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;-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 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 tallow1? Who comes here? my doe?

Enter MRS. FORD and MRS. PAGE.

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

1 This is technical. 'During the time of their rut the harts live with small sustenance.-The red mushroome helpeth well to make them pysse their greace they are then in so vehement heat." -Turberville's Book of Hunting, 1575.

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 2, I will shelter me here. [Embracing her.

Mrs. Ford. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.

Fal. Divide me like a bribe-buck 3, 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 5? 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.

Mrs. 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.

2 The sweet potato was used in England as a delicacy long before the introduction of the common potato by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1586. It was imported in considerable quantities from Spain and the Canaries, and was supposed to possess the power of restoring decayed vigour. The kissing-comfits were principally made of these and eringo roots, and were perfumed to make the breath sweet. Gerarde attributes the same virtues to the common potato which he distinguishes as the Virginian sort.

3 i. e. like a buck sent as a bribe.

4 The keeper. The shoulders of the buck were among his perquisites.

5 The woodman was an attendant on the forester. It is here however used in a wanton sense, for one who chooses female game for the object of his pursuit.

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.

Quick. Fairies, black, grey, green, and white, You moon-shine revellers, and shades of night, You orphan-heirs of fixed destiny,

Attend your office, and your quality 7.

Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy o-yes.

Pist. Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys.

Cricket, to Windsor chimnies 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. [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
of her fantasy 8,
the
up organs
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.

6 The old copy reads orphan-heirs. Warburton reads ouphen, and not without plausibility; ouphes being mentioned before and afterward. Malone thinks it means mortals by birth, but adopted by the faries: orphans in respect of their real parents, and now only dependent on destiny herself.

7 Profession.

8 i. e. elevate her fancy, and amuse her tranquil mind with some delightful vision, though she sleep as soundly as an infant.

Quick. 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 'tis fit;
Worthy the owner, and the owner it.

The several chairs of order look you scour
With juice of balm, and every precious flower9:
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:
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,

10

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 'tis one o'clock,
Our dance of custom, round about the oak
Of Herne the hunter, let us not 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 11.

9 It was an article of ancient luxury to rub tables, &c. with aromatic herbs. So, in the Baucis and Philemon of Ovid, Met. viii.

mensam

aequatam Mentha abstersere virenti.

Pliny informs us that the Romans did so to drive away evil spirits. 10"Charactery, is a writing by characters, or by strange marks." -Bullokar's English Expositor, 12mo. 1656.

11 By this term is merely meant a mortal man, in contradistinction to a spirit of the earth or of the air, such as a fairy or gnome. It was in use in the north of Scotland a century since, and appears borrowed from the Saxon Middan Eard.

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 12 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?

[They burn him with their tapers.

Fal. Oh, oh, oh !

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.

Fye on sinful fantasy!
Fye 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

12 By o'er-looked is here meant bewitched by an evil eye, the word is used in that sense in Glanvilli Sadducismi Triumphatus, p. 95. Steevens erroneously interprets it 'Slighted as soon as born.' See note on the Merchant of Venice, Act iii. Sc. 2.

"Beshrew your eyes,

They have o'er-looked me