The Merry Wives of Windsor

I think the devil will not have me damn’d, lest the oil that’s in me should set hell on fire; he would never else cross me thus.

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 receiv’d belief, in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and reason, that they were fairies.

O powerful love, that in some respects 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!

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.

Pray you lock hand in hand; yourselves in order set; And twenty glow-worms shall our lanthorns be, To guide our measure round about the tree. But stay, I smell a man of middle-earth.

Stand not amaz’d; here is no remedy. In love, the heavens themselves do guide the state; Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.

Th’ offense is holy that she hath committed, And this deceit loses the name of craft, Of disobedience, or unduteous title, Since therein she doth evitate and shun A thousand irreligious cursed hours Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.”

I have a letter from her Of such contents as you will wonder at; The mirth whereof so larded with my matter, That neither, singly, can be manifested Without the show of both.

I rather will suspect the sun with cold Than thee with wantonness. Now doth thy honor stand, In him that was of late an heretic, As firm as faith.

I warrant they would whip me with their fine wits till I were as crestfall’n as a dried pear. I never prosper’d since I forswore myself at primero. Well, if my wind were but long enough to say my prayers, I would repent.

If it should come to the ear of the court, how I have been transform’d, and how my transformation hath been wash’d and cudgell’d, they would melt me out of my fat drop by drop, and liquor fishermen’s boots with me.

MRS. PAGE. Fear not you that. Go get us properties And tricking for our fairies. EVANS. Let us about it. It is admirable pleasures and fery honest knaveries.

The devil take one party and his dam the other! And so they shall be both bestow’d. I have suffer’d more for their sakes—more than the villainous inconstancy of man’s disposition is able to bear.

The night is dark, light and spirits will become it well. Heaven prosper our sport! No man means evil but the devil, and we shall know him by his horns.

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.

Was there a wise woman with thee? FAL. Ay, that there was, mine host, one that hath taught me more wit than ever I learn’d before in my life; and I paid nothing for it neither, but was paid for my learning.

You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know The superstitious idle-headed eld Receiv’d and did deliver to our age This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth.

Hang him, dishonest varlet! We cannot misuse him enough. We’ll leave a proof, by that which we will do, Wives may be merry, and yet honest too: We do not act that often jest and laugh; ’Tis old, but true: still swine eats all the draff.

He will seek there, on my word. Neither press, coffer, chest, trunk, well, vault, but he hath an abstract for the remembrance of such places, and goes to them by his note. There is no hiding you in the house.

The spirit of wantonness is sure scar’d out of him. If the devil have him not in fee-simple, with fine and recovery, he will never, I think, in the way of waste, attempt us again.

Will you follow, gentlemen? I beseech you follow; see but the issue of my jealousy. If I cry out thus upon no trail, never trust me when I open again.

A kind heart he hath. A woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart. But yet I would my master had Mistress Anne; or I would Master Slender had her; or, in sooth, I would Master Fenton had her.

Be not amaz’d, call all your senses to you, defend your reputation, or bid farewell to your good life forever.

Fie, fie, Master Ford, are you not asham’d? What spirit, what devil suggests this imagination? I would not ha’ your distemper in this kind for the wealth of Windsor Castle.

Gentle Master Fenton, Yet seek my father’s love, still seek it, sir. If opportunity and humblest suit Cannot attain it, why then hark you hither!

Gentlemen, I have dream’d tonight; I’ll tell you my dream. Here, here, here be my keys. Ascend my chambers, search, seek, find out. I’ll warrant we’ll unkennel the fox. Let me stop this way first.

Go to then. We’ll use this unwholesome humidity, this gross wat’ry pumpion. We’ll teach him to know turtles from jays.

Have I liv’d to be carried in a basket like a barrow of butcher’s offal? And to be thrown in the Thames? Well, and I be serv’d such another trick, I’ll have my brains ta’en out and butter’d, and give them to a dog for a new-year’s gift.

I quak’d for fear, lest the lunatic knave would have search’d it; but fate (ordaining he should be a cuckold) held his hand. Well, on went he for a search, and away went I for foul clothes. But mark the sequel, Master Brook. I suffer’d the pangs of three several deaths:

No, heaven so speed me in my time to come! Albeit I will confess thy father’s wealth Was the first motive that I woo’d thee, Anne;

No, Master Brook, but the peaking cornuto her husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual ’larum of jealousy, comes me in the instant of our encounter, after we had embrac’d, kiss’d, protested, and, as it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy;

SLEN. Ay, that I do—as well as I love any woman in Gloucestershire. SHAL. He will maintain you like a gentlewoman. SLEN. Ay, that I will, come cut and long-tail, under the degree of a squire. SHAL. He will make you a hundred and fifty pounds jointure.

Thou wouldst make an absolute courtier, and the firm fixture of thy foot would give an excellent motion to thy gait in a semicircled farthingale. I see what thou wert, if Fortune thy foe were not, Nature thy friend.

Though what I am I cannot avoid, yet to be what I would not shall not make me tame. If I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go with me: I’ll be horn-mad.

Yet wooing thee, I found thee of more value Than stamps in gold, or sums in sealed bags; And ’tis the very riches of thyself That now I aim at.

You shall hear. As good luck would have it, comes in one Mistress Page; gives intelligence of Ford’s approach; and in her invention, and Ford’s wive’s distraction, they convey’d me into a buck-basket.

Nay, keep your way, little gallant; you were wont to be a follower, but now you are a leader. Whether had you rather lead mine eyes, or eye your master’s heels?

The clock gives me my cue, and my assurance bids me search—there I shall find Falstaff. I shall be rather prais’d for this than mock’d; for it is as positive as the earth is firm that Falstaff is there.

Well, I will take him, then torture my wife, pluck the borrow’d veil of modesty from the so-seeming Mistress Page, divulge Page himself for a secure and willful Actaeon; and to these violent proceedings all my neighbors shall cry aim.

Why, this boy will carry a letter twenty mile, as easy as a cannon will shoot point-blank twelve score. He pieces out his wive’s inclination; he gives her folly motion and advantage;

Am I politic? Am I subtle? Am I a Machiavel? Shall I lose my doctor? No, he gives me the potions and the motions. Shall I lose my parson? My priest? My Sir Hugh? No, he gives me the proverbs and the no-verbs.

Believe it, for you know it. There is money, spend it, spend it; spend more; spend all I have; only give me so much of your time in exchange of it, as to lay an amiable siege to the honesty of this Ford’s wife.

But whatsoever I have merited, either in my mind or in my means, meed I am sure I have receiv’d none, unless experience be a jewel—that I have purchas’d at an infinite rate, and that hath taught me to say this: “Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues, Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.

FAL. Of what quality was your love then? FORD. Like a fair house built on another man’s ground, so that I have lost my edifice by mistaking the place where I erected it.

God be prais’d for my jealousy! Eleven o’ clock the hour. I will prevent this, detect my wife, be reveng’d on Falstaff, and laugh at Page. I will about it; better three hours too soon than a minute too late.

Good Sir John, I sue for yours—not to charge you, for I must let you understand I think myself in better plight for a lender than you are; the which hath something embold’ned me to this unseason’d intrusion; for they say, if money go before, all ways do lie open.

I have directed you to wrong places. Your hearts are mighty, your skins are whole, and let burnt sack be the issue. Come, lay their swords to pawn.

Let him die; but first sheathe thy impatience, throw cold water on thy choler. Go about the fields with me through Frogmore, I will bring thee where Mistress Anne Page is, at a farm-house a-feasting; and thou shalt woo her.

Never a wife in Windsor leads a better life than she does: do what she will, say what she will, take all, pay all, go to bed when she list, rise when she list, all is as she will; and truly she deserves it, for if there be a kind woman in Windsor, she is one.

PAGE. Yonder is a most reverend gentleman, who, belike having receiv’d wrong by some person, is at most odds with his own gravity and patience that ever you saw. SHAL. I have liv’d fourscore years and upward; I never heard a man of his place, gravity, and learning, so wide of his own respect.