Fal. I went to her, Master Brook, as you see, like a poor old man: but I came from her, Master Brook, like a poor old woman. That same knave Ford, her husband, hath the finest mad devil of jealousy in him, Master Brook, that ever governed frenzy:-I will tell you:-he beat me grievously, in the shape of a woman; for in the shape of man, Master Brook, I fear not Goliath with a weaver's beam; because I know also life is a shuttle. I am in haste; go along with me: I'll tell you all, Master Brook. Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipped top, I knew not what 'twas 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. [Exeunt. SCENE II-Windsor Park. Enter PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER. Page. Come, come; we'll couch i' the castleditch 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. SCENE V.—Another part of the Park. Enter FALSTAFF disguised as Herne, 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:-Oh, 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 :- Oh, omnipotent love! how near the god drew to the complexion of a goose!-A fault done first in the form of a beast ;—and then another fault in the semblance Enter MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD, and of a fowl;-think on't, Jove; a foul fault. For me, DOCTOR CAIUS. I am here a Windsor stag; and the fattest, I think, the forest.- Who comes here? my doe? Enter MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE. Mrs. Ford. Sir John! art thou here, my deer? Fal. My doe!-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, I will shelter me here. [Embracing her. Mrs. Ford. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart. 5. Eringoes. A sea-side plant, used in making sugar-plums called "kissing-comfits:" as were also potatoes, when first introduced into England. This kind of sweetmeat found favour among gallants of Falstaff's description. 6 Bribed buck. A buck cut up into portions for distribution: from French, bribe, a piece or portion. The Welsh word brib, a scrap or fragment, supports this derivation. 7. The fellow of this walk. The forester; to whom it was the custom to present as perquisites the shoulders of venison cut from the buck when-in the language of the chase-the 'breaking up' of a deer took place. "Woodman" was the title given to the forester's attendant; but it applied to one Mrs. Ford. Mrs. Page. Away, away! [They run off. Fal. I think the devil will not have me, lest the oil that's in me should set his place on fire; he would never else cross me thus. Enter SIR HUGH EVANS, as a Satyr: PISTOL, as Hobgoblin: ANNE PAGE, as the Fairy Queen, attended by her Brother and others, as Fairies, with waxen tapers on their heads. Queen. Fairies, black, grey, green, and white, You moonshine revellers, and shades of night, generally skilled in the sport of hunting game, and is used equivocally by Falstaff. 8. Queen. This prefix is given Qui and Q. through this scene in the Folio, and may have meant that the actress who played Mrs. Quickly was to double her part with this one; but as in Act iv. sc. 4, in Act iv. sc. 6, and in Act v. sc. 3, it is distinctly said that Anne Page is to enact the Fairy Queen, there is every probability that "Queen" is intended to be the VOL. I. 17 You orphan-heirs of fixèd destiny," Pist. Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys! Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap; 12 Where fires thou find'st unrak'd, and hearths unswept; There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry: 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. Evans. Where's Bede ?-Go you, and where you find a maid, That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said, Sleep she as sound as careless infancy : shins. Queen. About, about; Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out: prefix here, and that the actress who plays Anne Page is to deliver these speeches. 9. Orphan-heirs of fixed destiny. Beings created orphans by fate; in allusion to supposed spontaneous and ex-natural births, such as Merlin's, and others of his stamp, holding place in popular superstition, who were believed to have been born without fathers. There is a similar reference in "2 Henry IV.," iv. 4-"Unfather'd heirs, and loathly births of nature." 10. Quality. Used for appointed duty or performance. 11. O-yes. Old French, eyez, hear ye. "O-yes" still forms the commencement of a "Crier's" official proclamation. 12. Shalt thou leap. This has been changed to when thou'st leapt,' in order to make the couplet here rhyme like the rest; but many imperfectly rhyming couplets are to be found elsewhere in Shakespeare, when the general passage is in rhyme. Evans. Pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves in order set; And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be, Fal. Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese! Pist. Vile worm, thou wast o'erlook'd1 even in thy birth. Queen. 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. Evans. Come, will this wood take fire ? [They burn him with their tapers. Fal. Oh, oh, oh ! Queen. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire !— About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme! And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time. SONG. Fie on sinful fantasy! Fie on vice and luxury! Pinch him for his villainy ; Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about, During this song the Fairies pinch FALSTAFF. DOCTOR 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 within. The Fairies run away. FALSTAFF pulls off his buck's head, and rises. Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE, and MISTRESS FORD. They lay hold on FALSTAFF. Page. Nay, do not fly; I think we have watch'd you now. 19 Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives?See you these, husband? do not these fair yokes 20 Become the forest better than the town? Ford. Now, sir, who's a gull now?-Master Brook, Falstaff's a knave, a rascally knave; here are his horns, Master Brook: and, Master Brook, he hath enjoyed nothing of Ford's but his buckbasket, his cudgel, and twenty pounds of money, which must be paid to Master Brook; 21 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. Ford. Ay, 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'er-reaching as this? Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? shall I have a coxcomb of frize? 'Tis time I were choked with a piece of toasted cheese. Evans. Seese is not goot to give putter; your paunch 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 vice and latewalking 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 sin, 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? And as poor as Job? Page. Ford. And as wicked as his wife? Evans. And given to taverns, and sack, and wine, and metheglins, and to drinkings, and swearings and starings, pribbles and prabbles ? Fal. Well, I am your theme: you have the start of me; I am dejected; I am not able to answer the Welsh flannel; ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me: 23 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 broker: 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 to-night at my house; where I will desire thee to laugh at my wife, that now laughs at thee: tell her Master Slender hath married her daughter. Slen. Whoo! ho! ho! father Page! Page. Son, how now! how now, son! have you despatched ? Slen. Despatched!-I'll make the best in Glostershire know on't; would I were hanged, la, else! Page. Of what, son? Slen. I came yonder at Eton to marry Mistress Anne Page, and she's a great lubberly boy. If it had not been i' the church, I would have swinged him, or he should have swinged me. If I did not think it had been Anne Page, would I might never stir!-and 'tis a postmaster's boy. mortification of the witty Falstaff at being outwitted, is a profound lesson; while that touch conveyed in the words, "I was three or four times in the thought they were not fairies," preserves the shrewd-sensed supremacy of the character, even while rendering the moral all the more pungent. 23. Ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me. 'Ignorance itself can sound the depths of my shallowness in this.' Falstaff, true to himself, has wit at command, even when deploring his own lack of brains; and the retorts he flings at his outwitters are thorough self-vindicators. "Toasted cheese" and "Welsh flannel" amply revenge him. 24. Posset. A warm drink made of milk curdled with wine or ale, much in favour among our ancestors as a night-draught before going to bed. There is something especially cordial in the introduction of this proposal from the good-natured yeoman, |