The Merry Wives of Windsor · William Shakespeare
SCENE IV. A room in Ford’s house
Enter Page, Ford, Mistress Page, Mistress Ford and Sir Hugh Evans. EVANS. ’Tis one of the best discretions of a ’oman as ever I did look upon. PAGE. And did he send you both these letters at an instant? MISTRESS PAGE. Within a quarter of an hour. FORD. Pardon me, wife. Henceforth, do what thou wilt. I rather will suspect the sun with cold Than thee with wantonness. Now doth thy honour stand, In him that was of late an heretic, As firm as faith. PAGE. ’Tis well, ’tis well, no more. Be not as extreme in submission as in offence. But let our plot go forward. Let our wives Yet once again, to make us public sport, Appoint a meeting with this old fat fellow, Where we may take him and disgrace him for it. FORD. There is no better way than that they spoke of. PAGE. How? To send him word they’ll meet him in the park at midnight? Fie, fie, he’ll never come. EVANS. You say he has been thrown in the rivers, and has been grievously peaten as an old ’oman. Methinks there should be terrors in him, that he should not come. Methinks his flesh is punished; he shall have no desires. PAGE. So think I too. MISTRESS FORD. Devise but how you’ll use him when he comes, And let us two devise to bring him thither.
MISTRESS PAGE. There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter, Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest, Doth all the winter time, at still midnight, Walk round about an oak, with great ragged horns, And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle, And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain In a most hideous and dreadful manner. You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know The superstitious idle-headed eld Received and did deliver to our age, This tale of Herne the hunter for a truth. PAGE. Why, yet there want not many that do fear In deep of night to walk by this Herne’s oak. But what of this? MISTRESS FORD. Marry, this is our device, That Falstaff at that oak shall meet with us, Disguised like Herne, with huge horns on his head. PAGE. Well, let it not be doubted but he’ll come, And in this shape; when you have brought him thither, What shall be done with him? What is your plot? MISTRESS PAGE. That likewise have we thought upon, and thus: Nan Page my daughter, and my little son, And three or four more of their growth, we’ll dress Like urchins, oafs and fairies, green and white, With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads And rattles in their hands. Upon a sudden, As Falstaff, she, and I are newly met, Let them from forth a sawpit rush at once With some diffused song; upon their sight We two in great amazedness will fly. Then let them all encircle him about, And fairy-like, to pinch the unclean knight, And ask him why, that hour of fairy revel, In their so sacred paths he dares to tread In shape profane.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.