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 for his villainy; Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about, Till candles, and starlight, 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 Mrs. Anne Page. A noise of hunting is made within. All the fairies run away. Falstaff pulls off his buck's head, and rises.] Enter PAGE, FORD, Mrs. PAGE, and Mrs. FORD. They lay hold on him. 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: See you these, husband? do not these fair yokes 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. 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 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 't is upon ill employment. and iniquity." Theobald says, "this speech is very much in character for Sir Hugh." He forgets that the real actors of the comedy are here speaking in assumed characters. Pistol has a speech or two; but all traces of Pistol's own character are suppressed. The entire scene is elevated into pure poetry in the amended edition, and none of the coarseness of the original is retained. For example, in the quarto, Sir Hugh says,— "Where's Pede? Go and see where brokers sleep, And fox-eyed serjeants with their mace; Go lay the proctors in the street, EVA. Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you. FORD. Well said, fairy Hugh. EVA. 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. 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 toasted cheese. EVA. Seese is not good to give putter; your pelly is all putter. FAL. Seese and putter! have I lived to stand at the taunts 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 Johm, 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? EVA. 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 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 b. 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. MRS. PAGE. Doctors doubt that; if Anne Page be my daughter, she is, by this, doctor Caius' wife. Enter SLENDer. SLEN. Whoo, ho! ho! father Page! PAGE. Son! how now? how now, son? have you despatched? a Plummet. Johnson would read plume; Farmer, planet. [Aside. The whole scene being changed, three lines are here ordinarily foisted in from the quarto:"MRS. FORD. Nay, husband, let that go to make amends: Forgive that sum, and so we 'll all be friends. FORD. Well, here's my hand; all 's forgiven at last." SLEN. Despatched!-I'll make the best in Glocestershire know on 't; would I were hanged, la, else. PAGE. Of what, son? 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 't is a postmaster's boy. 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 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 boyb. 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 CAIUS. CAIUS. Vere is mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened; I ha' married un garçon, a boy; un paisan, by gar, a boy; it is not Anne Page: by gar, cozened. MRS. PAGE. Why, did you take her in green? I am CAIUS. Ay, be gar, and 't is a boy; be gar, I'll raise all Windsor. [Exit CAIUS. 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? FENT. You do amaze her: Hear the truth of it. You would have married her most shamefully, Of disobedience, or unduteous title; Since therein she doth evitate and shun The original has green instead of white, which is clearly a mistake:-" Her father means she shall be all in white." Two other lines are here introduced from the quarto, in modern editions: "EVA. Jeshu! Master Slender, cannot you see but marry boys? A thousand irreligious cursed hours, Which forced marriage would have brought upon her. In love, the heavens themselves do guide the state; FAL. 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. FAL. When night-dogs run all sorts of deer are chas'da. FORD. Let it be so:-Sir John, To master Brook you yet shall hold your word; [Exeunt. a We have also another line restored-rescued, as the editors say-good in itself, but out of place:"EVA. I will dance and eat plums at your wedding." Dominus meus Rex, Dominus meus Joab, Dominus Sacerdos and afterwards, when honours began to take their subordination one under another, and titles of princely dignity to be hereditary to succeeding posterity (which happened upon the fall of the Roman empire), then Dominus was in Latin applied to all noble and generous hearts, even from the king to the meanest Priest, or temporal person of gentle blood, coat-armour perfect, and ancestry. But Sir in English was restrained to these four; Sir Knight, Sir Priest, Sir Graduate, and in common speech Sir Esquire: so as always since distinction of titles were, Sir Priest was ever the second." Fuller, in his 'Church History,' gives us a more homely version of the title. After saying that anciently there were in England more Sirs than Knights, he adds, "Such priests as have the addition of Sir before their Christian name were men not graduated in the university, |