Act 5, Scene 5
Another part of the Park.
Enter FALSTAFF disguised as Herne.
Falstaff
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' the forest. Send me a cool rut-time, Jove, or who can blame me to piss my tallow? Who comes here? my doe?
Mistress Ford
Sir John! art thou there, my deer? my male deer?
Falstaff
My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Greensleeves, hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.
Mistress Ford
Mistress Page is come with me, sweet heart.
Falstaff
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 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!
Mistress Page
Alas, what noise?
Mistress Ford
Heaven forgive our sins!
Falstaff
What should this be?
Mrs. Page and Mrs. Ford
Away, away!
Falstaff
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.
Quickly
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.
Pistol
Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys.
Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap:
Where fires thou find'st unraked and hearths unswept,
There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry:
Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery.
Falstaff
They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die:
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.
Quickly
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:
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.
Falstaff
Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!
Pistol
Vile worm, thou wast o'erlooked even in thy birth.
Quickly
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.
Pistol
A trial, come.
Evans
Come, will this wood take fire? They burn him with their tapers.
Falstaff
O, O, O!
Quickly
Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!
About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme;
And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.
SONG.
Page
Nay, do not fly; I think we have watched you now:
Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn?
Mistress Page
I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher.
Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives?
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!
Evans
Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you.
Ford
Well, said, fairy 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'erreaching 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.
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?
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.
Page
Yet be cheerful, knight: thou shalt eat a posset to-night 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
Doctors doubt that: if Anne Page be my daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius' wife.
Slender
Whoa, ho! ho, father Page!
Page
Son, how now! how now, son! have you dispatched?
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
When 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?
Slender
I went to her in white, and cried “mum,” and she cried “budget,” as Anne and I had appointed; and yet it was not Anne, but a postmaster's boy.
Mistress Page
Good George, be not angry: I knew of your purpose; turned my daughter into green; and, indeed, she is now with the doctor at the deanery, and there married.
Caius
Vere is Mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened: I ha' married un garçon, a boy; un paysan, by gar, a boy; it is not Anne Page: by gar, I am cozened.
Mistress Page
Why, did you take her in green?
Caius
Ay, by gar, and 'tis a boy: by gar, I'll raise all Windsor.
Ford
This is strange. Who hath got the right Anne?
Page
My heart misgives me: here comes Master Fenton. How now, Master Fenton!
Anne
Pardon, good father! good my mother, pardon!
Page
Now, mistress, how chance you went not with Master Slender?
Mistress Page
Why went you not with master doctor, maid?
Fenton
You do amaze her: hear the truth of it.
You would have married her most shamefully,
Where there was no proportion held in love.
The truth is, she and I, long since contracted,
Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us.
The offence is holy that she hath committed;
And this deceit loses the name of craft,
Of disobedience, or unduteous title,
Since therein she doth evitate and shun
A thousand irreligious cursed hours,
Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.
Ford
Stand not amazed; here is no remedy:
In love the heavens themselves do guide the state;
Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.
Falstaff
I am glad, though you have ta'en a special stand to strike at me, that your arrow hath glanced.
Page
Well, what remedy? Fenton, heaven give thee joy!
“What cannot be eschewed must be embraced.
Falstaff
When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chased.
Mistress Page
Well, I will muse no further, Master Fenton,
Heaven give you many, many merry days!
Good husband, let us every one go home,
And laugh this sport o'er by a country fire;
Sir John and all.
Ford
Let it be so, Sir John,
To Master Brook you yet shall hold your word;
For he to-night shall lie with Mistress Ford. Exeunt.