[A noise of horns within.]
MISTRESS PAGE.
Alas, what noise?
MISTRESS FORD.
Heaven forgive our sins!
FALSTAFF.
What should this be?
MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE.
Away, away!
[They run off.]
FALSTAFF.
I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that’s in me should set hell on fire; he would never else cross me thus.
Enter Mistress Quickly as the Queen of Fairies, Sir Hugh Evans as a Satyr, Pistol as Hobgoblin, Anne Page and children as Fairies, carrying tapers.
MISTRESS QUICKLY.
Fairies, black, grey, green, and white,
You moonshine revellers and shades of night,
You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,
Attend your office and your quality.
Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes.
PISTOL.
Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys!
Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap,
Where fires thou find’st unraked and hearths unswept,
There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry.
Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery.