The Merry Wives of Windsor eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 98 pages of information about The Merry Wives of Windsor.

The Merry Wives of Windsor eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 98 pages of information about The Merry Wives of Windsor.
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 FalstaffDoctor 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?

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Merry Wives of Windsor from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.