The Merry Wives of Windsor, William Shakespeare [the reading strategies book TXT] 📗

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[Exeunt.]


ACT V.

SCENE 1. A room in the Garter Inn.

[Enter FALSTAFF and MISTRESS QUICKLY.]

FALSTAFF. Prithee, no more prattling; go: I'll hold. This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers. Away! go. They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death. Away!

QUICKLY. I'll provide you a chain, and I'll do what I can to get you a pair of horns.

FALSTAFF. Away, I say; time wears; hold up your head, and mince.

[Exit MRS. QUICKLY.]

[Enter FORD.]

How now, Master Brook! Master Brook, the matter will be known tonight, or never. Be you in the Park about midnight, at Herne's oak, and you shall see wonders.

FORD. Went you not to her yesterday, sir, as you told me you had appointed?

FALSTAFF. I went to her, Master Brook, as you see, like a poor old man; but I came from her, Master Brook, like a poor old woman. That same knave Ford, her husband, hath the finest mad devil of jealousy in him, Master Brook, that ever governed frenzy. I will tell you: he beat me grievously in the shape of a woman; for in the shape of man, Master Brook, I fear not Goliath with a weaver's beam, because I know also life is a shuttle. I am in haste; go along with me; I'll tell you all, Master Brook. Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipped top, I knew not what 'twas to be beaten till lately. Follow me: I'll tell you strange things of this knave Ford, on whom to-night I will be revenged, and I will deliver his wife into your hand. Follow. Strange things in hand, Master Brook! Follow.

[Exeunt.]


SCENE 2. Windsor Park.

[Enter PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER.]

PAGE. Come, come; we'll couch i' the castle-ditch till we see the light of our fairies. Remember, son Slender, my daughter.

SLENDER. Ay, forsooth; I have spoke with her, and we have a nay-word how to know one another. I come to her in white and cry 'mum'; she cries 'budget,' and by that we know one another.

SHALLOW. That's good too; but what needs either your 'mum' or her 'budget'? The white will decipher her well enough. It hath struck ten o'clock.

PAGE. The night is dark; light and spirits will become it well. Heaven prosper our sport! No man means evil but the devil, and we shall know him by his horns. Let's away; follow me.

[Exeunt.]


SCENE 3. The street in Windsor.

[Enter MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD, and DOCTOR CAIUS.]

MRS. PAGE. Master Doctor, my daughter is in green; when you see your time, take her by the hand, away with her to the deanery, and dispatch it quickly. Go before into the Park; we two must go together.

CAIUS. I know vat I have to do; adieu.

MRS. PAGE. Fare you well, sir. [Exit CAIUS.] My husband will not rejoice so much at the abuse of Falstaff as he will chafe at the doctor's marrying my daughter; but 'tis no matter; better a little chiding than a great deal of heart break.

MRS. FORD. Where is Nan now, and her troop of fairies, and the Welsh devil, Hugh?

MRS. PAGE. They are all couched in a pit hard by Herne's oak, with obscured lights; which, at the very instant of Falstaff's and our meeting, they will at once display to the night.

MRS. FORD. That cannot choose but amaze him.

MRS. PAGE. If he be not amazed, he will be mocked; if he be amazed, he will every way be mocked.

MRS. FORD. We'll betray him finely.

MRS. PAGE. Against such lewdsters and their lechery, Those that betray them do no treachery.

MRS. FORD. The hour draws on: to the oak, to the oak!

[Exeunt.]


SCENE 4. Windsor Park

[Enter SIR HUGH EVANS, disguised, with others as Fairies.]

EVANS. Trib, trib, fairies; come; and remember your parts. Be pold, I pray you; follow me into the pit; and when I give the watch-ords, do as I pid you. Come, come; trib, trib.

[Exeunt.]


SCENE 5. Another part of the Park.

[Enter FALSTAFF disguised as HERNE with a buck's head on.]

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?

[Enter MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE.]

MRS. 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.

[Embracing her.]

MRS. FORD. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.

FALSTAFF. Divide me like a brib'd 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!

[Noise within.]

MRS. PAGE. Alas! what noise?

MRS. FORD. Heaven forgive our sins!

FALSTAFF. What should this be?

MRS. FORD. Away, away!

MRS. PAGE. Away, away!

[They run off.]

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.

[Enter SIR HUGH EVANS like a Satyr, PISTOL as a Hobgoblin, ANNE PAGE as the the Fairy Queen, attended by her Brothers and Others, as fairies, with waxen tapers on their heads.]

ANNE. 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 unrak'd, 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, Rein 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.

ANNE. 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'erlook'd even in thy birth.

ANNE. 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. Oh, oh, oh!

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

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 star-light 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 rises.]

[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: 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? 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.

MRS. 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.