Chapter: SCENE 5.

Another part of the Park.

[Enter FALSTAFF disguised as HERNE with a buck's head on.]

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.]

MRS. 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 'Greensleeves'; hail kissing-comfits and
snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will
shelter me here.

[Embracing her.]

MRS. FORD.
Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.

FALSTAFF.
Divide 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!

[Noise within.]

MRS. PAGE.
Alas! what noise?

MRS. FORD.
Heaven forgive our sins!

FALSTAFF.
What should this be?

MRS. FORD.
Away, away!

MRS. 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 like a Satyr, PISTOL as a Hobgoblin, ANNE
PAGE as the the Fairy Queen, attended by her Brothers and Others,
as fairies, with waxen tapers on their heads.]

ANNE.
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 unrak'd, 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.]

EVANS.
Where'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.

ANNE.
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;
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.

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.

ANNE.
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.

EVANS.
Come, will this wood take fire?

[They burn him with their tapers.]

FALSTAFF.
Oh, oh, oh!

ANNE.
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 star-light and moonshine be out.

[During 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 rises.]

[Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD. They lay hold on
FALSTAFF.]

PAGE.
Nay, do not fly; I think we have watch'd you now:
Will none but Herne 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 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!

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
choked 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 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.

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 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?

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.

MRS. FORD.
Nay, husband, let that go to make amends;
Forget that sum, so we'll all be friends.

FORD.
Well, here's my hand: all is forgiven at last.

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 now
laughs at thee. Tell her, Master Slender hath married her daughter.

MRS. 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.

EVANS.
Jeshu! Master Slender, cannot you see put marry poys?

PAGE.
O I am vexed at heart: what shall I do?

MRS. 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.]

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.

MRS. PAGE.
Why, did you take her in green?

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.
Pardon, good father! good my mother, pardon!

PAGE.
Now, Mistress, how chance you went not with Master Slender?

MRS. 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 amaz'd: 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 embrac'd.

FALSTAFF.
When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chas'd.

MRS. 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, to-night, shall lie with Mistress Ford. 

[Exeunt.]

 The clock strikes midnight as Falstaff shows up at the park dressed as "Herne the hunter" and wearing a huge set of horns on his head. Falstaff compares himself to Jupiter, the god who turned himself into a swan and raped Europa. Gross. Then he declares that he's a "stag" in the middle of "rut-time" . Go ahead and cover your eyes now if you're creeped out by all this because it only gets worse. Falstaff tells us he's so excited that he just might "piss tallow," pee his pants or sweat away all his fat, which is what stags were thought to do during mating season). Mistress Ford show up and Falstaff says "Who comes here? My doe! My doe with the black scut!" Falstaff gets really worked up at this point and yells out "Let the sky rain potatoes." Then he grabs Mistress Ford and feels her up. When Mistress Page announces that her BFF wants to join in on the fun, Falstaff says he's totally down for a threesome--the women can divide his body in half and each have a "haunch." Some loud noises come from the bushes and Mistresses Page and Ford run away in pretend-fear. Mistress Quickly, Anne Page, Evans, and the little kids jump out of the bushes in their creepy little fairy costumes and start chanting and dancing. Brain Snack: You're probably thinking this sounds like that little Halloween pageant you were in back in the 4th grade. That's because the whole episode in the woods is designed to look like a masque. Basically, a masque is a form of entertainment involving fancy costumes, elaborate sets, music, singing, dancing, and acting. Masques were mostly performed at court or at some rich nobleman's house. Shakespeare's monarch, Queen Elizabeth I, was crazy about them. Falstaff is terrified. He thinks he'll die if he speaks to the fairies, so he throws himself on the ground and covers his face. Which actually seems like a good move. Mistress Quickly starts in on a crazy, rhyming song. She orders her "elfs" and "oafs" to flit over to Windsor Castle and sprinkle it with "good luck." While they're at it, she wants them to deck it out with flower petals and clean it with flower juice to get it ready for the Order of the Garter. Go to "Symbols" and we'll tell you more about this. Evans says he "smells" a mortal man. Uh, oh. Look out Falstaff! Mistress Quickly tells the kids to burn him with their candles to test whether or not he's got a "corrupted heart." The children/fairies mob up on Falstaff and proceed to burn him with their candles and pinch him with their little fingers. Ouch. Little kid pinches are the worst. During the fray, Doctor Caius rushes out and grabs the fairy dressed in green. Then, Slender pops out of the woods and grabs the fairy dressed in white. Meanwhile, Fenton grabs Anne and they run off. After the scary fairy song, Falstaff gets up and tries to make a run for it but the Pages and the Fords jump out and confront him. Mistress Page does a little taunting, and Master Ford tells Falstaff that "Brooke" isn't a real person--it was Master Ford in disguise. And by the way, Ford is going to take Falstaff's horses until Falstaff can pay him back the money he took from him. Falstaff takes off his horns and admits that he's been made into "an ass." Everyone stands around bagging on Falstaff for acting like such a fraidy cat. Finally, they take pity on him: Master Page invites Falstaff to his house for a wedding feast Mistress Page snickers to the audience because she thinks Anne is off getting hitched to Doctor Caius, not Slender. Just then, Slender shows up and declares that he thought he ran off with Anne but when he got to the church, he discovered that his bride was a stable boy. Anyway, Slender assures everyone that he didn't have sex with the kid, whew. Next, Doctor Caius shows up and announces that he has just married "un garcon, a boy, un paysan ." Just as everyone is wondering what the heck happened, Fenton strolls in with Anne on his arm. It's obvious these two crazy kids just got hitched. Anne is pretty quiet. All she has to say is "Pardon, good father. Good my mother, pardon." Fenton does all the talking. He yells at the Pages for trying to make Anne marry someone she didn't love. He says that even though Anne "disobeyed" her parents, they can't put her on restriction or take away her iPhone, because getting married is "holy." Since this is a comedy, Master and Mistress Page decide there's nothing left to do but welcome their new son-in-law into the family instead of, oh, slaughtering everyone like they might in a tragedy. Everyone runs off to the Page house to watch the happy couple smash wedding cake in each others' faces. Ford wants to have the last word so he looks over at Falstaff and says something like "Just so you know, I'm going to go home tonight and have sex with my wife." The end. What? You want more? Fine. Go read "What's Up With the Ending."

