it was to be beaten, till lately. Follow me: I'll tell you strange things of this knave Ford: on whom tonight I will be revenged, and I will deliver his wife into your hand.-Follow: Strange things in hand, master Brook! follow.

SCENE II.-Windsor Park.

[Exeunt.

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.

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

Shal. 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 MRS. PAGE, MRS. 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 despatch 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 heartbreak.

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.

oak!

To the oak, to the

[Exeunt.

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 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?

backs, what shall poor men do?

Enter MRS. FORD and MRS. 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; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.

[Embracing her. Mrs. Ford. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.

Fal. Divide me like a bribe-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?a 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.

a Do I understand woodman's craft-the hunter's art.

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.

Anne. Fairies, black, grey, green, and white, You moonshine revellers, and shades of night, You orphan-heirs of fixed destiny,

Attend your office and your quality.

Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes.b

Pist. 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.

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
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,

a These poetical speeches belong to Anne as the Fairy Queen. In all modern editions they are very inappropriately given to Quickly. We have traced the origin of this mistake, which is perfectly evident. (See Pictorial and Library editions.)

b The o-yes, the oyez, of the crier of a proclamation, was clearly a monosyllable, rhyming to toys.

• Elevate her fancy.

In state as wholesome, as in state 't is 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 bless'd!
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,
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 't is one o'clock,
Our dance of custom, round about the oak
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 be,
To guide our measure round about the tree.
But, 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. Vild 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.

Pist. A trial, come.

Eva.

Fal. Oh, oh, oh!

Come, will this wood take fire? [They burn him with their tapers.

Anne. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!

a Pense is a dissyllable-a proof that Shakspere knew the distinction between French verse and prose.