Enter ⌜Sir John⌝ Falstaff ⌜wearing a buck’s head.⌝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,5 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; O10 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’ th’ forest. Send me a cool rut-time,15 Jove, or who can blame me to piss my tallow?Enter Mistress Page ⌜and⌝ Mistress Ford. Who comes here? My doe?MISTRESS FORD Sir John? Art thou there, my deer, my male deer?FALSTAFF My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain20 potatoes, let it thunder to the tune of “Greensleeves,” hail kissing-comfits, and snow eryngoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.⌜He embraces her.⌝MISTRESS FORD Mistress Page is come with me,25 sweetheart.FALSTAFF Divide me like a bribed 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 like30 Herne the Hunter? Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience; he makes restitution. As I am a true spirit, welcome.⌜A noise of horns within.⌝
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MISTRESS PAGE Alas, what noise?MISTRESS FORD Heaven forgive our sins!FALSTAFF 35What should this be?MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE Away, away.⌜The two women 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 ⌜Mistress⌝ Quickly, Pistol, ⌜Sir Hugh⌝ Evans,
Anne Page ⌜and boys, all disguised as⌝ Fairies ⌜and
carrying tapers.⌝MISTRESS QUICKLY, ⌜as Fairy Queen⌝ 40 Fairies black, gray, green, and white, You moonshine revelers and shades of night, You orphan heirs of fixèd destiny, Attend your office and your quality. Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes.PISTOL, ⌜as Hobgoblin⌝ 45 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.50 Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery.FALSTAFF, ⌜aside⌝ They are fairies. He that speaks to them shall die. I’ll wink and couch. No man their works must eye.⌜He crouches down and covers his eyes.⌝SIR HUGH, ⌜as a fairy⌝ Where’s Bead? Go you, and where you find a maid That ere she sleep has thrice her prayers said,55 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.
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MISTRESS QUICKLY, ⌜as Fairy Queen⌝ 60About, about! Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out. Strew good luck, aufs, on every sacred room, That it may stand till the perpetual doom In state as wholesome as in state ’tis fit,65 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 installment, coat, and sev’ral crest With loyal blazon evermore be blest!70 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 write75 In em’rald 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,80 Our dance of custom round about the oak Of Herne the Hunter let us not forget.SIR HUGH, ⌜as a fairy⌝ 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.85 But stay! I smell a man of Middle Earth.FALSTAFF, ⌜aside⌝ Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese.PISTOL, ⌜as Hobgoblin, to Falstaff⌝ Vile worm, thou wast o’erlooked even in thy birth.MISTRESS QUICKLY, ⌜as Fairy Queen, to Sir Hugh⌝ With trial-fire touch me his finger-end.90 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.
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PISTOL, ⌜as Hobgoblin⌝ A trial, come!SIR HUGH, ⌜as a fairy⌝ Come, will this wood take fire?⌜Sir Hugh puts a taper to Falstaff’s finger, and he starts.⌝FALSTAFF 95O, O, O!MISTRESS QUICKLY, ⌜as Fairy Queen⌝ Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire! About him, fairies. Sing a scornful rhyme, And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.⌜Here they pinch him and sing about him, and Doctor
Caius comes one way and steals away a boy in white.
And Slender comes another way; he takes a boy in
green. And Fenton steals Mistress Anne Page.⌝⌜FAIRIES sing⌝ Fie on sinful fantasy!
100 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.
105 Pinch him, fairies, mutually;
Pinch him for his villainy. Pinch him and burn him and turn him about, Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out.⌜A noise of hunting is made within, and all the fairies
run away from Falstaff, who pulls off his buck’s head
and rises up.⌝ Enter Page, ⌜Mistress Page,
Mistress Ford and⌝ Ford.PAGE, ⌜to Falstaff⌝ Nay, do not fly. I think we have watched you now.110 Will none but Herne the Hunter serve your turn?MISTRESS PAGE I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher.— Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives?
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⌜She points to the horns.⌝ See you these, husband? Do not these fair yokes Become the forest better than the town?FORD, ⌜to Falstaff⌝ 115Now, sir, who’s a cuckold now? Master ⌜Brook,⌝ 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 twenty120 pounds of money, which must be paid to Master ⌜Brook.⌝ His horses are arrested for it, Master ⌜Brook.⌝MISTRESS FORD Sir John, we have had ill luck. We could never meet. I will never take you for my love125 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.FALSTAFF And these are not fairies. I was three or four times in the thought they were not fairies; and yet130 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 ’tis upon135 ill employment.SIR HUGH Sir John Falstaff, serve Got and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you.FORD Well said, Fairy Hugh.SIR HUGH And leave you your jealousies too, I pray140 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 it wants matter to prevent so gross o’erreaching145 as this? Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? Shall I have a coxcomb of frieze? ’Tis time I were choked with a piece of toasted cheese.
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SIR HUGH Seese is not good to give putter. Your belly is all putter.FALSTAFF 150“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 we155 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?MISTRESS PAGE 160A 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?SIR HUGH 165And given to fornications, and to taverns, and sack, and wine, and metheglins, and to drinkings and swearings and starings, pribbles and prabbles?FALSTAFF Well, I am your theme. You have the start of170 me. I am dejected. I am not able to answer the Welsh 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,175 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 to180 laugh at my wife, that now laughs at thee. Tell her Master Slender hath married her daughter.MISTRESS PAGE, ⌜aside⌝ Doctors doubt that. If Anne Page be my daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius’ wife.
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Enter Slender.SLENDER 185Whoa, ho, ho, Father Page!PAGE Son, how now! How now, son! Have you dispatched?SLENDER “Dispatched”? I’ll make the best in Gloucestershire know on ’t. Would I were hanged, la, else!PAGE 190Of 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’ th’ church, I would have swinged him, or he should have swinged me. If I did not think it195 had been Anne Page, would I might never stir! And ’tis a post-master’s boy.PAGE Upon my life, then, you took the wrong—SLENDER What need you tell me that? I think so, when I took a boy for a girl. If I had been married to him,200 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?SLENDER 205I 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 post-master’s boy.MISTRESS PAGE Good George, be not angry. I knew of210 your purpose, turned my daughter into ⌜green,⌝ and indeed she is 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 garçon, a boy; un paysan, by215 gar, a boy. It is not Anne Page. By gar, I am cozened.
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MISTRESS PAGE Why? Did you take her in ⌜green?⌝DOCTOR CAIUS Ay, be gar, and ’tis a boy. Be gar, I’ll raise all Windsor.FORD 220This is strange. Who hath got the right Anne?Enter Fenton and Anne Page.PAGE My heart misgives me. Here comes Master Fenton.— How now, Master Fenton!ANNE Pardon, good father. Good my mother, pardon.PAGE Now, mistress, how chance you went not with225 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.230 The truth is, she and I, long since contracted, Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us. Th’ offense is holy that she hath committed, And this deceit loses the name of craft, Of disobedience, or unduteous title,235 Since therein she doth evitate and shun A thousand irreligious cursèd hours Which forcèd marriage would have brought upon her.FORD, ⌜to Page and Mistress Page⌝ Stand not amazed. Here is no remedy. In love the heavens themselves do guide the state.240 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.245 What cannot be eschewed must be embraced.
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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 home250 And laugh this sport o’er by a country fire— 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.They exit.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
