Mrs Page. I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher.
Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives?
105 See you [these, husband]? do not these [fair yokes]
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 110 of Ford’s but his buck-basket, his cudgel, and twenty pounds of money, which must be [paid to Master Brook]; his horses are arrested for it, Master Brook.
Mrs Ford. Sir John, we have had ill luck; we could never meet. I will never take you for my love again; but 115 I will always count you my deer.
Fal. I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass.
Ford. Ay, and an ox too: both the proofs are extant.
Fal. And these are not fairies? I was three or four times in the thought they were not fairies: and yet the 120 guiltiness of my mind, [the sudden] surprise of my powers, drove the grossness of the foppery into a received belief, in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and reason, that they were fairies. See now how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when ’tis upon ill employment!
V. 5.
125 Evans. Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you.