SCENE V. Another part of the Park. The Merry Wives of Windsor  Shakespeare homepage  |  Merry Wives of Windsor  | Act 5, Scene 5 

 Previous scene  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 

 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? 



 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 

 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 

 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  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 

 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. 

 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: 

 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, 

 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; 

 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; 

 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 

 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  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 

 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  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 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  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. 

 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  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 

 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 

 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  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  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  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  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  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 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. 

 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  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 

 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  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 

 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; 

 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  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  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, 

 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. 

 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. 

 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! 

 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, 

 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 