ARKCODEX
Act V, Scene 5
1Beneath a mighty oak in another part of the park.
2Enter Falstaff disguised as Herne the hunter with a buck’s head on.
3FalstaffThe 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?
4Enter Mistress Ford and Mistress Page.
5Mistress FordSir John! Art thou there, my deer? my male deer?
6FalstaffMy 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.
7Embracing her.
8Mistress FordMistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.
9FalstaffDivide 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!
10Noise within.
11Mistress PageAlas! what noise?
12Mistress FordHeaven forgive our sins!
13FalstaffWhat should this be?
14Mistress FordAway, away!
15Mistress PageAway, away!
16They run off.
17FalstaffI 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.
18A 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.
19Mistress QuicklyFairies, 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.
20PistolElves, 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.
21FalstaffThey are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die:
I’ll wink and couch: no man their works must eye.
22Lies down upon his face at the foot of the oak.
23Sir Hugh EvansWhere’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.
24Mistress QuicklyAbout, 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.
25Sir Hugh EvansPray 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.
26FalstaffHeavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!
27PistolVile worm, thou wast o’erlook’d even in thy birth.
28Anne PageWith 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.
29PistolA trial! come.
30Sir Hugh EvansSetting his lights to the buck’s horns. Come, will this wood take fire?
31They burn him with their tapers.
32FalstaffOh, oh, oh!
33Anne PageCorrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!
About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme;
And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.
34The Fairies dance about him and sing.
35AllFie 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.
36During 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.
37Enter Page, Ford, Mistress Page, Mistress Ford. They lay hold on Falstaff.
38PageNay, do not fly; I think we have watch’d you now:
39Falstaff seeks to hide his face within the buck’s head once again.
40Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn?
41Mistress PageI 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?
42FordNow, 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.
43Mistress FordSir 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.
44FalstaffI do begin to perceive that I am made an ass.
45FordAy, and an ox too; both the proofs are extant.
46FalstaffAnd 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!
47Enter Sir Hugh Evans without his satyr mask.
48Sir Hugh EvansSir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you.
49FordWell said, fairy Hugh.
50Sir Hugh EvansAnd leave you your jealousies too, I pray you.
51FordI will never mistrust my wife again, till thou art able to woo her in good English.
52FalstaffHave 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.
53Sir Hugh EvansSeese is not good to give putter: your belly is all putter.
54Falstaff“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.
55Mistress PageWhy, 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?
56FordWhat, a hodge-pudding? a bag of flax?
57Mistress PageA puffed man?
58PageOld, cold, withered, and of intolerable entrails?
59FordAnd one that is as slanderous as Satan?
60PageAnd as poor as Job?
61FordAnd as wicked as his wife?
62Sir Hugh EvansAnd given to fornications, and to taverns, and sack and wine, and metheglins, and to drinkings and swearings and starings, pribbles and prabbles?
63FalstaffWell, 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.
64FordMarry, 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.
65Mistress FordNay, husband, let that go to make amends;
Forget that sum, so we’ll all be friends.
66FordWell, here’s my hand: all is forgiven at last.
67PageYet 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.
68Mistress PageAside. Doctors doubt that; if Anne Page be my daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius’ wife.
69Slender heard hulloing in the wood.
70SlenderWhoa, ho! ho! father Page!
71PageSon, how now! how now, son! have you dispatched?
72Enter Slender.
73SlenderDispatched! I’ll make the best in Gloucestershire know on’t; would I were hanged, la, else!
74PageOf what, son?
75SlenderI 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.
76PageUpon my life, then, you took the wrong.
77SlenderWhat 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.
78PageWhy, this is your own folly. Did not I tell you how you should know my daughter by her garments?
79SlenderI 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.
80Sir Hugh EvansJeshu! Master Slender, cannot you see put marry poys?
81PageO I am vexed at heart: what shall I do?
82Mistress PageGood 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.
83Enter Doctor Caius.
84Doctor CaiusWrathfully. 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.
85Mistress PageWhy, did you take her in green?
86Doctor CaiusAy, by gar, and ’tis a boy: by gar, I’ll raise all Windsor.
87Exit Doctor Caius shaking his fist.
88FordThis is strange. Who hath got the right Anne?
89PageMy heart misgives me; here comes Master Fenton.
90Enter Fenton and Anne Page, arm in arm.
91How now, Master Fenton!
92Anne PageKneels. Pardon, good father! good my mother, pardon!
93PageNow, Mistress, how chance you went not with Master Slender?
94Mistress PageWhy went you not with Master Doctor, maid?
95FentonYou 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.
96FordStand 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.
97FalstaffI am glad, though you have ta’en a special stand to strike at me, that your arrow hath glanced.
98PageWell, what remedy?—Fenton, heaven give thee joy!
What cannot be eschew’d must be embrac’d.
99FalstaffWhen night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chas’d.
100Mistress PageWell, 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.
101FordLet it be so. Sir John,
To Master Brook you yet shall hold your word;
For he, tonight, shall lie with Mistress Ford.
102Exeunt.