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'th'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.
												[He embraces MISTRESS FORD.

Mistress Ford	Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.

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!
												[Noise of horns within.

Mistress Page	Alas, what noise?

Mistress Ford	Heaven forgive our sins!

Falstaff	What should this be?

Mistress Ford &
Mistress Page		Away, away!
						 [Exeunt MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE.

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 in his disguise, PISTOL as Hobgoblin,
                   MISTRESS QUICKLY as the Fairy Queen,
      with ANNE PAGE, WILLIAM, and CHILDREN, as fairies with tapers.

Quickly	Fairies, black, gray, green, and white,
	You moonshine revellers, and shades of night,
	You orphan heirs of fixd 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 thon 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 face down.

Evans	Where's Bead? Go you, and where yon 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, ouphs, 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 sev'ral crest,
	With loyal blazon, evermore be blest;
	And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,
	Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring:
	Th' 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 em'rald 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	Oh, oh, oh!

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

Fairies	[Sing.]	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 villainy;
			Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,
			Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out.

                  During this song they pinch Falstaff;
    and 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.
                          The FAIRIES run away.
              FALSTAFF pulls off his buck's head, and rises.

           Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE, and MISTRESS FORD.

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?
												[Pointing to the 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!

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 cockscomb 
	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 pandar. 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 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.

                              Enter SLENDER.

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'th'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.

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.

Caius	Vere is Mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened! I ha' married 
	un garon, 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!
												[Exit.

Ford	This is strange. Who hath got the right Anne?

Page	My heart misgives me: here comes Master Fenton.

                       Enter FENTON and ANNE PAGE.

	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 cursd hours
	Which forcd 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 tonight shall lie with Mistress Ford.
												[Exeunt.
