TPTT The Merry Wives of Windsor: ACT V
Introduction
ACT I
ACT II
ACT III
ACT IV
ACT V
SCENE I. A room in the Garter Inn.
SCENE II. Windsor Park.
SCENE III. A street leading to the Park.
SCENE IV. Windsor Park.
SCENE V. Another part of the Park.
About the Play
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SCENE V. Another part of the Park.
Enter FALSTAFF disguised as Herne
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
5     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
10    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
15    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 Green
20    Sleeves, hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes; let
      there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.
MISTRESS FORD
      Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.
FALSTAFF
      Divide me like a bribe buck, each a haunch: I will
      keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow
25    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
30    Heaven forgive our sins
FALSTAFF
      What should this be?
MISTRESS FORD
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
35    never else cross me thus.
Enter SIR HUGH EVANS, disguised as before; PISTOL, as Hobgoblin; MISTRESS QUICKLY, ANNE PAGE, and others, as Fairies, with tapers
MISTRESS QUICKLY
      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.
40    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 unraked and hearths unswept,
      There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry:
45    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
SIR HUGH EVANS
      Where's Bede? Go you, and where you find a maid
      That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said,
50    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.
MISTRESS QUICKLY
      About, about;
55    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.
60    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,
65    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;
70    Let 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
75    Of Herne the hunter, let us not forget.
SIR HUGH 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
80    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.
MISTRESS QUICKLY
      With trial-fire touch me his finger-end:
      If he be chaste, the flame will back descend
85    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
      Come, will this wood take fire?
They burn him with their tapers
FALSTAFF
      Oh, Oh, Oh!
MISTRESS QUICKLY
90    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!
95    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;
100   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 boy in white; and FENTON comes and steals away ANN 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, 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?
MISTRESS PAGE
105   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,
110   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
115   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
120   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
125   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!
SIR HUGH EVANS
      Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your
130   desires, and fairies will not pinse you.
FORD
      Well said, fairy Hugh.
SIR HUGH EVANS
      And leave 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
135   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 frize? 'Tis time I were choked
      with a piece of toasted cheese.
SIR HUGH EVANS
140   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
145   Why Sir John, do you think, though we would have the
      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
150   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
155   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
160   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
165   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
170   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
175   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
180   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
185   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
190   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;
195   turned my daughter into green; and, indeed, she is
      now with the doctor at the deanery, and there married.
Enter DOCTOR CAIUS
DOCTOR CAIUS
      Vere is Mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened: I ha'
      married un garcon, a boy; un paysan, by gar, a boy;
      it is not Anne Page: by gar, I am cozened.
MISTRESS PAGE
200   Why, did you take her in green?
DOCTOR 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 PAGE
205   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,
210   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,
215   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.
FORD
      Stand not amazed; here is no remedy:
220   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!
225   What cannot be eschew'd 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,
230   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
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