Shakespeare’s only comedy set in his homeland (with the exception of the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew), and his closest to the mainstream tradition of English farce, may also be his only play composed for a specific state occasion. According to a tradition first recorded by John *Dennis in 1702, the play was personally commissioned by Queen *Elizabeth, who, added *Rowe in 1709, particularly wished to see Falstaff in love. This unlikely piece of hearsay may have a kernel of truth, in that the play’s last act alludes to the ceremonies of the Order of the Garter, to which Shakespeare’s patron George Carey, Lord *Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, was admitted at Windsor early in 1597. These ceremonies were followed by a Garter Feast at the Palace of Westminster on St George’s Day, 23 April, attended by the Queen, and the play’s topical references to the Order of the Garter suggest that The Merry Wives of Windsor may have been composed expressly for performances associated with this event. The play may thus have enjoyed a royal première on Shakespeare’s 33rd birthday: in any event its rare vocabulary, quite apart from its leading role, links it closely with the Henry IV plays (1596–8), and since it calls Sir John Falstaff throughout rather than Oldcastle it must post-date the censorship of 1 Henry IV. Royal command performance or not, the play was almost certainly composed in 1597 or 1598.
Text: The play was entered in the *Stationers’ Register in January 1602, and was printed in the same year in a quarto that was subsequently reprinted in 1619: a much fuller and more reliable text appeared in the *Folio in 1623, and was itself reprinted in quarto in 1630. The two early quartos preserve an abbreviated and sometimes clumsily rewritten text of the play, apparently adapted from a memorial reconstruction (see reported text) prepared by an actor who had played the Host, but it is nonetheless a useful one, since the Folio text—visibly prepared from a transcript by the idiosyncratic scribe Ralph *Crane—is apparently based on a promptbook which had undergone both expurgation (in compliance with the *Act to Restrain the Abuses of Players, 1606) and censorship. Lord *Cobham, who had already complained about Shakespeare’s treatment of his ancestor Oldcastle, seems to have objected to Ford’s alias as ‘Brooke’ (the Cobhams’ family name), which the Folio text alters to ‘Broome’ (though preserving, meaninglessly, some of the puns occasioned by the original pseudonym). The confusing incident involving the theft of the Host’s horses, apparently incorporating allusions to the German Count Momplegard (finally elevated to the Garter in absentia in 1597 after much embarrassing importunity), also seems to have been censored, but is irrecoverably truncated in both extant texts.
Sources: No single source for this play is known, though its plot draws on widespread literary traditions, most obviously that of the Italian novella (exemplified, for example, by the work of Ser *Giovanni). With its good-natured plot of a comic elopement in a realistic English provincial setting, the play resembles Henry *Porter’s Two Angry Women of Abingdon, published in 1599, but Porter’s comedy may have been influenced by Shakespeare’s rather than vice versa. A long-standing tradition regards Justice Shallow as a hostile portrait of Sir Thomas *Lucy, alleged to have prosecuted the young Shakespeare for deer-poaching, though Leslie Hotson (in Shakespeare versus Shallow, 1931) claimed him more plausibly as a hit at the Surrey justice William *Gardiner.
Synopsis: 1.1 Justice Shallow calls at Master Page’s house in Windsor, hoping to recommend his foolish nephew Slender as a suitor to Page’s daughter Anne: he is incensed against Sir John Falstaff, also a dinner guest at the Pages’, who has been poaching his deer. The Welsh parson Evans attempts to make peace between Shallow, Sir John, and Sir John’s followers Bardolph, Nim, and Pistol, who have earlier got Slender drunk and robbed him. Finally left alone with Anne, Slender is socially inept.
1.2 Evans sends a letter, via Slender’s servant Peter Simple, to Mistress Quickly, housekeeper to the French physician Dr Caius and a friend of Anne, urging her to promote Slender’s suit.
1.3 Sir John, staying at the Garter Inn, successfully recommends Bardolph to his Host as a tapster. Sir John then explains to Nim and Pistol that he means to gain money by seducing Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, and gives them love letters to deliver: when they refuse this dishonourable errand he dismisses them, entrusting the letters instead to his page Robin. Nim and Pistol decide to avenge themselves by warning Ford and Page.
1.4 Mistress Quickly is telling Simple she will recommend Slender to Anne when Dr Caius returns unexpectedly: she hides Simple in a closet, where Caius finds him. Furious to learn of Simple’s errand—since he himself wishes to marry Anne—Caius sends a challenge to Evans. After Caius’s departure, the well-born Fenton arrives, also hoping to be recommended to Anne.
2.1 Mistress Page is affronted by the letter she has received from Sir John: Mistress Ford arrives, similarly agitated by her own letter, and when the two women compare notes they discover Sir John has written identically to each. They decide to avenge themselves on him by feigning compliance only to delay him at the Garter until he is bankrupt, deliberately arousing Ford’s causeless jealousy at the same time. Ford and Page arrive, receiving their warnings from Pistol and Nim: Page laughs his off, but the jealous Ford is troubled. The two wives leave with Mistress Quickly, whom they intend to use as go-between to Sir John. Ford arranges with the Host to visit Sir John under the alias of Brooke: he, the Host, Page, and Shallow leave in the hopes of seeing the intended duel between Evans and Caius.
2.2 At the Garter Mistress Quickly tells Sir John that both wives, ignorant of each other’s affairs, are in love with him, and that Mistress Ford sends word her husband will be absent from his house tomorrow between ten and eleven: she begs Robin, a potential go-between, for Mistress Page. Ford, sending Sir John a bottle of sack, subsequently arrives as Brooke, and privately explains that he has long desired Mistress Ford himself but despairs of overcoming her virtue unless she is first seduced by a more accomplished lover. Sir John delightedly accepts the money Brooke offers him to seduce Mistress Ford, and tells him gleefully of his appointment with her the following morning. Alone, Ford, horrified that his worst fears are apparently justified, rejoices that at least he now stands a chance of averting his cuckolding.
2.3 Caius and his servant John Rugby are waiting for Evans to arrive and fight: the Host, Shallow, Page, and Slender arrive, and the Host promises not only to lead Caius to where Evans is but to bring him to a farmhouse where he may woo Anne.
3.1 Evans is also waiting, with Simple, for Caius, trying to maintain his courage by singing: when Shallow, Slender, and Page and at last the Host and Caius arrive, the jovial Host reveals that he has deliberately been averting the duel by sending the would-be combatants to separate places. Caius and Evans, reconciled, plan to avenge themselves on the Host for this indignity.
3.2 Ford, learning that Mistress Page now employs Sir John’s page, is astonished at Page’s unsuspicious nature. Page arrives, assuring Slender that he supports his suit with Anne although Mistress Page favours Caius, and though the Host thinks that Anne herself will prefer Fenton. Ford takes Caius and Evans with him towards his house, expecting to surprise Sir John with his wife.
3.3 Mistresses Ford and Page are preparing for Sir John’s arrival, having their servants bring a large laundry basket and hiding Mistress Page in another room. Sir John arrives and woos Mistress Ford, swearing that her suspicion that he is also courting Mistress Page is groundless: on a pre-arranged cue from Robin, Mistress Page enters, announcing that the jealous Ford is on his way with armed men to search the house, and the two women hide Sir John in the laundry basket, in which he is carried out by two servants just as Ford, Page, Caius, and Evans arrive. When their combined search of the house fails to find Sir John, the baffled Ford has to apologize to the company.
3.4 Fenton is reassuring Anne that although at first, as her father suggests, he only wooed her for her money, he now loves her truly, when Shallow, Slender, and Mistress Quickly arrive: Slender is as incompetent a wooer as ever. Page and Mistress Page arrive: Page rebukes Fenton for his persistence, favouring Slender, whom Anne tells her mother she does not wish to marry. Left alone, Mistress Quickly admits she has been accepting gifts from all three of Anne’s rival suitors.
3.5 A chilled Sir John, who has been tipped from the basket into the Thames with the laundry, orders some mulled sack. Mistress Quickly apologizes on Mistress Ford’s behalf and tells him to come again between eight and nine, when Ford will be out birding. Ford then arrives as Brooke for a progress report, and learns both how Sir John escaped him among the laundry and of his next impending appointment with his wife.
4.1 Mistress Page’s young son William is given a Latin lesson by Evans, much misconstrued by Mistress Quickly.
4.2 Sir John is again wooing Mistress Ford when Mistress Page again brings news that the jealous Ford is approaching: Sir John refuses to enter the laundry basket again, and the women instead arrange to dress him as Mother Prat, a suspected witch. Before Page, Caius, Evans, and Shallow, Ford triumphantly ransacks the laundry basket, baffled not to find Sir John, and himself unwittingly drives Sir John, disguised as Mother Prat, out of the house, beating him with a cudgel. After the men depart, the wives agree to inform their husbands of the whole story, hoping this will have cured Ford’s jealousy forever, and resolve to punish Sir John further only with their husbands’ co-operation.
4.3 Bardolph requests three horses from the Host for a mysterious German duke, who has apparently booked the Garter for a week already, obliging the Host to turn away his other guests.
4.4 The Pages and the Fords, laughing over Sir John’s misadventures to date, plot that the two wives should invite Sir John to meet them, disguised as the legendary horned spirit Herne the Hunter, at Herne’s Oak in Windsor Park at midnight, where Sir John can be ambushed by Anne, William, and other children disguised as fairies and then exposed to public ridicule. It is agreed that Anne Page will be dressed as the queen of the fairies: Page plans secretly to arrange Slender’s elopement with her, though his wife still prefers Caius.
4.5 Simple has come to the Garter, hoping to consult Mother Prat, supposedly seen entering Sir John’s rooms, about Anne Page’s fortune. The Host learns from Bardolph, Evans, and Caius that the German duke was a hoax and his horses have been stolen. Mistress Quickly brings Sir John the letter appointing his midnight rendezvous.
4.6 Fenton arranges with the discomfited Host for a vicar to be ready to marry him to Anne between midnight and one: she has feigned compliance with both her father’s plot that she should elope with Slender and her mother’s that she should elope with Caius, but really plans to run away with Fenton.
5.1 Sir John agrees to the rendezvous, and tells Ford as Brooke of his escape and sufferings in the guise of Mother Prat.
5.2 Page and Shallow check that Slender knows how he is to identify the figure with whom he is to elope: he and Anne will both be dressed in white.
5.3 Mistress Page similarly briefs Caius, who expects Anne to be in green. Anne, Evans, and the other pretended fairies are already lying in wait in a pit near Herne’s Oak.
5.4 Disguised as a satyr, Evans marshals his fairies.
5.5 The amorous Sir John, wearing horns, awaits Mistress Ford: she arrives, with Mistress Page, and he is delightedly preparing to enjoy both when, hearing a noise, they flee in pretended panic. Evans and the fairies appear, with Anne dressed as a fairy and Mistress Quickly as the fairy queen: Sir John hides, convinced he is witnessing fairy revels and in grave danger, as they recite verses blessing Windsor and the Garter emblems. The fairies find Sir John, testing his purity with lighted tapers, then pinching him as a punishment for his sins (to the song ‘Fie on sinful luxury…’): meanwhile Caius steals away with a fairy in green, Slender with one in white, and Anne leaves with Fenton. The pretended fairies disperse at a sound of hunters, and are replaced by the Pages and the Fords, who confront Sir John and reveal their various stratagems. Evans joins in their sermonizing. Slender arrives, indignant at discovering that the fairy in white was a boy, followed by Caius, whose fairy in green was also a boy: the newly-weds Fenton and Anne then arrive, and on Ford’s advice the Pages accept their new son-in-law. All, including Sir John, set off for Windsor to laugh about the night’s events.
Artistic features: The play uses less verse than any other Shakespeare play, and features more devices familiar from later situation comedies, such as comic stage accents (Welsh and French) and malapropisms (or, less anachronistically, Quicklyisms). Nonetheless its harmonious, magic-haunted conclusion is recognizably akin to the worlds of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It.
Critical history: Apart from a long-running argument about whether the Sir John of this play lives up to his appearances in the Henry IV plays, The Merry Wives of Windsor has occasioned very little critical discussion, although some modern criticism has related it usefully to the *city comedies favoured by some of Shakespeare’s colleagues, such as *Jonson and *Middleton.
Stage history: As its multiple early editions suggest, the play was popular before the Civil War (played at court in 1604 and in the 1630s), and it was revived in unadapted form soon after the Restoration in 1660. Despite *Dennis’s short-lived adaptation The *Comical Gallant (1702), the original play has remained popular ever since, often starring actors already established as Sir John in Henry IV (from *Betterton through *Quin to Beerbohm *Tree and beyond), though many important performers have also been attracted to the role of Ford (including *Kemble and Charles *Kean), and to those of the wives themselves (including Anne *Bracegirdle and Elizabeth *Barry, Madge Kendal and Ellen *Terry, the *Vanbrugh sisters, Peggy *Ashcroft and Edith *Evans). Modern directors have found possibilities in the play too: *Komisarjevsky gave it a Viennese setting at Stratford in 1935, Terry *Hands has directed it twice, and in 1985 Bill Alexander successfully staged the play for the *RSC in a kitsch, mock-Tudor 1950s setting, the wives comparing letters under adjoining hairdryers. It remains true, however, that this unabashedly middlebrow play has enjoyed its greatest acclaim as an *opera, its musical transformations including Otto Nicolai’s Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (1848) and *Verdi’s last masterpiece Falstaff (1893). Gregory *Doran added a minor footnote to this tradition in 2006 when he directed Merry Wives—The Musical for the *Royal Shakespeare Company, with Judi *Dench as Mistress Quickly.
Michael Dobson
On the screen: Historically interesting screen versions include the BBC TV transmission of Glen *Byam Shaw’s Christmassy Stratford production (1955), with Anthony *Quayle, and the 1982 BBC TV production with Ben *Kingsley (Ford) and Richard Griffiths (Sir John).
Anthony Davies