Quickly, and others,
drest like Fairies, with Tapers.
Quic.
Fairies, black, gray, green, and white,
You moon-shine revellers, and shades of night,
2 note
You Ouphen heirs of fixed destiny,
Attend your office, and your quality.
Crier hobgoblin, make the fairy o-yes.
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,
3 note
Rein up the organs of her fantasie;
Sleep she as sound as careless infancy;
-- 343 --
But those, that sleep, and think not on their sins,
Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides and shins.
Quick.
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,
4 note
In state as wholsom, as in state 'tis fit;
-- 344 --
5 note
Worthy the owner, as the owner it.
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,
6 note
In emrold-tuffs, flow'rs purfled, blue and white,
Like saphire, pearl, in rich embroidery,
Buckled below fair Knight-hood's bending knee;
Fairies use flow'rs for their charactery.
-- 345 --
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.
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.
Quic.
With tryal-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 tryal, come.—
[They burn him with their tapers, and pinch him.
Come, with 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.
It is right, indeed, he is full of leacheries and
iniquity.
The SONG.
Fie on sinful phantasie,
Fie on lust and luxury!
Lust is but (a) note i'th' blood, a fire,
Kindled with unchaste desire,
Fed in heart, whose flames aspire,
As thoughts to blow them, higher and higher.
-- 346 --
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.
During 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; and
Fenton comes, and steals away Mrs. Anne Page. A
noise of hunting is made within. All the Fairies run
away. Falstaff pulls off his Buck's head, and rises.
Alexander Pope [1747], The works of Shakespear in eight volumes. The Genuine Text (collated with all the former Editions, and then corrected and emended) is here settled: Being restored from the Blunders of the first Editors, and the Interpolations of the two Last: with A Comment and Notes, Critical and Explanatory. By Mr. Pope and Mr. Warburton (Printed for J. and P. Knapton, [and] S. Birt [etc.], London) [word count] [S11301].
