Eva. Elves, lift your names; filence, you airy toys Cricket, to Windfor chimneys fhalt thou leap: Where fires thou find'ft unrak'd, and hearths unfwept, There pinch the maids as blue as bilbery. Our radiant Queen hates fluts and fluttery. Fal. They're fairies; he, that speaks to them, fhall die. I'll wink and couch; no man their works must eye. [Lyes down upon his face. Eva. Where's Pede? go you, and where you find a maid, That, ere fhe fleep, hath thrice her prayers faid, But commended themselves to the protection of heaven. So Shakepeare makes one, on his lying down, fay, From fairies, and the tempters of the night, Protect us, heav'n! As this is the fenfe, let us fee how the common reading expreffes it; Raife up, the organs of her fantafie, i. e. inflame her imagination with fenfual ideas; which is just the contrary to what the Poet would have the fpeaker fay. We cannot therefore but conclude he wrote, REIN up the organs of her fartafie, i. e. curb them, that the be no more difturbed by irregular imaginations, than children in their fleep. For, he adds immediately, Sleep fhe as found as careless infancy. So in the Tempest, But thofe, that fleep, and think not on their fins, fhins. Quic. About, about; Search Windfor caftle, elves, within and out. The feveral chairs of Order look your fcour, Like faphire, pearl, and rich embroidery, } Eva. Pray you, lock hand in hand, yourselves in And twenty glow-worms fhall our lanthorns be, Fal. Heav'ns defend me from that Welch fairy, left he transform me to a piece of cheese! Eva. Vild worm, thou waft o'er-look'd ev'n in thy birth. PLE, blue and white, In emrold-tuffs, flow'rs PUR- i. e. let there be blue and white Quic. With trial-fire touch me his finger-end; Eva. A trial, come. [They burn him with their tapers, and pinch him. Come, will this wood take fire? Fal. Oh, oh, oh! Quic. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in defire; About him, fairies, fing a fcornful rhime: And, as you trip, ftill pinch him to your time. Eva. It is right, indeed; he is full of leacheries and iniquity. The SONG. Fie on finful phantafy, As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher. Pinch him for his villainy: Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about, 'Till candles, and star-light, and moon-shine be out, During this Song, they pinch him. Doctor Caius comes one way, and steals away a boy in green; Slender another way, and he takes away a boy in white; and Fenton comes, and fteals way Mrs. Ann Page, A noise of hunting is made within. All the Fairies run away. Falstaff pulls off his Buck's head, and rifes. SCENE V. Enter Page, Ford, &c. They lay hold on him. Page. Nay, do not fly; I think, we've watcht you now; Will none but Herne the hunter ferve your turn? Mrs. Page. I pray you, come; hold up the jeft no higher. Now, good Sir John, how like you Windfor wives? See you thefe, hufbands? do not thefe fair Yoaks? Become the Foreft better than the Town? Ford. Now, Sir, who's a cuckold now? mafter Brook, Falstaff's a knave, a cuckoldly knave, here are his horns, mafter Brook; and, mafter Brook, he hath enjoy'd nothing of Ford's but his buck-basket, his cudgel, and twenty pounds of mony, which must be paid to mafter Brook; his horfes are arrested for it, mafter 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 afs. See you these bufbands? Do not thefe fair Oaks Become the Foreft better than the Town] What Oaks, in the Name of Nonfenfe, do our fagacious Editors make Mrs. Page talk of? The Oaks in the Park? But there was no Intention of tranfplanting them into the Town. -Talis infcitie me quidem pudet, pigetque. The firft Folio reads, as the Poet intended, Yoaks: and Mrs. Page's Meaning is this. She fpeaks it to her own, and Mrs. Ford's Hufband, and asks them, if they fee the Horns in Falfaff's Hand; and then, alluding to them as the Types of Cuckoldom, puts the Queftion, whether those Yoaks are not more proper in the Forefts than in the Town, i. e. than in their Families, as a Reproach to them. THEOBALD. Ford, |