The Complete Works of Shakespeare. William Shakespeare
Enter Evans [like a satyr], Anne Page [and Boys dressed like fairies], Pistol [as Hobgoblin, Mistress]
Quickly [like the Queen of Fairies; they sing a song about him and afterward speak].
Quick.
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.
Pist.
Elves, list your names; silence, you aery 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.
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;
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 flow’r;
Each fair installment, 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 tuffs, flow’rs purple, blue, and white,
Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,
Buckled below fair knighthood’s bending knee:
Fairies use flow’rs for their charactery.
Away, disperse! but till ’tis one a’ 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 lanthorns 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.
Vild worm, thou wast o’erlook’d even in thy birth.
Quick.
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.
Pist.
A trial, come.
Evans.
Come, will this wood take fire?
[They put the tapers to his fingers, and he starts.]
Fal.
O, O, O!
Quick.
Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!
About him, fairies, sing a scornful rhyme,
And as you trip, still pinch him to your time.
The 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 villainy!
Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,
Till candles, and starlight, and moonshine be out.
[Here they pinch him and sing about him. And the Doctor] Caius [comes one way, and steals away a boy in green; and] Slender [another way; he takes a boy in white; and] Fenton [steals Mistress Anne Page. And a noise of hunting is made within; and all the fairies run away. Falstaff pulls off his buck’s head, and rises up.]
[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 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 enjoy’d 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 receiv’d belief, in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and