The Merry Wives of Windsor

Act V

Scene I

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!
Mistress 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 Mistress 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. Donning his coat. Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipped top, I knew not what ’twas to be beaten till lately. At the door. Follow me: I’ll tell you strange things of this knave Ford, on whom tonight I will be revenged, and I will deliver his wife into your hand. Follow. Strange things in hand, Master Brook! Follow.
	Exeunt.

Scene II

The outskirts of Windsor Park; night.

	Enter Page, Justice Shallow, and Slender, with a lantern.
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.
Justice 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 III

The street in Windsor.

	Enter Mistress Page, Mistress Ford, and Doctor Caius.
Mistress 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.
Doctor Caius	I know vat I have to do; adieu.
Mistress Page	Fare you well, sir.
	Exit Doctor 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.
Mistress Ford	Where is Nan now, and her troop of fairies, and the Welsh devil, Hugh?
Mistress 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.
Mistress Ford	That cannot choose but amaze him.
Mistress Page	If he be not amazed, he will be mocked; if he be amazed, he will every way be mocked.
Mistress Ford	We’ll betray him finely.
Mistress Page	Against such lewdsters and their lechery, Those that betray them do no treachery.
Mistress Ford	The hour draws on: to the oak, to the oak!
	Exeunt.

Scene IV

Windsor Park.

	The Fairies approach, dancing, with masked lights; Sir Hugh Evans, disguised as a satyr in frieze and horns, Pistol attired as Puck, Mistress Quickly in white as Fairy Queen, Anne Page with William and many others in red, black, grey, green and white.
Sir Hugh 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 V

Beneath a mighty oak in another part of the park.

	Enter Falstaff* disguised as Herne the hunter 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.*
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.
	Embracing her.
Mistress 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.
Mistress Page	Alas! what noise?
Mistress Ford	Heaven forgive our sins!
Falstaff	What should this be?
Mistress Ford	Away, away!
Mistress 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.
	A sudden burst of light; the Fairies appear with crowns of fire and rattles in their hands led by Sir Hugh Evans like a Satyr, holding a taper, Pistol as a Puck, Mistress Quickly as Fairy Queen, Anne Page as a Fairy, and others; they dance towards Falstaff singing.
Mistress Quickly	Fairies, black, grey, green, and white, You moonshine revellers, and shades of night, You orphan heirs of fixèd destiny, Attend your office and your quality. Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes.
Pistol	Elves, list your names: silence, you airy toys! They are still. 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 at the foot of the oak.
Sir Hugh 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.
Mistress 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.
Sir Hugh Evans	Pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves in order set; The Fairies encircle the oak. And twenty glowworms 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 Page	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.
Sir Hugh Evans	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 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.
Sir Hugh Evans	Jeshu! Master Slender, cannot you see put marry poys?
Page	O I am vexed at heart: what shall I do?
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.
	Enter Doctor Caius.
Doctor Caius	Wrathfully. 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?
Doctor Caius	Ay, by gar, and ’tis a boy: by gar, I’ll raise all Windsor.
	Exit Doctor Caius* shaking his fist.*
Ford	This is strange. Who hath got the right Anne?
Page	My heart misgives me; here comes Master Fenton.
	Enter Fenton* and Anne Page, arm in arm.*
	How now, Master Fenton!
Anne Page	Kneels. 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 cursèd hours, Which forcèd marriage would have brought upon her.
Ford	Stand not amaz’d: 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 eschew’d must be embrac’d.
Falstaff	When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chas’d.
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, tonight, shall lie with Mistress Ford.
	Exeunt.