Mistress Page stops the punishment (at line 102). The old knight has suffered enough, and the wives feel satisfied that their revenge is complete.
Mistress Page then asks her husband, “Do not these fair yokes become the forest better than the town?” (104-05). The word yokes refers to the horns that Falstaff is still wearing on his head. Mistress Page is saying that the horns of a deer or stag in the forest are natural, but the horns of a cuckold in the city are unnatural. She is reminding her husband that he will never have to fear about becoming a cuckold.
The same idea holds true for Master Ford, who then mockingly asks Falstaff, “Who’s a cuckold now?” (106). Ford adds that Falstaff will have one further punishment: the twenty pounds of money given to him by Master Brooke will have to be repaid, and Falstaff’s horses have already been seized and will not be returned until all twenty pounds have been repaid.
Falstaff feels ridiculous because he was fooled by the fairy children, and he asserts, “See now how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent when ‘tis upon ill employment!” (122-23). A Jack-a-Lent is a butt or recipient of a joke (the word was often used in the Renaissance to mean target). Shakespeare is thus asserting that even a clever and witty man can be fooled under certain circumstances and conditions. No man is so wise as to not play the fool at some point in his life.
Falstaff feels further humiliated when Hugh