The Merry Wives of Windsor

class="editorial" epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Setting his lights to the buck’s horns. Come, will this wood take fire? They burn him with their tapers. Falstaff Oh, oh, oh! Anne Page

Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!
About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme;
And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.

The Fairies dance about him and sing. All

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 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 heard within. All the Fairies run away. Falstaff pulls off his buck’s head, and seeks to escape. Enter Page, Ford, Mistress Page, Mistress Ford. They lay hold on Falstaff. Page Nay, do not fly; I think we have watch’d you now: Falstaff seeks to hide his face within the buck’s head once again. Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn? Mistress Page

I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher.
Falstaff casts the buck’s head from him.
Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives?
Points to horns.
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 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. Mistress 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. Falstaff I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass. Ford Ay, and an ox too; both the proofs are extant. Falstaff 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-a-Lent when ’tis upon ill employment! Enter Sir Hugh Evans without his satyr mask. Sir Hugh Evans Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you. Ford Well said, fairy Hugh. Sir Hugh Evans And leave you your jealousies too, I pray you. Ford I will never mistrust my wife again, till thou art able to woo her in good English. Falstaff 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? ’Tis time I were choked with a piece of toasted cheese. Sir Hugh Evans Seese is not good to give putter: your belly is all putter. Falstaff “Seese” and “putter”! Have I lived to 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. Mistress 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? Mistress 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? Sir Hugh Evans And given to fornications, and to taverns, and sack and wine, and metheglins, and to drinkings and swearings and starings, pribbles and prabbles? Falstaff Well, I am your theme; you have the 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 pander: over and above that you have suffered, I think to repay that money will be a biting affliction. Mistress Ford

Nay, husband, let that go to make amends;
Forget that sum, so we’ll all be friends.

Ford Well, here’s my hand: all is forgiven at last. Page Yet be cheerful, knight; thou shalt eat a posset tonight at my house; where I will desire thee to laugh at my wife, that now laughs at thee. Tell her, Master Slender hath married her daughter. Mistress Page Aside. Doctors doubt that; if Anne Page be my daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius’ wife. Slender heard hulloing in the wood. Slender Whoa, ho! ho! father Page! Page Son, how now! how now, son! have you dispatched? Enter Slender. Slender Dispatched! I’ll make the best in Gloucestershire know on’t; would I were hanged, la, else! Page Of what, son? Slender 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 wrong. Slender 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