SCENE 5.—Another Part of the Park. 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 Enter FALSTAFF disguised, with a buck's away; follow me. [Exeunt. SCENE 3.-The Street in Windsor. Enter MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD and DR. 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 't is 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. Those that betray them do no treachery. oak, to the oak! SECNE 4.- Windsor Park. Enter EVANS and FAIRIES. To the [Exeunt. 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. 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 Î that in some respects makes a beast a man; in some others, 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? 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; i let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here. Mrs. Ford. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart. Fal. 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 like Herne the hunter?-Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience; he makes restitution. As I am a true spirit, welcome! [Noise without. Mrs. Page. Alas! what noise? Mrs. Ford. Heaven forgive our sins! Fal. What should this be? Mrs. Ford and 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. 1 Sea-holly. The shoulders of deer were formerly claimed by keepers as a perquisite. Enter Sir HUGH EVANS, like a satyr; Mis- | More fertile-fresh than all the field to see; TRESS QUICKLY and PISTOL, ANNE PAGE, And Hony soit qui mal y pense, write, as the Fairy Queen, attended by her In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue and brother and others, dressed like fairies, white; with waxen tapers on their heads. Queen. Fairies, black, gray, green, and white, You moon-shine revellers, and shades of You orphan-heirs of fixed destiny,' Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou 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. Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery, Fairies use flowers for their charactery. Of Herne the hunter, let us not forget. Eva. Pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves in order set: And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns pe, To guide our measure round apout the tree. Put, stay: I smell a man of middle earth. Fal Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese! Pist. Vile worm, thou wast o'erlook'd even in thy birth.1 Queen. With trial-fire touch me his finger-end : [Lies down upon his face. If he be chaste, the flame will back de Eva. Where's Pede ?-Go where you find a maid, you, and That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers Raise up the organs of her fantasy, Put those that sleep and think not on their Pinch them, arms, legs, packs, shoulders, sides and shins.. Queen. About, about: Search Windsor castle, elves, within and scend, It is the flesh of a corrupted heart. Pist. A trial, come ! Fie on sinful fantasy! Pinch him, fairies, mutually; Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him Till candles, and starlight, and moonshine be out. 1 Orphans in respect of your real parents, and now [During this song the fairies pinch FAL dependent only on Destiny herself.-FARMER. 2 Companions. 3 Impression. 1 Slighted as soon as born. STAFF. DR. 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 without. All the fairies run away. FALSTAFF pulls off his buck's head and rises. Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE and MISTRESS FORD. Page. Nay, do not fly: [They lay hold on him.] 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? Ford. Now, 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 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 made an ass. Ford. Ay, and an ox too; both proofs are extant. am the 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,2 when 't is upon ill employ ment. Eva. Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you. Ford. Well said, fairy Hugh. 1 Horns. 2 A puppet thrown at in Lent, like Shrove cocks. 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 as this? Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? Shall I have a coxcomb of frieze ?1 T is 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, and pribbles and prab bles? Fal. Well, I am your theme: you have the start of me; I am dejected; I am not able to answer the Welsh flannel: 3 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 afflic tion. Page. Yet be cheerful, knight; thou 1 A fool's cap of Welsh material. 2 Sweet fermented drinks. 8 Flannel was originally the manufacture of Wales. 4 Allusion appears to be made to the examination of a Carpenter's work by the plummet held over it, of which line Sir Hugh is hore represented as the lead.HENLEY. wrong. Slen. What need you tell me that? I think so, when I took a boy for a girl. If I had been married to him, 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? Slen. I 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. Mrs. Page. Good George, be not angry : I knew of your purpose; turned my daughter into green; and, indeed, she is now with the Doctor at the deanery, and there married. Enter CAIUS. Caius. Vere is Mistress Page! By gar, I am cozened; I ha' married un garçon, a boy; un paisan, by gar, a boy; it is not Anne Page; by gar, I am cozened. Mrs. Page. Why, did you take her in green? Caius. Ay, be gar, and 't is a boy; be gar, I'll raise all Windsor. Exit. Ford. This is strange. Who hath got the right Anne ? Page. My heart misgives me here comes Master Fenton. Enter FENTON and Anne. How now, Master Fenton ? Anne. Pardon, good father! good my mother, pardon! Page. Now, Mistress? how chance you went not with Master Slender ? Mrs. Page. Why went you not with master Doctor, maid? Fent. You do amaze her. Hear the truth of it. You would have married her most shamefully, Where there was no proportion held in love. The truth is, she and I, long since contracted, Are now so sure, that nothing can dissolve Boy. Mine host Pistol, you must come to my master,—and you, hostess ;-he is very sick, and would to bed.-Good Bardolph, put thy face between his sheets, and do the office of a warming pan : 'faith, he's very ill. Bard. Away, you rogue. Hostess. By my troth, he'll yield the crow a pudding one of these days; the king has killed his heart.-Good husband, come home [Exeunt Hostess and Boy. presently. Re-enter HOSTESS. Bardolph, be blithe.-Nym rouse thy vaunting veins; Boy, bristle thy courage up; for Falstaff he is dead; And we must yearn therefor. any Bard. Would I were with him, whereSome'er he is, either in heaven, or in hell! Hos. Nay, sure, he's not in hell; he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. 'A made a finer end, and went away, an it had been christom child; 'a parted even just between twelve and one, e'en at the turning o' the tide for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers and smile upon his finger's ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green fields. How now Sir John? quoth I: What, man, be of good cheer. So 'a cried out-God, God, God! three or four times: now I, to comfort him, bid him 'a should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet: so, 'a bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and so upward and upward, and all was cold as any stone. Nym. They say, he cried out of sack. Bard. And of women. Hos. As ever you came of women, come in quickly to Sir John: ah, poor heart! het is so shaken of a burning quotidian tertian, that it is most lamentable to behold. Sweet men come to him. Nym. The king hath run bad humors on the knight, that's the even of it. Pist. Nym, thou hast spoke the right; His heart is fracted, and corroborate. Nym. The king is a good king: but it must be as it may; he passes some humors, and careers. Pist. Let us condole the knight; for, lambkins, we will live. Exeunt. SCENE 3.-Pistol's House. Enter PISTOL, HOSTESS, NYM, BARDOLPH and Boy. Hos. Pr'ythee, honey-sweet husband, let me bring thee to Staines. Pist. No; for my manly heart doth yearn. Hos. 'A could never abide carnation; was a color he never liked. Boy. 'A said once the devil would have him about women. Hos. 'A did in some sort, indeed, handle women; but then he was rheumatic; and talked of the whore of Babylon. Boy. Do you not remember 'a saw a flea stick upon Bardolph's nose; and 'a said it was a black soul burning in hell? Bard. Well, the fuel is gone that maintained that fire: that's all the riches I got in his service. THE FALSTAFF LETTERS. [THESE Letters are so remarkable for their Shakspearean quality and for their absolute consistency with the personalities concerned, that it is safe to say they will be keenly relished by every lover of Shakspeare, and es |