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 10 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' the 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 20 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.

Mrs. Ford. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart,

Fal. Divide me like a bribed 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 wood- 30

man, 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!

Mrs. Page. Alas, what noise?

[Noise within.

Mrs. Ford. Heaven forgive our sins!

Fal. What should this be?

Mrs. Ford.

Mrs. Page.} Away, away!

[They run off.

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

Enter SIR HUGH EVANS, disguised as before;
PISTOL, as Hobgoblin; MISTRESS QUICKLY,
ANNE PAGE, and others as Fairies, with tapers.

Quick. Fairies, black, grey, green, and white,
You moonshine revellers, and shades of night,
You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,
Attend your office and your quality.

Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes.

Pist. Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys.

Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap:
Where fires thou find'st unraked and hearths un-

swept,

There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry:

Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery.

Fal. They are fairies; he that speaks to them.

shall die:

43. You orphan heirs of fixed destiny. This is partly to be explained by 2 Hen. IV. 4. 122, where unfathered heirs' are reckoned among unlucky portents,-'unfathered' being equivalent to supernaturally begotten.' Hence orphan' is

equivalent to

40

50

superhuman.'

'Heirs of fixed destiny' probably refers to the fairies' immortality. They are eternal children.

45. oyes, the 'O-yes' (Fr. oyes) with which the herald or crier opened his announcement.

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,
Raise up the organs of her fantasy;

Sleep she as sound as careless infancy :

But those as sleep and think not on their sins,

Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides and

shins.

Quick. About, about;

Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out:
Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room :
That it may stand till the perpetual doom,
In state as wholesome as in state 'tis fit,
Worthy the owner, and the owner it.
The several chairs of order look you scour
With juice of balm and every precious flower:
Each fair instalment, coat, and several crest,
With loyal blazon, evermore be blest!
And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,
Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring:
The expressure that it bears, green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see;
And 'Honi soit qui mal y pense' write

In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white;
Like sapphire, pearl and rich embroidery,
Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee:

55. Raise up, etc., give her choice and delightful dreams. The sound sleep' of the next line is contrasted not with blissful sleep of this kind, but with rude and violent disturbance.

63. state, (1) condition, (2) stateliness.

60

70

65. chairs of order, seats assigned to the members of the Order of the Garter.

67. instalment, seat of installation.

73. pense (two syllables as in French verse).

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.

77. charactery, writing.

84. a man of middle-earth, a 'human - mortal,' in Puck's phrase, not a fairy. 'Middleearth,' nowhere else used by Shakespeare, is an Old English word for the earth between heaven and hell.

87. o'erlook'd, i.e. by a malignant fairy, whose glance had power to injure the new-born child.

95. sing a scornful rhyme.

80

90

The situation resembles that of the scene in Lyly's Endymion (iv. 3.), where (according to the stage direction) the fairies dance, and with a song pinch him [Corsites]'

Omnes. Pinch him, pinch him
black and blue,

Saucy mortals must not view
What the Queen of Stars is doing
Nor pry into our fairy wooing.
1st Fairy. Pinch him blue.
2nd Fairy. And pinch him black.
3rd Fairy. Let him not lack
Sharp nails to pinch him blue and
red etc.

Fie on sinful fantasy!

SONG.

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. A 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.

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

98. luxury, wantonness.

III. yokes, the buck's horns,

resembling the peaked yoke borne by a pair of oxen.