I am

the semblance of a fowl: think on 't, Jove; a foul fault. When gods have hot backs, what shall poor men do? For me, 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 kissingcomfits, 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, wel

come.

[Noise within.

[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 brother and others, dressed like fairies, with waxen tapers on their heads. Queen. 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 o-yes.

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

Where fires thou find'st unrak'd, 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.

Eva. Where 's Bead?.

[Lies down upon his face.

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.
Queen. About, about!

Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out:
Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room,
That it may stand till the perpetual doom,
In state as wholesome, as in state 't is 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, ever more be blest!
And nightly, meadow-fairies, look, you sing,
Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring:
Th' 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;
Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,
Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee:
Fairies, use flowers for their charactery.
Away! disperse! But, till 't is one o'clock,
Our dance of custom, round about the oak
Of Heine 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. Heavens defend me from that Welch fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!

Pist. Vile worm, thou wast o'er-look'd, even in thy birth. Queen. 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.

Ευα.

Fal. Oh, oh, oh!

Come, will this wood take fire?

[They burn him with their tapers.

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

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

Fie on sinful fantasy!

Fie on lust and luxury!

Lust is but a bloody fire,

SONG.

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 villainy ;

Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,

Till candles, and star-light, 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 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 watch'd 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?

Master Brook,

Ford. Now, Sir, who's a cuckold now? Falstaff's a knave, a cuckoldly 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 't is 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'er-reaching at this? Am I ridden with a Welch goat too? shall I have a coxcomb of frize? 'Tis time I were choked with a piece of toasted cheese.

Eva. Seese is not good to give putter: your pelly is all putter.

Fal. 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.

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?

Mrs. Page. A puffed man?

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?

Eva. And given to fornications, and to taverns, and sack, and wine, and metheglins, and to drinkings, and swearings, and starings, pribbles and prabbles?

Fal. Well, I am your theme: you have the start of me; I am dejected; I am not able to answer the Welch flannel. Ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me: use 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 will be a biting affliction.

Page. Yet be cheerful, knight: thou shalt eat a posset tonight 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.

Mrs. Page. Doctors doubt that: if Anne Page be my daughter, she is, by this, doctor Caius' wife.

Enter SLENDer.

Slen. Whoo, ho! ho! father Page!

[Aside.

Page. Son, how now! how now, son! have you despatched? Slen. Despatched! - I'll make the best in Gloucestershire know on 't; would I were hanged, la, else.

Page. Of what, son?

Slen. I came yonder at Eton to marry mistress Anne Page,