• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

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 star-light and moonshine be out.

During this song they 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 steals away ANNE 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, MISTRESS FORD, and

SIR HUGH EVANS

PAGE.

Nay, do not fly; I think we have watch'd you now.

Will none but Heme 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 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.

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 receiv'd 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'er-reaching as this?

Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? Shall I have a cox-comb

of frieze? 'Tis time I were chok'd 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 liv'd 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, a hodge-pudding? a bag of flax?

MRS.

PAGE. A puff'd man?

PAGE.

Old, cold, wither'd, 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 cozen'd of money, to whom you

should have been a pander. Over and above that you have

suffer'd, 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