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 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. [Exeunt. SCENE II.-Windsor Park. Enter PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER. PAGE. Come, come; we'll couch i' th' 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. (*) First folio omits, daughter. b And mince.] To mince meant to walk with affected modesty. A nay-word,-] That is, a watch-word. SCENE III.-The Street in Windsor. Enter MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS 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 'tis no matter; better a little chiding, than a great deal of heart-break. 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; to the oak, to the oak! [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 backs, what shall poor men do? For me, I am here a Windsor stag; and the fattest, I think, i' th' forest: send me a cool rut-time, Jove, or who can blame me to piss my tallow? Who comes here? my doe? Enter MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS 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. a MRS. FORD. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart. FAL. Divide me like a brib'd-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? 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 without. MRS. PAGE. Alas! what noise? a Enter Sir Hugh Evans, &c.] This stage-direction is chiefly made up from that in the early quarto. The folio has only, "Enter fairies." The introduction of Pistol and Mistress Quickly in this scene, is to be accounted for on the supposition that the necessity of the theatre compelled the performers of these characters to take part among the fairies, and that the names thus got inserted in the printed copies. b QUEEN.] There is nothing inconsistent in the prefix Quic. to these speeches in the quarto, because Mistress Quickly, or rather the actor who personated that character, was intended to "double" with it the Fairy Queen; but in the enlarged play, as Anne Page enacts the latter part, the prefix should certainly be "Queen." You orphan-heirs of fixed destiny,-] Warburton proposed, 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 [Lies down upon his face. EVA. Where's Pede?*-Go you, and where eye. 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; Put those as sleep, and think not on their sins, Pinch them, arms, legs, packs, shoulders, sides, and shins. QUEEN. About, about; Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out; Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room; (*) First folio, Bede. with plausibility, to read, "Ouphen heirs," but see note (3), page 630. d QUEEN. Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy o-yes. PIST Elves, list your names; silence, you airg toys.] "These two lines were certainly intended to rhyme together, as the preceding and subsequent couplets do; and accordingly, in the old editions, the final words of each line are printed ages and toyes. This therefore is a striking instance of the inconvenience which has arisen from modernizing the orthography of Shakespeare."-TYRWHITT. That it may stand till the perpetual doom, And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns pe, FAL. Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy! lest he transform me to a piece of cheese! PIST. Vile worm, thou wast o'er-look'd' even in QUEEN. With trial-fire touch me his finger-end: PIST. A trial, come! EVA. Come, will this wood take fire? QUEEN. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire! SONG. Fie on sinful fantasy! Lust is but a bloody fire, Kindled with unchaste desire, Fed in heart, whose flames aspire, Pinch him, fairies, mutually; 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 without. All the fairies run away, FALSTAFF pulls off his buck's head, and rises. Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE, and MIS- PAGE. Nay, do not fly: I think, we have. Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn? Now, good sir John, how like you Windsor wives? 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. ass. FAL. I do begin to perceive that I am made an 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 As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher. a-lent, when 'tis upon ill employment! commentators, is to one of the methods employed to tame, or "Another way I have to man my haggard, And again, in "Othello," Act III. Sc. 3: EVA. Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you. FORD. Well said, fairy Hugh. pray EVA. And leave you your jealousies too, I 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 frieze? a 'tis time I were choked with a piece of toasted cheese. EVA. 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? a A coxcomb of frieze?] A fool's cap made of frieze. Wales was celebrated for this description of cloth. This is enough to be the decay of lust 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 hell, 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? PAGE. And as poor as Job? FORD. And as wicked as his wife? EVA. And given to fornications, and to taverns, and sack, and wine, and metheglins, and to drinkings, and swearings, and starings, pribbles and prabbles? |