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.
MISTRESS FORD.
And till he tell the truth,
Let the supposed fairies pinch him sound
And burn him with their tapers.
MISTRESS PAGE.
The truth being known,
We’ll all present ourselves, dis-horn the spirit,
And mock him home to Windsor.