Volume 1 / Act 5 — V. 5 Scene V. Another part of the Park.

V. 5 Scene V. Another part of the Park.

Enter Falstaff disguised as Horne.

Fal. 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, 5 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 10 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.

15 Mrs Ford. Sir John! art thou there, my deer? my male deer?

Fal. 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 20 of provocation, I will shelter me here.

Mrs Ford. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.

Fal. 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. V. 5. 25 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!

30 Fal. What should this be?

Fal. 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.

45 Fal. 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.

Fal. Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he 80 transform me to a piece of cheese!

Pist. Vile worm, thou wast o’erlook’d even in thy birth.

Pist. A trial, come.

They burn him with their tapers.

Fal. Oh, Oh, Oh!

Song.

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 Mrs 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 and Mistress Ford.

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 110 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 115 I will always count you my deer.

Fal. I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass.

Ford. Ay, and an ox too: both the proofs are extant.

Fal. And these are not fairies? I was three or four times in the thought they were not fairies: and yet the 120 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!

V. 5. 125 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 130 able to woo her in good English.

Fal. 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 135 toasted cheese.

Evans. Seese is not good to give putter; your pelly is all putter.

Fal. ‘Seese’ and ’putter’! have I lived to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of English? This is enough 140 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?

145 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?

V. 5. 150 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?

Fal. Well, I am your theme: you have the start of 155 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 160 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 165 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.

Slen. Whoa, ho! ho, father Page!

170 Page. Son, how now! how now, son! have you dispatched?

Slen. Dispatched!—I’ll make the best in Gloucestershire know on’t; would I were hanged, la, else!

Page. Of what, son?

V. 5. 175 Slen. 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.

180 Page. Upon my life, then, you took the wrong.

Slen. 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 185 how you should know my daughter by her garments?

Slen. 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.

Mrs Page. Good George, be not angry: I knew of 190 your purpose; turned my daughter into green; and, indeed, she is now with the doctor at the deanery, and there married.

Enter Caius.

Caius. Vere is Mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened: I ha’ married un garçon, a boy; un paysan, by gar, a boy; it 195 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?

V. 5. 200 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 205 Master Slender?

Mrs Page. Why went you not with master doctor, maid?

Fal. I am glad, though you have ta’en a special stand to strike at me, that your arrow hath glanced.

Fal. When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chased.

Exeunt.

NOTES.

Note I.

I. 1. 41. Master Page is called ‘George’ in three places, II. 1. 134 and 142 , and V. 5. 189, but we have left the text of the Folios uncorrected, as the mistake may have been Shakespeare’s own. It is however possible that a transcriber or printer may have mistaken ‘Geo.’ for ‘Tho.’

In I. 3. 89, 90, on the other hand, we have not hesitated to correct the reading of the Folio, substituting ‘Page’ for ‘Ford,’ and ‘Ford’ for ‘Page,’ because, as the early Quartos have the names right, it seems likely that the blunder was not due to Shakespeare.

Note II.

I. 1. 49. Here again, as in line 40, F₂ F₃ F₄ read ‘good,’ F₁ Q₃ ‘goot,’ but we have not thought it necessary to do more than give a specimen of such variations. Capell, in order to make Dr Caius’s broken English consistent with itself, corrects it throughout and substitutes ‘de’ for ‘the,’ ‘vill’ for ‘will,’ and so forth. As a general rule, we have silently followed the first Folio.

Note III.

I. 1. 114. With regard to this and other passages which Pope, Theobald, Malone, &c. have inserted from the early Quartos, our rule has been to introduce, between brackets, such, and such only, as seemed to be absolutely essential to the understanding of the text, taking care to give in the note all those which we have rejected.

The fact that so many omissions can be supplied from such mutilated copies as the early Quartos, indicates that there may be many more omissions for the detection of which we have no clue. The text of the Merry Wives given in F₁ was probably printed from a carelessly written copy of the author’s MS.

Note IV.

I. 3. 95. Perhaps, as in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, III. 1. 315, and other passages, some of which are mentioned by Sidney Walker in his ‘Criticisms,’ Vol. II. p. 13 sqq., this vexed passage may be emended by supplying a word. We venture to suggest ’the revolt of mine anger is dangerous.’ The recurrence of the same letters anger in the word ‘dangerous,’ might mislead the printer’s eye and cause the omission.

Note V.

II. 1. 5. In the copy of Johnson’s Edition, which belongs to Emmanuel College, there is a MS. note of Dr Farmer’s referring to Sonnet CXLVII. in support of the conjecture ‘physician’ for ‘precisian;’ we find there

Note VI.

II. 1. 194, 196. Here again we have followed the early Quartos in reading ‘Brook’ instead of ‘Broome,’ the name given by Ff Q₃. That the former was the original name is proved by the jest in II. 2. 136, where the Folios make sheer nonsense.

Mr Halliwell suggests that the following lines, IV. 4. 75, 76,

were intended to rhyme and therefore favour the later reading. But in this scene there are no rhyming lines except the couplet at the end.

On the whole, it seems likely that the name was altered in the stage copies at the instance of some person of the name of Brook living at Windsor, who had sufficient acquaintance with the players, or interest with their patrons, to get it done.

Note VII.

III. 1. 74, 78. Mr Staunton is unquestionably right in supposing that one part of Evans’s speech is spoken aside to his opponent, and the other part aloud. It is impossible else to account for the sudden change of tone. It might have been conjectured that, being a parson, he wished to appear peacefully minded, and therefore made his offers of reconciliation aloud and his menaces in an under tone, but Caius’s reply shews that it was the threat which had been made aloud. Evans’s valour, it would seem, had already evaporated when he had ‘a great dispositions to cry’ (III. 1. 20) and, besides, he had just begun to see that he was being made a laughing-stock. As his former speech (74, 75,) is also conciliatory, it was probably spoken so as to be heard by Caius only. He wished to keep up his credit for courage in the eyes of the bystanders. In the corresponding scene of the first Quartos we have the words ‘Hark van urd in your ear,’ and the meaning of the text may have been obscured by some omission in the Folio.

Note VIII.

IV. 4. 41. No doubt there is an omission here in the Folio, which may be partly supplied from the Quarto. But it is probable that Mrs Ford gave a still fuller explanation of her device and the grounds on which the disguise was recommended to Falstaff, otherwise Page would not have been so confident of his falling into the snare.

Note IX.

IV. 5. 49. In the edition of 1778 Steevens reads ‘Ay, sir Tike, like’ ... but it is clear from Farmer’s note that it should be ‘Ay, sir Tike,’ ... and so it is corrected in the later Editions of Steevens. In the Edition annotated by Fanner, mentioned in note V., we find another conjecture of his: ‘Ay, sir, if you like,’ ... or it may have been ‘Ay, sir, an you like,’ for the word preceding ‘you’ has been cut away by the binder.

Note X.

The stage direction of the early Quartos is: Enter Sir Hugh like a Satyre, and boyes drest like Fayries, Mistresse Quickly, like the Queene of Fayries; they sing a song about him and afterward speake.

The Folio enumerates at the commencement of the scene all who take part in it, including Anne Page, Fairies, Quickly and Pistol, and in this place has merely Enter Fairies. Malone introduced Anne Page as the Fairy Queen, and at the end, with waxen tapers on their heads. He however still assigned the speeches 35-39, 53-74, 82-85, and 88-90 to Quickly. Recent Editors have generally given them to Anne, on the ground that it is proved by IV. 6. 20 and V. 3. 11, 12, that she was to ‘present the Fairy Queen,’ and that the character of the speeches is unsuitable to Mrs Quickly. It has been argued, too, that the Qui. of the folios, line 35, may be a misprint for Qu., i.e. Queen. This however is contradicted by the fact that Mrs Quickly plays the Queen in the early Quartos, and that the recurrence of Qui., line 88, proves that the printer of the first Folio used either Qui. or Qu. indifferently as the abbreviation of Quickly.

Most likely, in this and other respects the play was altered by its author, but the stage MSS. were not corrected throughout with sufficient care. This will account for the mistake about the colours ‘green’ and ‘white’ in the final scene, lines 186, 190, 196.

Or we may suppose Mrs Quickly to have agreed to take Anne’s part in order to facilitate her escape with Fenton.

CRITICAL APPARATUS (“Linenotes”).