William Shakespeare - The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

[Exeunt.]

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.

SLENDER

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

SHALLOW

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.

[Exeunt.]

SCENE III. The street in Windsor

[Enter MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD, and DOCTOR 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 dispatch it quickly. Go before into the Park; we two must go together.

CAIUS

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, disguised, with others as Fairies.]

EVANS

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 as HERNE with a buck’s head on.]

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 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 tallow? Who comes here? my doe?

[Enter MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE.]

MRS. 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 “Greensleeves”; 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.

FALSTAFF

Divide me like a brib’d 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!

FALSTAFF

What should this be?

MRS. FORD

Away, away!

MRS. 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.

[Enter SIR HUGH EVANS like a Satyr, PISTOL as a Hobgoblin, ANNE PAGE as the the Fairy Queen, attended by her Brothers and Others, as fairies, with waxen tapers on their heads.]

ANNE

Fairies, black, grey, green, and white,

You moonshine revellers, and shades of night,

You orphan heirs of fixèd destiny,

Attend your office and your quality.

Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes.

PISTOL

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.

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.]

EVANS

Where’s Bede? Go you, and where you find a maid

That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said,

Rein 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.

ANNE

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 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:

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;

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.

EVANS

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

And twenty glowworms 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 transform me to a piece of cheese!

PISTOL

Vile worm, thou wast o’erlook’d even in thy birth.

ANNE

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.

PISTOL

A trial! come.

EVANS

Come, will this wood take fire?

[They burn him with their tapers.]

FALSTAFF

Oh, oh, oh!

ANNE

Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!

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,

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,