1    The Windsor bell hath struck twelve; the minute
2    draws on. Now, the hot-blooded gods assist me!
3    Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa; love
4    set on thy horns. O powerful love! that, in some
5    respects, makes a beast a man, in some other, a man
6    a beast. You were also, Jupiter, a swan for the love
7    of Leda. O omnipotent Love! how near the god drew
8    to the complexion of a goose! A fault done first in
9    the form of a beast. O Jove, a beastly fault! And
10   then another fault in the semblance of a fowl; think
11   on 't, Jove; a foul fault! When gods have hot
12   backs, what shall poor men do? For me, I am here a
13   Windsor stag; and the fattest, I think, i' the
14   forest. Send me a cool rut-time, Jove, or who can
15   blame me to piss my tallow? Who comes here? my
16   doe?

17   Sir John! art thou there, my deer? my male deer?

18   My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain
19   potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Green
20   Sleeves, hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes; let
21   there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.

22   Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.

23   Divide me like a bribe buck, each a haunch: I will
24   keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow
25   of this walk, and my horns I bequeath your husbands.
26   Am I a woodman, ha? Speak I like Herne the hunter?
27   Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience; he makes
28   restitution. As I am a true spirit, welcome!

29   Alas, what noise?

30   Heaven forgive our sins

31   What should this be?

32   Away, away!

33   I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the
34   oil that's in me should set hell on fire; he would
35   never else cross me thus.

36   Fairies, black, grey, green, and white,
37   You moonshine revellers and shades of night,
38   You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,
39   Attend your office and your quality.
40   Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes.

41   Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys.
42   Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap:
43   Where fires thou find'st unraked and hearths unswept,
44   There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry:
45   Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery.

46   They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die:
47   I'll wink and couch: no man their works must eye.

48   Where's Bede? Go you, and where you find a maid
49   That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said,
50   Raise up the organs of her fantasy;
51   Sleep she as sound as careless infancy:
52   But those as sleep and think not on their sins,
53   Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides and shins.

54   About, about;
55   Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out:
56   Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room:
57   That it may stand till the perpetual doom,
58   In state as wholesome as in state 'tis fit,
59   Worthy the owner, and the owner it.
60   The several chairs of order look you scour
61   With juice of balm and every precious flower:
62   Each fair instalment, coat, and several crest,
63   With loyal blazon, evermore be blest!
64   And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,
65   Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring:
66   The expressure that it bears, green let it be,
67   More fertile-fresh than all the field to see;
68   And 'Honi soit qui mal y pense' write
69   In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue and white;
70   Let sapphire, pearl and rich embroidery,
71   Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee:
72   Fairies use flowers for their charactery.
73   Away; disperse: but till 'tis one o'clock,
74   Our dance of custom round about the oak
75   Of Herne the hunter, let us not forget.

76   Pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves in order set
77   And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be,
78   To guide our measure round about the tree.
79   But, stay; I smell a man of middle-earth.

80   Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he
81   transform me to a piece of cheese!

82   Vile worm, thou wast o'erlook'd even in thy birth.

83   With trial-fire touch me his finger-end:
84   If he be chaste, the flame will back descend
85   And turn him to no pain; but if he start,
86   It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.

87   A trial, come.

88   Come, will this wood take fire?

89   Oh, Oh, Oh!

90   Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!
91   About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme;
92   And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.
93   Fie on sinful fantasy!
94   Fie on lust and luxury!
95   Lust is but a bloody fire,
96   Kindled with unchaste desire,
97   Fed in heart, whose flames aspire
98   As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.
99   Pinch him, fairies, mutually;
100  Pinch him for his villany;
101  Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,
102  Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out.

103  Nay, do not fly; I think we have watch'd you now
104  Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn?

105  I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher
106  Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives?
107  See you these, husband? do not these fair yokes
108  Become the forest better than the town?

109  Now, sir, who's a cuckold now? Master Brook,
110  Falstaff's a knave, a cuckoldly knave; here are his
111  horns, Master Brook: and, Master Brook, he hath
112  enjoyed nothing of Ford's but his buck-basket, his
113  cudgel, and twenty pounds of money, which must be
114  paid to Master Brook; his horses are arrested for
115  it, Master Brook.

116  Sir John, we have had ill luck; we could never meet.
117  I will never take you for my love again; but I will
118  always count you my deer.

119  I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass.

120  Ay, and an ox too: both the proofs are extant.

121  And these are not fairies? I was three or four
122  times in the thought they were not fairies: and yet
123  the guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprise of my
124  powers, drove the grossness of the foppery into a
125  received belief, in despite of the teeth of all
126  rhyme and reason, that they were fairies. See now
127  how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when 'tis upon
128  ill employment!

129  Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your
130  desires, and fairies will not pinse you.

131  Well said, fairy Hugh.

132  And leave your jealousies too, I pray you.

133  I will never mistrust my wife again till thou art
134  able to woo her in good English.

135  Have I laid my brain in the sun and dried it, that
136  it wants matter to prevent so gross o'erreaching as
137  this? Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? shall I
138  have a coxcomb of frize? 'Tis time I were choked
139  with a piece of toasted cheese.

140  Seese is not good to give putter; your belly is all putter.

141  'Seese' and 'putter'! have I lived to stand at the
142  taunt of one that makes fritters of English? This
143  is enough to be the decay of lust and late-walking
144  through the realm.

145  Why Sir John, do you think, though we would have the
146  virtue out of our hearts by the head and shoulders
147  and have given ourselves without scruple to hell,
148  that ever the devil could have made you our delight?

149  What, a hodge-pudding? a bag of flax?

150  A puffed man?

151  Old, cold, withered and of intolerable entrails?

152  And one that is as slanderous as Satan?

153  And as poor as Job?

154  And as wicked as his wife?

155  And given to fornications, and to taverns and sack
156  and wine and metheglins, and to drinkings and
157  swearings and starings, pribbles and prabbles?

158  Well, I am your theme: you have the start of me; I
159  am dejected; I am not able to answer the Welsh
160  flannel; ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me: use
161  me as you will.

162  Marry, sir, we'll bring you to Windsor, to one
163  Master Brook, that you have cozened of money, to
164  whom you should have been a pander: over and above
165  that you have suffered, I think to repay that money
166  will be a biting affliction.

167  Yet be cheerful, knight: thou shalt eat a posset
168  to-night at my house; where I will desire thee to
169  laugh at my wife, that now laughs at thee: tell her
170  Master Slender hath married her daughter.

Aside
171   Doctors doubt that: if Anne Page be my
172  daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius' wife.

173  Whoa ho! ho, father Page!

174  Son, how now! how now, son! have you dispatched?

175  Dispatched! I'll make the best in Gloucestershire
176  know on't; would I were hanged, la, else.

177  Of what, son?

178  I came yonder at Eton to marry Mistress Anne Page,
179  and she's a great lubberly boy. If it had not been
180  i' the church, I would have swinged him, or he
181  should have swinged me. If I did not think it had
182  been Anne Page, would I might never stir!--and 'tis
183  a postmaster's boy.

184  Upon my life, then, you took the wrong.

185  What need you tell me that? I think so, when I took
186  a boy for a girl. If I had been married to him, for
187  all he was in woman's apparel, I would not have had
188  him.

189  Why, this is your own folly. Did not I tell you how
190  you should know my daughter by her garments?

191  I went to her in white, and cried 'mum,' and she
192  cried 'budget,' as Anne and I had appointed; and yet
193  it was not Anne, but a postmaster's boy.

194  Good George, be not angry: I knew of your purpose;
195  turned my daughter into green; and, indeed, she is
196  now with the doctor at the deanery, and there married.

197  Vere is Mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened: I ha'
198  married un garcon, a boy; un paysan, by gar, a boy;
199  it is not Anne Page: by gar, I am cozened.

200  Why, did you take her in green?

201  Ay, by gar, and 'tis a boy: by gar, I'll raise all Windsor.

202  This is strange. Who hath got the right Anne?

203  My heart misgives me: here comes Master Fenton.
Enter FENTON and ANNE PAGE
204  How now, Master Fenton!

205  Pardon, good father! good my mother, pardon!

206  Now, mistress, how chance you went not with Master Slender?

207  Why went you not with master doctor, maid?

208  You do amaze her: hear the truth of it.
209  You would have married her most shamefully,
210  Where there was no proportion held in love.
211  The truth is, she and I, long since contracted,
212  Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us.
213  The offence is holy that she hath committed;
214  And this deceit loses the name of craft,
215  Of disobedience, or unduteous title,
216  Since therein she doth evitate and shun
217  A thousand irreligious cursed hours,
218  Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.

219  Stand not amazed; here is no remedy:
220  In love the heavens themselves do guide the state;
221  Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.

222  I am glad, though you have ta'en a special stand to
223  strike at me, that your arrow hath glanced.

224  Well, what remedy? Fenton, heaven give thee joy!
225  What cannot be eschew'd must be embraced.

226  When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chased.

227  Well, I will muse no further. Master Fenton,
228  Heaven give you many, many merry days!
229  Good husband, let us every one go home,
230  And laugh this sport o'er by a country fire;
231  Sir John and all.

232  Let it be so. Sir John,
233  To Master Brook you yet shall hold your word
234  For he tonight shall lie with Mistress Ford.