warrant they'll have him publicly shamed: and
methinks there would be no period to the jest,
should he not be publicly shamed.
Come, to the forge with it then; shape it: I would
not have things cool.
Sir, the Germans desire to have three of your
horses: the duke himself will be to-morrow at
court, and they are going to meet him.
What duke should that be comes so secretly? I hear
not of him in the court. Let me speak with the
gentlemen: they speak English?
Ay, sir; I'll call them to you.
They shall have my horses; but I'll make them pay;
I'll sauce them: they have had my house a week at
command; I have turned away my other guests: they
must come off; I'll sauce them. Come.
'Tis one of the best discretions of a 'oman as ever
I did look upon.
And did he send you both these letters at an instant?
Within a quarter of an hour.
Pardon me, wife. Henceforth do what thou wilt;
I rather will suspect the sun with cold
Than thee with wantonness: now doth thy honour stand
In him that was of late an heretic,
As firm as faith.
'Tis well, 'tis well; no more:
Be not as extreme in submission
As in offence.
But let our plot go forward: let our wives
Yet once again, to make us public sport,
Appoint a meeting with this old fat fellow,
Where we may take him and disgrace him for it.
There is no better way than that they spoke of.
How? to send him word they'll meet him in the park
at midnight? Fie, fie! he'll never come.
You say he has been thrown in the rivers and has
been grievously peaten as an old 'oman: methinks
there should be terrors in him that he should not
come; methinks his flesh is punished, he shall have
no desires.
So think I too.
Devise but how you'll use him when he comes,
And let us two devise to bring him thither.
There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter,
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest,
Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;
And there he blasts the tree and takes the cattle
And makes milch-kine yield blood and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner:
You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know
The superstitious idle-headed eld
Received and did deliver to our age
This tale of Herne the hunter for a truth.
Why, yet there want not