Page 2562 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

About him, fairies, sing a scornful rhyme;
And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time. [90]

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, [95]
As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.

Pinch him, fairies, mutually;
Pinch him for his villainy;
Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,

Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out. [100]

During this song they 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. The Fairies run away. Falstaff pulls off his buck’s head, and rises.

Enter Page, Ford, Mistress Page, and Mistress Ford.

PAGE

Nay, do not fly; I think we have watch’d you now.
Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn?

MISTRESS PAGE
I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher.
Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives?
[Pointing to the horns.]

See you these, husband? Do not these fair yokes [105]
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 [110] twenty pounds of
money, which must be paid to Master Brook; his horses are arrested for it,