The Merry Wives Of Windsor

1 Enter Falstaff wearing a buck’s head.
2 FALSTAFF.
3 The Windsor bell hath struck twelve, the minute draws on. Now the
4 hot-blooded gods assist me! Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy
5 Europa; love set on thy horns. O powerful love, that in some respects,
6 makes a beast a man, in some other a man a beast! You were also,
7 Jupiter, a swan for the love of Leda. O omnipotent love, how near the
8 god drew to the complexion of a goose! A fault done first in the form
9 of a beast; O Jove, a beastly fault! And then another fault in the
10 semblance of a fowl; think on’t, Jove, a foul fault! When gods have hot
11 backs, what shall poor men do? For me, I am here a Windsor stag, and
12 the fattest, I think, i’ the forest. Send me a cool rut-time, Jove, or
13 who can blame me to piss my tallow? Who comes here? My doe?
14 Enter Mistress Ford and Mistress Page.
15 MISTRESS FORD.
16 Sir John? Art thou there, my deer, my male deer?
17 FALSTAFF.
18 My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain potatoes, let it thunder
19 to the tune of “Greensleeves”, hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes;
20 let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.
21 [_He embraces her._]
22 MISTRESS FORD.
23 Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.
24 FALSTAFF.
25 Divide me like a bribed buck, each a haunch. I will keep my sides to
26 myself, my shoulders for the fellow of this walk, and my horns I
27 bequeath your husbands. Am I a woodman, ha? Speak I like Herne the
28 hunter? Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience; he makes restitution.
29 As I am a true spirit, welcome!
30 [_A noise of horns within._]
31 MISTRESS PAGE.
32 Alas, what noise?
33 MISTRESS FORD.
34 Heaven forgive our sins!
35 FALSTAFF.
36 What should this be?
37 MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE.
38 Away, away!
39 [_They run off._]
40 FALSTAFF.
41 I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that’s in me
42 should set hell on fire; he would never else cross me thus.
43 Enter Mistress Quickly as the Queen of Fairies, Sir Hugh Evans as a
44 Satyr, Pistol as Hobgoblin, Anne Page and children as Fairies, carrying
45 tapers.
46 MISTRESS QUICKLY.
47 Fairies, black, grey, green, and white,
48 You moonshine revellers and shades of night,
49 You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,
50 Attend your office and your quality.
51 Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes.
52 PISTOL.
53 Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys!
54 Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap,
55 Where fires thou find’st unraked and hearths unswept,
56 There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry.
57 Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery.
58 FALSTAFF.
59 They are fairies, he that speaks to them shall die.
60 I’ll wink and couch. No man their works must eye.
61 [_Lies down upon his face._]
62 EVANS
63 Where’s Bead? Go you, and where you find a maid
64 That ere she sleep has thrice her prayers said,
65 Rein up the organs of her fantasy;
66 Sleep she as sound as careless infancy.
67 But those as sleep and think not on their sins,
68 Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins.
69 MISTRESS QUICKLY.
70 About, about!
71 Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out.
72 Strew good luck, oafs, on every sacred room,
73 That it may stand till the perpetual doom
74 In state as wholesome as in state ’tis fit,
75 Worthy the owner and the owner it.
76 The several chairs of order look you scour
77 With juice of balm and every precious flower.
78 Each fair instalment, coat, and several crest,
79 With loyal blazon, evermore be blest!
80 And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,
81 Like to the Garter’s compass, in a ring.
82 Th’ expressure that it bears, green let it be,
83 More fertile-fresh than all the field to see;
84 And _Honi soit qui mal y pense_ write
85 In em’rald tufts, flowers purple, blue and white,
86 Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,
87 Buckled below fair knighthood’s bending knee.
88 Fairies use flowers for their charactery.
89 Away, disperse! But till ’tis one o’clock,
90 Our dance of custom round about the oak
91 Of Herne the hunter let us not forget.
92 EVANS.
93 Pray you, lock hand in hand, yourselves in order set;
94 And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be,
95 To guide our measure round about the tree.
96 But stay, I smell a man of middle earth.
97 FALSTAFF.
98 Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a
99 piece of cheese!
100 PISTOL.
101 Vile worm, thou wast o’erlooked even in thy birth.
102 MISTRESS QUICKLY.
103 With trial-fire touch me his finger-end.
104 If he be chaste, the flame will back descend
105 And turn him to no pain; but if he start,
106 It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.
107 PISTOL.
108 A trial, come.
109 EVANS.
110 Come, will this wood take fire?
111 [_They put the tapers to his fingers, and he starts._]
112 FALSTAFF.
113 O, o, o!
114 MISTRESS QUICKLY.
115 Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!
116 About him, fairies, sing a scornful rhyme,
117 And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.
118 SONG.
119 Fie on sinful fantasy!
120 Fie on lust and luxury!
121 Lust is but a bloody fire,
122 Kindled with unchaste desire,
123 Fed in heart, whose flames aspire,
124 As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.
125 Pinch him, fairies, mutually;
126 Pinch him for his villainy.
127 Pinch him and burn him and turn him about,
128 Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out.
129 [_During the song they pinch him, and Doctor Caius comes one way and
130 steals away a boy in green; and Slender another way takes a boy in
131 white; Fenton comes in and steals away Anne Page. A noise of hunting is
132 heard within and all the fairies run away. Falstaff pulls off his
133 buck’s head, and rises up._]
134 Enter Page, Ford, Mistress Page and Mistress Ford.
135 PAGE.
136 Nay, do not fly. I think we have watched you now.
137 Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn?
138 MISTRESS PAGE.
139 I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher.—
140 Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives?
141 See you these, husband?
142 [_She points to the horns._]
143 Do not these fair yokes
144 Become the forest better than the town?
145 FORD.
146 Now, sir, who’s a cuckold now? Master Brook, Falstaff’s a knave, a
147 cuckoldly knave. Here are his horns, Master Brook. And, Master Brook,
148 he hath enjoyed nothing of Ford’s but his buck-basket, his cudgel, and
149 twenty pounds of money, which must be paid to Master Brook. His horses
150 are arrested for it, Master Brook.
151 MISTRESS FORD.
152 Sir John, we have had ill luck, we could never meet. I will never take
153 you for my love again, but I will always count you my deer.
154 FALSTAFF.
155 I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass.
156 FORD.
157 Ay, and an ox too. Both the proofs are extant.
158 FALSTAFF.
159 And these are not fairies? I was three or four times in the thought
160 they were not fairies; and yet the guiltiness of my mind, the sudden
161 surprise of my powers, drove the grossness of the foppery into a
162 received belief, in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and reason, that
163 they were fairies. See now how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent when ’tis
164 upon ill employment!
165 EVANS.
166 Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies will
167 not pinse you.
168 FORD.
169 Well said, fairy Hugh.
170 EVANS.
171 And leave you your jealousies too, I pray you.
172 FORD.
173 I will never mistrust my wife again, till thou art able to woo her in
174 good English.
175 FALSTAFF.
176 Have I laid my brain in the sun, and dried it, that it wants matter to
177 prevent so gross o’erreaching as this? Am I ridden with a Welsh goat
178 too? Shall I have a cox-comb of frieze? ’Tis time I were choked with a
179 piece of toasted cheese.
180 EVANS.
181 Seese is not good to give putter. Your belly is all putter.
182 FALSTAFF.
183 “Seese” and “putter”? Have I lived to stand at the taunt of one that
184 makes fritters of English? This is enough to be the decay of lust and
185 late-walking through the realm.
186 MISTRESS PAGE.
187 Why, Sir John, do you think, though we would have thrust virtue out of
188 our hearts by the head and shoulders, and have given ourselves without
189 scruple to hell, that ever the devil could have made you our delight?
190 FORD.
191 What, a hodge-pudding? A bag of flax?
192 MISTRESS PAGE.
193 A puffed man?
194 PAGE.
195 Old, cold, withered, and of intolerable entrails?
196 FORD.
197 And one that is as slanderous as Satan?
198 PAGE.
199 And as poor as Job?
200 FORD.
201 And as wicked as his wife?
202 EVANS.
203 And given to fornications, and to taverns, and sack, and wine, and
204 metheglins, and to drinkings and swearings and starings, pribbles and
205 prabbles?
206 FALSTAFF.
207 Well, I am your theme. You have the start of me. I am dejected, I am
208 not able to answer the Welsh flannel. Ignorance itself is a plummet
209 o’er me. Use me as you will.
210 FORD.
211 Marry, sir, we’ll bring you to Windsor to one Master Brook, that you
212 have cozened of money, to whom you should have been a pander. Over and
213 above that you have suffered, I think to repay that money will be a
214 biting affliction.
215 PAGE.
216 Yet be cheerful, knight. Thou shalt eat a posset tonight at my house,
217 where I will desire thee to laugh at my wife, that now laughs at thee.
218 Tell her Master Slender hath married her daughter.
219 MISTRESS PAGE.
220 [_Aside_.] Doctors doubt that. If Anne Page be my daughter, she is, by
221 this, Doctor Caius’ wife.
222 Enter Slender.
223 SLENDER
224 Whoa, ho, ho, father Page!
225 PAGE.
226 Son, how now! How now, son, have you dispatched?
227 SLENDER.
228 Dispatched? I’ll make the best in Gloucestershire know on’t. Would I
229 were hanged, la, else!
230 PAGE.
231 Of what, son?
232 SLENDER.
233 I came yonder at Eton to marry Mistress Anne Page, and she’s a great
234 lubberly boy. If it had not been i’ the church, I would have swinged
235 him, or he should have swinged me. If I did not think it had been Anne
236 Page, would I might never stir! And ’tis a postmaster’s boy.
237 PAGE.
238 Upon my life, then, you took the wrong.
239 SLENDER.
240 What need you tell me that? I think so, when I took a boy for a girl.
241 If I had been married to him, for all he was in woman’s apparel, I
242 would not have had him.
243 PAGE.
244 Why, this is your own folly. Did not I tell you how you should know my
245 daughter by her garments?
246 SLENDER.
247 I went to her in white and cried “mum”, and she cried “budget”, as Anne
248 and I had appointed, and yet it was not Anne, but a postmaster’s boy.
249 MISTRESS PAGE.
250 Good George, be not angry. I knew of your purpose, turned my daughter
251 into green, and indeed she is now with the doctor at the deanery, and
252 there married.
253 Enter Doctor Caius.
254 CAIUS
255 Vere is Mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened, I ha’ married _un garçon_,
256 a boy; _un paysan_, by gar, a boy. It is not Anne Page. By gar, I am
257 cozened.
258 MISTRESS PAGE.
259 Why, did you take her in green?
260 CAIUS.
261 Ay, by gar, and ’tis a boy. By gar, I’ll raise all Windsor.
262 FORD
263 This is strange. Who hath got the right Anne?
264 Enter Fenton and Anne Page.
265 PAGE.
266 My heart misgives me. Here comes Master Fenton.—How now, Master Fenton!
267 ANNE.
268 Pardon, good father. Good my mother, pardon.
269 PAGE.
270 Now, mistress, how chance you went not with Master Slender?
271 MISTRESS PAGE.
272 Why went you not with Master Doctor, maid?
273 FENTON.
274 You do amaze her. Hear the truth of it.
275 You would have married her most shamefully,
276 Where there was no proportion held in love.
277 The truth is, she and I, long since contracted,
278 Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us.
279 Th’ offence is holy that she hath committed,
280 And this deceit loses the name of craft,
281 Of disobedience, or unduteous title,
282 Since therein she doth evitate and shun
283 A thousand irreligious cursed hours,
284 Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.
285 FORD.
286 Stand not amazed, here is no remedy.
287 In love, the heavens themselves do guide the state.
288 Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.
289 FALSTAFF.
290 I am glad, though you have ta’en a special stand to strike at me, that
291 your arrow hath glanced.
292 PAGE.
293 Well, what remedy? Fenton, heaven give thee joy!
294 What cannot be eschewed must be embraced.
295 FALSTAFF.
296 When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chased.
297 MISTRESS PAGE.
298 Well, I will muse no further.—Master Fenton,
299 Heaven give you many, many merry days!
300 Good husband, let us every one go home,
301 And laugh this sport o’er by a country fire,
302 Sir John and all.
303 FORD.
304 Let it be so, Sir John,
305 To Master Brook you yet shall hold your word,
306 For he tonight shall lie with Mistress Ford.
307 [_Exeunt._]