Enter SIR HUGH EVANS, like a satyr; MRS. QUICKLY, and PISTOL; ANNE PAGE, as the fairy queen, at tended by her brother and others, dressed like fairies, with waxen tapers on their heads.

Mrs. Quick. Fairies, black, grey, green, and white, You moonshine revellers, and shades of night, You orphan-heirs of fixed destiny,1 Attend your office, and your quality.2

Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy o-yes.3

Pis. Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys.

Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap: Where fires thou find'st unraked, and hearths un

swept,

There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry :

Our radiant queen hates sluts, and sluttery.

4

Fal. They are fairies; he, that speaks to them, shall die:

I'll wink and couch. No man their works must eye. [lies down on his face.

Evans. Where's Pede ?-Go you, and where you

find a maid,

That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said,
Raise up the organs of her fantasy,

Sleep she as sound as careless infancy;

Orphans in respect of your real parents, and now dependent only on Destiny herself.'-Farmer.

2 Companions.

3 The usual proclamation.

• A sweet shrub, called a whortleberry.

But those as sleep, and think not on their sins,

Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and

shins.

Mrs. Quick. About, about;

Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out:
Strew good luck, ouphes,1 on every sacred roota;
That it may stand till the perpetual doom,
In state as wholesome, as in state 'tis fit;
Worthy the owner, and the owner it.

The several chairs of order look you scour
With juice of balm, and every precious flower:
Each fair instalment, coat, and several crest,
With loyal blazon evermore be bless'd!
And nightly, meadow-fairies, look, you sing,
Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring:

2

The expressure that it bears, green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see;

And Hony soit qui mal y pense, write,

In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white;
Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,
Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee :
Fairies use flowers for their charactery.
Away; disperse. But, till 'tis one o'clock,
Our dance of custom, round about the oak
Of Herne the hunter, let us not forget.

Evans. Pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves in order set:

And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be,

Sinirke del

Act 7 Scer V

To guide our measure round about the trec.
But, stay; I smell a man of middle earth.

Fal. Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!

Pis. Vile worm, thou wast o'er-look'd even in thy birth.1

Mrs. Quick. With trial-fire touch me his finger-end: If he be chaste, the flame will back descend,

And turn him to no pain; but if he start,
It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.

Pis. A trial, come.

Evans. Come, will this wood take fire?

Fal. Oh, oh, oh!

[They burn him with their tapers.

Mrs. Quick. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire! About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme : And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time. Evans. It is right; indeed he is full of lecheries

Fie on lust and luxury!

Lust is but a bloody fire,2

Kindled with unchaste desire,

Fed in heart; whose flames aspire,

As thoughts do blow them higher and higher.

Pinch him, fairies, mutually;

Pinch him for his villany;

Pinch nim, and burn him, and turn him about,

Till candles, and star-light, and moonshine be out.

During this song, the fairies pinch Falstaff. Doctor

Slighted as soon as born.

2 A fire in the blood.