Ford searches everywhere for Falstaff
in vain, and is beginning to despair of finding him, when the sound of a
kiss behind the screen arrests his attention. He approaches it
cautiously, and thrusts it aside only to find his daughter in Fenton's
arms. Meanwhile Mrs. Ford calls on her servants. Between them they
manage to lift the gigantic basket, and, while she calls her husband to
view the sight, carry it to the window and pitch it out bodily into the
Thames. The first scene of the third act is devoted to hatching a new
plot to humiliate the fat knight, and the second shows us a moonlit
glade in Windsor Forest, whither he has been summoned by the agency of
Dame Quickly. There all the characters assemble disguised as elves and
fairies. They give Falstaff a _mauvais quart d'heure_, and end by
convincing him that his amorous wiles are useless against the virtue of
honest burghers' wives. Meanwhile Nannetta has induced her father, by
means of a trick, to consent to her marriage with Fenton, and the act
ends with a song of rejoicing in the shape of a magnificent fugue in
which every one joins.
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about 'Falstaff' is that it was
written by a man eighty years old. It is the very incarnation of youth
and high spirits. Verdi told an interviewer that he thoroughly enjoyed
writing it, and one can well believe his words. He has combined a
schoolboy's sense of fun with the grace and science of a Mozart.
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