As the two ladies exit the stage, their husbands enter (at line 90). Pistol is with Master Ford, and Nim is with Master Page. The two scoundrels are telling the two husbands about Falstaff’s plot to have an affair with their wives. Pistol warns Ford that he better take action against Falstaff: otherwise, Ford will be “like Sir Actaeon” (105). The name of Actaeon appears in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (many Renaissance poets greatly admired Ovid, the greatest of Roman poets during the Classical Age). In the tale Actaeon is a hunter who accidentally comes upon the goddess Diana (the Roman goddess equivalent to Artemis in Greek mythology) while she is bathing naked in a pond. The goddess is angry when she catches Actaeon staring at her, and she turns the hunter into a stag (a male deer). Actaeon’s hunting dogs then chase him down and kill him. Pistol, though, is not suggesting that Ford will be transformed into an animal. Rather, he is wittily suggesting that Ford will become a cuckold. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, cuckold was the term that was used for a man whose wife is having an affair. Society would often laugh at cuckolds, ridiculing the men who could not control their wives. And, according to medieval superstition, a cuckold would grow small horns on his head. Thus, like Actaeon, Ford will grow horns on his head if Falstaff succeeds in seducing his wife.