Quickly, and others,
drest like Fairies, with Tapers.
Quic.
Fairies, black, gray, green, and white,
You moon-shine revellers, and shades of night,
You Ouphen heirs of fixed destiny,9 note
Attend your office, and your quality,
Crier hobgoblin, make the fairy o-yes.
-- 548 --
Eva.
Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys
Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap:
Where fires thou find'st unrak'd, and hearths unswept,
There pinch the maids as blue as bilbery.
Our radiant Queen hates sluts and sluttery.
Fal.
They're fairies; he, that speaks to them, shall die.
I'll wink and couch; no man their works must eye.
[Lyes down upon his face.
Eva.
Where's Pede? go you, and where you find a maid,
That ere she sleep, hath thrice her prayers said,
Rein up the organs of her fantasy;1 note
Sleep she as sound as careless infancy;
-- 549 --
But those, that sleep, and think not on their sins,
Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides and shins.
Quic.
About, about;
Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out.
Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room,
That it may stand 'till the perpetual Doom,
In state as wholsom, as in state 'tis fit;2 note
Worthy the owner, as the owner it.3 note
The several chairs of Order look you scour,
With juice of balm and ev'ry precious flow'r:
Each fair Instalment-Coat and sev'ral Crest,
With loyal blazon evermore be blest!
And nightly-meadow-fairies, look, you sing,
Like to the Garter-compass, in a ring:
Th' 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 emrold tuffs, flow'rs purple, blue and white,4 note
-- 550 --
Like saphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,
Buckled below fair Knight-hood's bending knee;
Fairies use flow'rs for their charactery.4 note
Away, disperse; but, 'till 'tis one o'clock,
Our dance of custom round about the Oak
Of Herne, the hunter, let us not forget.
Eva.
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.5 note
Fal.
Heav'ns defend me from that Welch fairy, lest he
transform me to a piece of cheese!
Eva.
Vild worm, thou wast o'er-look'd ev'n in thy birth.
-- 551 --
Quic.
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.
Eva.
A trial, come.—
[They burn him with their tapers, and pinch him.
Come, will this wood take fire.
Fal.
Oh, oh, oh!
Quic.
Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire;
About him, fairies, sing a scornful rhime:
And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.
Eva.
6 noteIt is right, indeed, he is full of leacheries
and iniquity.
The SONG.
Fie on sinful phantasy,
Fie on lust and luxury!
Lust is but a bloodish fire,7 note
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 him, and burn him, and turn him about,
'Till candles, and star-light, and moon-shine be out.
8 noteDuring this Song, they pinch him. Doctor Caius
comes one way, and steals away a boy in green; Slender
another way, and he takes away a boy in white;
-- 552 --
and Fenton comes, and steals away Mrs. Ann Page.
A noise of hunting is made within. All the Fairies
run away. Falstaff pulls off his Buck's head, and rises.
Samuel Johnson [1765], The plays of William Shakespeare, in eight volumes, with the corrections and illustrations of Various Commentators; To which are added notes by Sam. Johnson (Printed for J. and R. Tonson [and] C. Corbet [etc.], London) [word count] [S11001].
