Fairies use flowers for their charactery.
Away; disperse: but till 'tis one o'clock,
Our dance of custom round about the oak
Of Herne the hunter, let us not forget.

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

Quick. 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!

Quick. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire !

About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme;
And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.

80

90

SONG.

Fie on sinful fantasy!
Fie on lust and luxury!
Lust is but a bloody fire,
Kindled with unchaste desire,
Fed in heart, whose flames aspire
As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.
Pinch him, fairies, mutually;

Pinch him for his villany;

Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,
Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out.

During this song they pinch FALSTAFF. Doc-
Tor Caius comes one way, and steals away
a boy in green; SLENDER another way, and
takes off a boy in white; and FENTON comes,
and steals away Mrs. ANNE PAGE.
noise of hunting is heard within. All the
Fairies run away. FALSTAFF pulls off his
buck's head, and rises.

Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE, and
MISTRESS FORD.

A

Page. Nay, do not fly; I think we have watch'd you now :

Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn? Mrs. Page. I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher.

Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives ? 110 See you these, husband? do not these fair yokes Become the forest better than the town?

Ford. Now, sir, who's a cuckold now? Master

100

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; 120 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 130 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-aLent, 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 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'erreaching 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.

140

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

Fal. 'Seese' and 'putter'! have I lived to 150 stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of English? This is enough to be the decay of lust and late-walking 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?

Evans. And given to fornications, and to taverns and sack and wine and metheglins, and to drinkings and swearings and starings, pribbles and prabbles?

160

Fal. Well, I am your theme: you have the 170 start of me; I am dejected; I am not able to answer the Welsh flannel; ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me: 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 pandar: 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 180

thee to laugh at my wife, that now laughs at thee: tell her Master Slender hath married her daughter.

Mrs. Page. [Aside] Doctors doubt that: if Anne Page be my daugher, she is, by this, Doctor Caius' wife.

Enter SLENDER.

Slen. Whoa, ho! ho, father Page!

Page. Son, how now! how now, son! have you dispatched ?

Slen. Dispatched! I'll make the best in Glou- 190 cestershire 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.

Page. Upon my life, then, you took the 200 wrong.

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

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

Slen. I went to her in white, and cried 'mum,' and she cried 'budget,' as Anne and I had ap- 210 pointed; and yet it was not Anne, but a postmaster's boy.

Mrs. Page. Good George, be not angry: I knew of your purpose; turned my daughter into