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Enter FORD.

How now, Master Brook! Master Brook, the matter will be known to-night, 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?

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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 IV.

Windsor Park.

as Fairies.

Fal. 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 grievous- Enter SIR HUGH EVANS disguised, with others ly, 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.

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SCENE III. A street leading to the Park. 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 despatch it quickly. Go before into the Park: we two must go together.

Caius. 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 chate at the doctor's marrying my daughter: but 'tis no matter; better a little chiding than a great deal of heart-break. 11 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.

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. Another part of the Park.

Enter FALSTAFF disguised as Herne, Fal. 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 semblace of a

For

fowl; think on't, Jove; a foul fault! When gods
have hot backs, what shall poor men do?
me, I am here a Windsor stag; and the fattest,
Send me a cool rut-time,
I think i' the forest.
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!

Fal. My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Green Sleeves, hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.

Mrs. Ford. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.

Fal. Divide me like a bribe 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 wood-
man, 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!
Fal. What should this be?
Mrs. Ford.

Mrs. Page

Away, away! [They run off.

Fal. 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.

40

Enter SIR HUGH EVANS, disguised as before; PISTOL, as Hobgoblin; MISTRESS QUICKLY, ANNE PAGE, and others, as Fairies, with tapers.

Quick. Fairies, black, gray, 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.

Pist. 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. 50
Fal. 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.

Quick. About, about:

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Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out: 60
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 ali the field to see;
And Honi soit qui mai 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; your-
selves in order set;

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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.

Fal. Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese! Pist. Vile worm, thou wast o'erlook'd even in thy birth.

Quick 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 starlight and moonshine be out.

During this song they pinch FALSTAFF. DOCTOR CAIUS comes one way, and steals away a boy in green; SLENDER another way, and takes off a by in white; and FENTON comes and steals away Mrs. ANNE PAGE. A noise of hunting is heard within. All the Fairies run away. FALSTAFF pulis off his buck's head, and rises.

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

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 Windsorwives? 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.

Fal. I do begin to perceive that I am made

an ass.

Ford. Ay, and an ox too: both the proofs

are extant.

Fal. 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 Jacka-Lent, when 'tis upon ill employment! Evans. Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and

Quick. With trial-fire touch me his finger-leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you. end:

Ford. Well said, fairy Hugh.
Evans. And leave your jealousies too, I pray

90 you.

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.
Pist. A trial, come.
Evans. Come, will this wood take fire?
[They burn him with their tapers.

Fal. Oh, Oh, Oh!

140

Ford, I will never mistrust my wife again, till thou art able to woo her in good English.

Fal. 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 | ume I were choked with a piece of toasted cheese. Evans. Seese is not good to give putter; your belly is all putter.

Fal. 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.

Mrs. 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, ahodge-pudding? a bag of flax? Mrs. Page. A puffed man? 160 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?

Fal. 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.

Mrs. Page. Aside] Doctors doubt that; if Anne Page be my daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius' wife.

Enter SLENDER.

Sien. Whoa, ho! ho, Father Page! Page. Son, how now! how now, son! have you despatched?

Slen. Despatched! I'll make the best in Gloucestershire know on t; would I were hanged, la, else!

Page. Of what, son?

Slen. 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 201 Slen. 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.

wrong.

Page. Why, this is your own folly. Did not I tell you how you should know my daughter by her garments?

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Mrs. Page. Why, did you take her in green? Caius. Ay, by gar, and 'tis a boy: by gar, I'll raise all Windsor. [Exit. Who hath got the

Ford. This is strange.

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? 231

Mrs. Page. Why went you not with master doctor, maid?

Fent. 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.

240

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. Fal. I am glad, though you have ta'en a special stand to strike at me, that your arrow hath glanced.

250

Page. Well, what remedy? Fenton, heaven give thee joy! What cannot be eschew'd must be embraced. Fal. When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chased.

Mrs. 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

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SCENE I. An apartment in the DUKE's palace.
Enter DUKE, ESCALUS, Lords and Attendants.
Duke. Escalus.
Escal. My lord.

Duke. Of government the properties to unfold,
Would seem in me to affect speech and discourse;
Since I am put to know that your own science
Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice [mains,
My strength can give you; then no more re-
But that to your sufficiency..
as your worth is able,
And let them work. The nature of our people,
Our city's institutions, and the terms
For common justice, you're as pregnant in
As art and practice hath enriched any
That we remember. There is our commission,
From which we would not have you warp. Call
hither,

II

I say, bid come before us Angelo.
(Exit an Attendant.
What figure of us think you he will bear?
For you must know, we have with special soul
Elected him our absence to supply,
Lent him our terror, dress'd him with our love,
And given his deputation all the organs
Of our own power: what think you of it?
Escal. If any in Vienna be of worth
To undergo such ample grace and honor,
It is Lord Angelo.
Duke.

Look where he comes.
Enter ANGELO.

Ang. Always obedient to your grace's will,

I come to know your pleasure.

Duke.

Angelo,

There is a kind of character in thy life,

That to the observer doth thy history

21

Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely

touch'd

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We have with a leaven'd and prepared choice
Proceeded to you; therefore take your honors.
Our haste from hence is of so quick condition
That it prefers itself, and leaves unquestion'd
Matters of needful value. We shall write to you,
As time and our concernings shall importune,
How it goes with us, and do look to know
What doth befall you here. So, fare
you well:
To the hopeful execution do I leave you 60
Of your commissions.
Ång.

You give leave, my lord,
That we may bring you something on the way.
Duke. My haste may not admit it;

Nor need you, on mine honor, have to do
With any scruple; your scope is as mine own,
So to enforce or qualify the laws

As to your soul seems good. Give me your hand:
I'll privily away. I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes:

Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings 30 Though it do well, I do not relish well

Are not thine own so proper as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,

70

Their loud applause and Aves vehement;
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
That does affect it. Once more, fare you well.

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Sec. Gent. Amen.

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Lucio. Thou concludest like the sanctimonious pirate, that went to sea with the Ten Commandments, but scraped one out of the table. Sec. Gent. Thou shalt not steal?' Lucio. Ay, that he razed. First Gent. Why, 'twas a commandment to command the captain and all the rest from their functions: they put forth to steal. There's not a soldier of us all, that, in the thanksgiving before meat, do relish the petition well that prays for peace.

Sec. Gent. I never heard any soldier dislike it. Lucio. I believe thee; for I think thou never wast where grace was said.

20

Sec. Gent, No? a dozen times at least. First Gent. What, in metre? Lucio. In any proportion or in any language. First Gent. I think, or in any religion. Lucio. Ay, why not? Grace is grace, despite of all controversy: as, for example, thou thyself art a wicked villain, despite of all grace.

First Gent. Well, there went but a pair of shears between us.

Lucio. I grant; as there may between the lists and the velvet. Thou art the list. 31 First Gent. And thou the velvet: thou art good velvet; thou'rt a three-piled piece, I warrant thee: I had as lief be a list of an English kersey as be piled, as thou art piled, for a French velvet. Do I speak feelingly now!

Lucio. I think thou dost; and, indeed, with most painful feeling of thy speech: I will, out of thine own confession, learn to begin thy health; but, whilst I live, forget to drink after thee. 40 First Gent. I think I have done myself wrong, have I not?

Sec. Gent. Yes, that thou hast, whether thou are tainted or free.

Lucio, Behold, behold, where Madame Mitigation comes! I have purchased as many diseases under her roof as come to

Sec. Gent. To what, I pray?

Lucio. Judge.

Sec. Gent. To three thousand dolours a year. First Gent. Ay, and more. 51

Lucio. A French crown more. First Gent. Thou art always figuring diseases in me; but thou art full of error; I am sound. Lucio. Nay, not as one would say, healthy: but so sound as things that are hollow: thy bones are hollow; impiety has made a feast of thee. Enter MISTRESS OVERDONE.

First Gent. How now! which of your hips has the most profound sciatica ?

Mrs. Ov. Well, well; there's one yonder arrested and carried to prison was worth five thousand of you all.

Sec. Gent, Who's that, I pray thee?

Mrs. Ov. Marry, sir, that's Claudio, Signior Claudio.

First Gent. Claudio to prison? 'tis not so.

Mrs. Ov. Nay, but I know 'tis so; I saw him arrested, saw him carried away; and, which is more, within these three days his head is to be chopped off.

70

Lucio. But, after all this fooling, I would not have it so. Art thou sure of this? Mrs. Ov. I am too sure of it: and it is for getting Madam Julietta with child.

Lucio. Believe me, this may be: he promised to meet me two hours since, and he was ever precise in promise-keeping.

Sec. Gent. Besides, you know, it draws something near to the speech we had to such a pur. pose.

81

First Gent. But, most of all, agreeing with the proclamation. Lucio. Away! let's go learn the truth of it. [Exeunt Lucio and Gentlemen. Mrs. Ov. Thus, what with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows and what with poverty, I am custom-shrunk.

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Mrs. Ov. What proclamation, man? Pom. All houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be plucked down.

Mrs. Ov. And what shall become of those in the city?

ΙΟΙ

Pom. They shall stand for seed: they had gone down too, but that a wise burgher put in for them. Mrs. Ov. But shall all our houses of resort in the suburbs be pulled down?

Pom. To the ground, mistress. Mrs. Ov. Why, here's a change indeed in the commonwealth! What shall become of me? Pom. Come; fear not you: good counsellors lack no clients: though you change your place, you need not change your trade: I'll be your tapster still. Courage! there will be pity taken

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