To guide our measure round about the tree. Fal. Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese! Pis. Vile worm, thou wast o'er-look'd even in thy birth.1 Mrs. 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, Pis. A trial, come. Evans. Come, will this wood take fire? Fal. Oh, oh, oh! [They burn him with their tapers. Mrs. Quick. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire! About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme: And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time. Evans. It is right; indeed he is full of lecheries and iniquity. SONG. Fie on sinful fantasy! Lust is but a bloody fire,2 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 star-light, and moonshine be out. During this song, the fairies pinch Falstaff. Doctor 1 Slighted as soon as born. 2 A fire in the blood. 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 Mrs. 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. 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 1 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 am made an ass. 1 Horns. 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 'tis upon ill employment! Evans. Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you. Ford. Well said, fairy Hugh. Evans. 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'erreaching as this? Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? Shall I have a coxcomb of frize? 2 'tis time I were choked with a piece of toasted cheese. Evans. 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 latewalking through the realm. A puppet thrown at in Lent, like Shrove cocks. |