, FR. 16 Expressions taken from the chase. Trail is the scent left by the passage of the game. To cry out is to open, or bark.

Mrs. Page. The spirit of wantonness is, sure, scared out of him; if the devil have him not in feesimple, with fine and recovery 17, he will never, I think, in the way of waste 18, attempt us again.

Mrs. Ford. Shall we tell our husbands how we have served him?

Mrs. Page. Yes, by all means; if it be but to scrape the figures out of your husband's brains. If they can find in their hearts, the poor unvirtuous fat knight shall be any further afflicted, we two will still

be the ministers.

Mrs. Ford. I'll warrant they'll have him publickly shamed: and, methinks, there would be no period 19 to the jest, should he not be publickly shamed.

Mrs. Page. Come to the forge with it then, shape it: I would not have things cool.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III. A Room in the Garter Inn.

Enter HOST and BARDOLPH.

Bard. Sir, the Germans desire to have three of your horses: the duke himself will be to-morrow at court, and they are going to meet him.

Host. What duke should that be comes so secretly? I hear not of him in the court: Let me speak with the gentlemen; they speak English?

Bard. Ay, sir, I'll call them to you.

Host. They shall have my horses; but I'll make

17 Ritson remarks that Shakspeare had been long enough in an attorney's office to know that fee-simple is the largest estate, and fine and recovery the strongest assurance, known to English Law.' How Mrs. Page acquired her knowledge of these terms he has not informed us.

18 This is another forensic expression. Mr. Steevens says that the meaning of the passage is, "he will not make further attempts to ruin us by corrupting our virtue and destroying our reputation." 19 i. e. right period, or proper catastrophe.

them pay, I'll sauce them: they have had my house a week at command; I have turned away my other guests: they must come off 20; I'll sauce them; Come. [Exeunt.

SCENE IV. A Room in Ford's House.

Enter PAGE, Ford, Mrs. PAGE, MRS. FORD, and SIR HUGH EVANS.

Eva. 'Tis one of the pest discretions of a 'oman as ever I did look upon.

Page. And did he send you both these letters at an instant?

Mrs. Page. Within a quarter of an hour.

Ford. Pardon me, wife: Henceforth do what thou wilt;

I rather will suspect the sun with cold1,

Than thee with wantonness: now doth thy honour stand,

In him that was of late an heretick,

As firm as faith.

Page.

'Tis well, 'tis well; no more.

Be not as extreme in submission,
As in offence;

But let our plot go forward: let our wives
Yet once again, to make us publick sport,
Appoint a meeting with this old fat fellow,
Where we may take him, and disgrace him for it.
Ford. There is no better way than that they spoke of.
Page. How! to send him word they'll meet him
in the park at midnight! fie, fie; he'll never come.
Eva. You say, he has been thrown into the rivers;
and has been grievously peaten, as an old 'oman;

20 To come off is to pay, to come down (as we now say), with a sum of money. It is a phrase of frequent occurrence in old plays. 1 The reading in the text was Mr. Rowe's. The old copies read I rather will suspect the sun with gold.'

methinks there should be terrors in him, that he should not come; methinks, his flesh is punished, he shall have no desires. Page. So think I too.

Mrs. Ford. Devise but how you'll use him when he comes,

And let us two devise to bring him thither.

Mrs. Page. There is an old tale goes, that Herne the hunter,

Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest,
Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;
And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle;
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner:

You have heard of such a spirit; and well you know,
The superstitious idle-headed eld3

Received, and did deliver to our age,

This tale of Herne the hunter for a truth.

Page. Why, yet there want not many, that do fear In deep of night to walk by this Herne's oak; But what of this?

2 To take signifies to seize or strike with a disease, to blast. So, in Lear, Act ii. Sc. 4:

'Strike her young bones, ye taking airs, with lameness.' And in Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 1:

"No planets strike,

No fairy takes, no witch has power to charm.”

"Of a horse that is taken. A horse that is bereft of his feeling, moving, or stirring, is said to be taken, and in sooth so he is, in that he is arrested by so villainous a disease: yet some farriers, not well understanding the ground of the disease, conster the word taken to be stricken by some planet, or evil spirit, which is false."-C. vii. Markham on Horses, 1595. Thusalso in Horman's Vulgaria, 1519. He is taken, or benomed. Attonitus est."

3 Old age.

66

4 The tree which was by tradition shown as Herne's oak; being totally decayed, was cut down by his late majesty's order in 1795.

Mrs. Ford. Marry, this is our device;

That Falstaff at that oak shall meet with us, Disguised like Herne, with huge horns on his head. Page. Well, let it not be doubted but he'll come, And in this shape: When you have brought him thither,

What shall be done with him? what is your plot? Mrs. Page. That likewise have we thought upon, and thus:

Nan Page my daughter, and my little son,
And three or four more of their growth, we'll dress
Like urchins, ouphes 5, and fairies, green and white,
With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads,
And rattles in their hands; upon a sudden,
As Falstaff, she, and I, are newly met,
Let them from forth a saw-pit rush at once
With some diffused 6
song; upon their sight,
We two in great amazedness will fly :

Then let them all encircle him about,

And, fairy-like, to-pinch the unclean knight;
And ask him, why, that hour of fairy revel,
In their so sacred paths he dares to tread,
In shape profane.

Mrs. Ford.

5 Elf, hobgoblin.

sense:

And till he tell the truth,

6 Some diffused song, appears to mean some obscure strange song. In Cavendish's Life of Wolsey the word occurs in this speak you Welsh to him: I doubt not but thy speech shall be more diffuse to him, than his French shall be to thee." Cotgrave explains diffused by the French diffus, espars, OBSCURE, and in Cooper's Dictionary, 1584, I find obscurum interpreted 'obscure, difficult, DIFFUSE, hard to understand.' Skelton uses diffuse several times for strange or obscure; for instance, in the Crown of Laurel :

"Perseus pressed forth with problems diffuse."

7 To-pinch: to has here an augmentative sense, like be has since had: all was generally prefixed, Spenser has all to-torn, all to-rent, &c. and Milton in Comus all to-ruffled.