_SCENE I. Sherwood Forest: An open glade, showing on the right the mouth of the outlaw's cave. It is about sunset. The giant figure of LITTLE JOHN comes out of the cave, singing._ LITTLE JOHN [_Sings._] When Spring comes back to England And crowns her brows with may, Round the merry moonlit world She goes the greenwood way. [_He stops and calls in stentorian tones._] Much! Much! Much! Where has he vanished now, Where has that monstrous giant the miller's son Hidden himself? [_Enter MUCH, a dwarf-like figure, carrying a large bundle of ferns._] MUCH Hush, hush, child, here I am! And here's our fairy feather-beds, ha! ha! Come, praise me, praise me, for a thoughtful parent. There's nothing makes a better bed than ferns Either for sleeping sound or rosy dreams. LITTLE JOHN Take care the fern-seed that the fairies use Get not among thy yellow locks, my Titan, Or thou'lt wake up invisible. There's none Too much of Much already. MUCH [_Looking up at him impudently._] It would take Our big barn full of fern-seed, I misdoubt, To make thee walk invisible, Little John, My sweet Tom Thumb! And, in this troublous age Of forest-laws, if we night-walking minions, We gentlemen of the moon, could only hunt Invisible, there's many and many of us With thumbs lopped off, eyes gutted and legs pruned, Slick, like poor pollarded pear-trees, would be lying Happy and whole this day beneath the boughs. LITTLE JOHN Invisible? Ay, but what would Jenny say To such a ghostly midge as thou would'st be Sipping invisibly at her cherry lips. MUCH Why, there now, that's a teaser. E'en as it is (Don't joke about it) my poor Jenny takes The smallness of her Much sorely to heart! And though I often tell her half a loaf (Ground in our mill) is better than no bread, She weeps, poor thing, that an impartial heaven Bestows on her so small a crumb of bliss As me! You'd scarce believe, now, half the nostrums, Possets and strangely nasty herbal juices That girl has made me gulp, in the vain hope That I, the frog, should swell to an ox like thee. I tell her it's all in vain, and she still cheats Her fancy and swears I've grown well nigh three feet Already. O Lord, she's desperate. She'll advance Right inward to the sources of creation, She'll take the reins of the world in hand. She'll stop The sun like Joshua, turn the moon to blood, And if I have to swallow half the herbs In Sherwood, I shall stalk a giant yet, Shoulder to shoulder with thee, Little John, And crack thy head at quarter-staff. But don't, Don't joke about it. 'Tis a serious matter. LITTLE JOHN