Mentions of Herne’s Oak

[4.4.27-43]. Mrs. Ford. “Devise but how you’ll use him when he comes,/ And let us two devise to bring him thither.” Mrs. Page. “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/ Receiv’d and did deliver to our age/ This tale of Herne the hunter for a truth.” Page. “Why, yet there want not many that do fear/ In deep of night to walk by this Herne’s oak./ But what of this?” Mrs. Ford. “Marry, this is our device;/ That Falstaff at that oak shall meet with us,/ Disguis’d like Herne with huge horns on his head.”

[4.6.19-25].Fenton “To-night at Herne’s oak, just ‘twixt twelve and one,/ Must my sweet Nan present the Fairy Queen;/ The purpose why, is here: in which disguise,/ While other jests are something rank on foot,/ Her father hath commanded her to slip/ Away with Slender, and with him at Eton/ Immediately to marry.”

[5.1.12]. Falstaff. ” Be you in the Park about midnight, at Herne’s oak, and you shall see wonders.”

[5.3.13-23].Mrs. Page. “They are all couched in a pit hardvby Herne’s oak, with obscured lights; which, at the very instant of Falstaff’s and our meeting,vthey will at once display to the night.” Mrs. Ford. “That cannot choose but amaze him.” Mrs. Page. “If he be not amazed, he will be mocked; if he be amazed, he will every way be mocked.” Mrs. Ford. “We’ll betray him finely.” Mrs. Page. “Against such lewdsters and their lechery,/ Those that betray them do no treachery.” Mrs. Ford. “The hour draws on: to the oak, to the oak!”

[5.5.55-75]. Quickly. “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 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 flow’r./ Each fair installment, coat, and sev’ral crest,/ With loyal blazon, everymore be blest!/ And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,/ Like to the Garter’s compass, in a ring,/ Th’ expressure that it bears, green let it be,/ More fertile-fresh than all the field to see;/ And ‘Honi soit qui maly y pense’ write/ In em’rald tufts, flow’rs purple, blue, and white,/ Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,/ Buckled below fair knighthood’s bending knee;/ Fairies use flow’rs for their charactery./ Away; disperse! But till ’tis one o’clcok/ Our dance of custom round about the oak/ of Herne the hunter, lelt us not forget.”