the devil be shamed. What! wife, I say! come, come forth; behold what honest clothes you send forth to bleaching!

PAGE. Why, this passes,a master Ford! you are not to go loose any longer; you must be pinioned.

EVA. Why, this is lunatics! this is mad as a mad dog!

SHAL. Indeed, master Ford, this is not well; indeed.

Enter MISTRESS FORD.

FORD. So say I too, sir.-Come hither, mistress Ford; mistress Ford, the honest woman, the modest wife, the virtuous creature, that hath the jealous fool to her husband!-I suspect without cause, mistress, do I?

MRS. FORD. Heaven be my witness, you do, if you suspect me in any dishonesty.

FORD. Well said, brazen-face; hold it out.-Come forth, sirrah! [Pulls the clothes out of the basket.

PAGE. This passes!

MRS. FORD. Are you not ashamed? let the clothes alone.
FORD. I shall find you anon.

EVA. 'Tis unreasonable! Will you take up your wife's clothes? Come away.

FORD. Empty the basket, I say.

MRS. FORD. Why, man, why?

FORD. Master Page, as I am a man, there was one conveyed out of my house yesterday in this basket: why may not he be there again? In my house I am sure he is: my intelligence is true; my jealousy is reasonable: pluck me out all the linen.

MRS. FORD. If you find a man there, he shall die a flea's death. PAGE. Here's no man.

SHAL. By my fidelity, this is not well, master Ford; this wrongs you.

EVA. Master Ford, you must pray, and not follow the imaginations of your own heart: this is jealousies.

FORD. Well, he's not here I seek for.

PAGE. No, nor nowhere else but in your brain.

FORD. Help to search my house this one time: if I find not what I seek, show no colour for my extremity, let me for ever be your table-sport; let them say of me, As jealous as Ford, that searched a hollow walnut for his wife's leman. Satisfy me once more; once more search with me.

MRS. FORD. What hoa, mistress Page! come you, and the old woman, down; my husband will come into the chamber. FORD. Old woman! what old woman's that?

We are

MRS. FORD. Why, it is my maid's aunt of Brentford. FORD. A witch, a quean, an old cozening quean! Have I not forbid her my house? She comes of errands, does she? simple men; we do not know what's brought to pass under the profession of fortune-telling. She works by charms, by spells, by the

This passes,-] Surpasses belief. See note (), Vol. II., p. 102.

b His wife's leman.J Leman, lover, paramour. ́It was applied to both sexes, though more frequently to females.

figure, and such daubery as this,a is beyond our element: we know nothing. Come down, you witch, you hag you; come down, I say! MRS. FORD. Nay, good, sweet husband;-good gentlemen, let him not strike the old woman.

Enter FALSTAFF disguised like an old woman, led by MISTRESS PAGE. MRS. PAGE. Come, mother Prat, come, give me your hand. FORD. I'll prat her:-Out of my door, you witch! [Beats him.] you rag, you baggage, you polecat, you ronyon! out! out! I'll conjure you! I'll fortune-tell you! [Exit FALSTAFF.

MRS. PAGE. Are you not ashamed? I think, you have killed the poor woman.

MRS. FORD. Nay, he will do it :-'t is a goodly credit for you.
FORD. Hang her, witch!

EVA. By yea and no, I think, the 'oman is a witch indeed: I like not when a 'oman has a great peard; I spy a great peard under her* muffler.

FORD. Will you follow, gentlemen? I beseech you follow; see but the issue of my jealousy: if I cry out thus upon no trail, never trust me when I open again.

PAGE. Let's obey his humour a little further: come, gentlemen. [Exeunt PAGE, FORD, SHALLOW, CAIUS, and EVANS. MRS. PAGE. Trust me, he beat him most pitifully.

MRS. FORD. Nay, by the mass, that he did not; he beat him most unpitifully, methought.

MRS. PAGE. I'll have the cudgel hallowed, and hung o'er the altar; it hath done meritorious service.

MRS. FORD. What think you? May we, with the warrant of womanhood, and the witness of a good conscience, pursue him with any further revenge?

MRS. PAGE. The spirit of wantonness is, sure, scared out of him; if the devil have him not in fee-simple, with fine and recovery, he will never, I think, in the way of waste, attempt us again.

MRS. FORD. Shall we tell our husbands how we have served him? MRS. PAGE. Yes, by all means; if it be but to scrape the figures out of your husband's brains. If they can find in their hearts, the poor unvirtuous fat knight shall be any further afflicted, we two will still be the ministers.

MRS. FORD. I'll warrant, they'll have him publicly shamed: and, methinks, there would be no period to the jest, should he not be publicly shamed.

MRS. PAGE. Come, to the forge with it then, shape it: I would not have things cool.

(*) First folio, his.

[Exeunt.

Such daubery as this, &c.] Daubery means gullery, juggling, and the like; but from the invariable punctuation of the passage in modern editions, it appears to have been taken for some abusive epithet applied to the supposed witch.

b Let him not strike the ld woman.] The folio, 1623, omits, not, which was supplicd in that of 1632.

SCENE III-A Room in the Garter Inn.

Enter Host and BARDOLPH.

BARD. Sir, the Germans* desire to have three of your horses: the duke himself will be to-morrow at court, and they are going to meet him.

HOST. What duke should that be, comes so secretly? I hear not of him in the court: let me speak with the gentlemen; they speak English?

BARD. Ay, sir; I'll call them† to you.

HOST. They shall have my horses; but I'll make them pay, I'll sauce them they have had my house ‡ a week at command; I have turned away my other guests: they must come off; I'll sauce them. Come. [Exeunt.

SCENE IV.-A Room in Ford's House,

Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD, and SIR HUGH EVANS.

EVA. 'Tis one of the pest discretions of a 'oman as ever I did

look upon.

PAGE. And did he send you both these letters at an instant?

MRS. PAGE. Within a quarter of an hour.

FORD. Pardon me, wife: henceforth do what thou wilt;

I rather will suspect the sun with cold, §

Than thee with wantonness; now doth thy honour stand,
In him that was of late an heretic,

As firm as faith.

PAGE.

'Tis well, 't is well; no more.

Be not as éxtreme in submission, as in offence;
But let our plot go forward: let our wives
Yet once again, to make us public sport,

Appoint a meeting with this old fat fellow,

Where we may take him, and disgrace him for it.

FORD. There is no better way than that they spoke of.

PAGE. How! to send him word they 'll meet him in the park at midnight! fie, fie; he'll never come.

EVA. You say, he has peen thrown in the rivers; and has peen grievously peaten, as an old 'oman: methinks, there should pe terrors in him, that he should not come; methinks, his flesh is punished, he shall have no desires.

PAGE. So think I too.

(*) First folio, Germane desires.

(+) First folio, houses.

(+) First folio, him.
($) Old text, gold.

They must come off; ] That is, pay. The expression in this sense is met with as

early as Chaucer :

"Come off, and let me riden hastily;

Give me twelve pence; I may no longer tarrie."

The Friar's Tale.

MRS. FORD. Devise but how you'll use him when he comes, And let us two devise to bring him thither.

MRS. PAGE. There is an old tale goes, that Herne the hunter, Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest,

Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,

Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;
And there he blasts the tree, and takes a the cattle;
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner:

You have heard of such a spirit; and well you know,
The superstitious idle-headed eld

Receiv'd and did deliver to our age,

This tale of Herne the hunter for a truth.

PAGE. Why, yet there want not many, that do fear
In deep of night to walk by this Herne's oak:
But what of this?

MRS. FORD.

Marry, this is our device; That Falstaff at that oak shall meet with us,

Disguis'd like Herne, with huge horns on his head."

PAGE. Well, let it not be doubted but he 'll come, And in this shape; when you have brought him thither, What shall be done with him? what is your plot?

MRS. PAGE. That likewise have we thought upon, and thus :

Nan Page my daughter, and my little son,

And three or four more of their growth, we 'll dress

c

Like urchins, ouphes, and fairies, green and white,
With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads,

And rattles in their hands; upon a sudden,

As Falstaff, she, and I, are newly met,
Let them from forth a saw-pit rush at once
With some diffusedd song; upon their sight,
We two in great amazedness will fly :
Then let them all encircle him about,
And, fairy-like, to-pinch the unclean knight;
And ask him, why, that hour of fairy revel,
In their so sacred paths, he dares to tread,
In shape profane.

(*) First folio, make.

And takes the cattle;] To take, meant to bewitch, to blast with disease. Thus in "Hamlet," Act I. Sc. 1:

-"then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm."

b Disguis'd like Herne, with huge horns on his head.] This line, restored from the quarto, is shown by Page's next speech to be indispensable.

c

Ouphes,-] Elves, goblins.

d Diffused song;] Irregular, wild.

e

To-pinch-] To was very anciently used in connexion with verbs, as we conjoin be. Thus Gower, De Confessione Amantis, b. iv. fol. 7 :—

"All to-tore is myn araie."

And Chaucer, Reeve's Tale, 1. 4275 :—

nose and mouth to-broke."

And Spenser has all to-rent, all to-torn, where we should say all-be-torn, all-berent, &c.

Let the supposed fairies pinch him sound,
And burn him with their tapers.

MRS. PAGE.

The truth being known,

We'll all present ourselves; dis-horn the spirit,
And mock him home to Wndsor.

FORD.

The children must

Be practis'd well to this, or they 'll ne'er do 't.

EVA. I will teach the children their pehaviours; and I will pe like a jack-an-apes also, to purn the knight with my taper. FORD. That will be excellent. I'll go buy them vizards.

MRS. PAGE. My Nan shall be the queen of all the fairies,

Finely attired in a robe of white.

PAGE. That silk will I go buy ;-and in that tirea
Shall master Slender steal my Nan away,

And marry her at Eton.-Go, send to Falstaff straight.
FORD. Nay, I'll to him again in name of Brook:

He'll tell me all his purpose: sure, he'll come.

MRS. PAGE. Fear not you that: go, get us properties, And tricking for our fairies.

[Aside.

EVA. Let us about it: it is admirable pleasures, and fery honest knaveries. [Exeunt PAGE, FORD, and EVANS.

[Exit MISTRESS FORD.

MRS. PAGE. Go, mistress Ford,
Send Quickly to sir John, to know his mind.
I'll to the doctor; he hath my good will,
And none but he, to marry with Nan Page.
That Slender, though well landed, is an idiot;
And he my husband, best of all, affects:
The doctor is well money'd, and his friends
Potent at court; he, none but he, shall have her,

Though twenty thousand worthier come to crave her.

[Exit.

SCENE V.-A Room in the Garter Inn.

Enter Host and SIMPLE.

HOST. What would'st thou have, boor? what, thick-skin? speak, breathe, discuss; brief, short, quick, snap.

SIM. Marry, sir, I come to speak with sir John Falstaff from master Slender.

HOST. There's his chamber, his house, his castle, his standing-bed, and truckle-bed; 't is painted about with the story of the prodigal,

In that tire-] The first folio has, "in that time," which was corrected by Theobald.

b What, thick-skin?] This term of abuse, bearing the same meaning as our, thickhead, occurs again in A Midsummer Night's Dream," Act III. Sc. 2, where Puck, speaking of Bottom, says:

"The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort,

Who Pyramus presented in their sport."

• His standing-bed, and truckle-bed;] In the poet's time, chambers were usually