The Merry Wives of Windsor

Summary

The Merry Wives of Windsor is Shakespeare's only comedy set in the England of his own day, among the householders, innkeepers, servants and parsons of a market town beside the royal castle. Sir John Falstaff, short of money and lodged at the Garter Inn, decides to court two well-to-do wives, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, in the hope of getting at their husbands' purses. He sends them the same love letter with only the name changed. The wives compare the letters, laugh, and resolve to punish him, while proving to everyone that wives may be merry and still be honest. Their three tricks give the play its shape. Falstaff is smuggled out of Ford's house in a basket of dirty laundry and tipped into a ditch beside the Thames; he escapes a second time disguised as the old woman of Brentford, whom Ford hates, and is beaten out of the house; and at last he is lured at midnight to Herne's Oak in Windsor Park wearing a buck's horns, where children dressed as fairies pinch and burn him with tapers until he admits he has been made an ass. Running alongside the wives' plot is Ford's own: tormented by jealousy, he disguises himself as Master Brook and pays Falstaff to seduce his wife, so that he hears from the would-be seducer's mouth each appointment he hopes to catch. A second plot follows Anne Page, whose father wants her to marry the foolish country heir Slender while her mother prefers the irascible French physician Doctor Caius. Anne loves Fenton, a gentleman whose past is wild and who admits he first sought her for her father's wealth. During the fairy masque each parent sends a suitor to steal Anne away in a coloured gown; Slender and Caius each elope with a boy, and Fenton marries Anne. The play ends not with punishment but with an invitation: Page asks everyone, Falstaff included, home to laugh over a posset by the fire. The comedy is built from prose more than any other Shakespeare play, and much of its pleasure is in its voices: the Welsh parson Sir Hugh Evans, the Frenchman Caius, the Host's bluster, Mistress Quickly's malapropisms, and Slender's helpless courtship. Beneath the farce it treats real goods. The wives defend their marriages with wit rather than complaint, Ford is cured of a suspicion that nearly wrecks his home, Fenton's confession shows love outgrowing a mercenary start, and Falstaff's humiliation is meant to correct rather than destroy. The library attaches the full Project Gutenberg text (#1517), so the tricks, speeches and scene locations named here can be checked directly.

Plot or Argument

• Act I: Complaints, suitors and a pair of letters

  Justice Shallow arrives in Windsor complaining that Falstaff has beaten his men, killed his deer and broken open his lodge. Sir Hugh Evans proposes that Shallow's cousin Slender marry Anne Page, heir to seven hundred pounds. At the Garter Falstaff dismisses Bardolph to serve the Host and announces his plan to woo the wives; Pistol and Nym refuse to carry the letters. At Doctor Caius's house Mistress Quickly promises her help to all three of Anne's suitors, and Caius challenges Evans for supporting Slender.

• Act II: The wives compare notes; Ford becomes Brook

  Mistress Page and Mistress Ford discover their identical letters and plan revenge. Pistol and Nym tell the husbands: Page laughs, Ford broods. The Host arranges for Ford to visit Falstaff as Master Brook, who pays the knight to seduce Mistress Ford. Ford's soliloquy reveals the torment of his jealousy. Meanwhile the Host sends Caius and Evans to different places so that their duel cannot happen.

• Act III: The buck-basket

  The Host reconciles the parson and the doctor, who then plot together against him. Falstaff visits Mistress Ford; Mistress Page announces Ford's approach, and the knight is carried out in a laundry basket and emptied into the ditch at Datchet Mead. Fenton and Anne speak of his suit, and Slender stumbles through his. Falstaff tells Brook the whole story and swears to try again.

• Act IV: The old woman of Brentford and a fairy plot

  Evans examines young William Page in Latin while Mistress Quickly mishears the grammar as indecency. Falstaff, trapped a second time, escapes in the clothes of the old woman of Brentford and is beaten by Ford, who ransacks the basket again. The wives tell their husbands everything; Ford asks pardon, and all agree to shame Falstaff publicly at Herne's Oak. Page and his wife privately plan rival elopements for Anne; the Host is cheated by false Germans and agrees to help Fenton.

• Act V: Herne's Oak

  At midnight Falstaff, wearing horns, meets the wives; the fairies, led by Mistress Quickly as their queen and Evans as a satyr, pinch and burn him while singing against lust. Slender and Caius each carry off a disguised boy, and Fenton returns married to Anne. Falstaff admits he has been made an ass, Ford promises to trust his wife, Page accepts Fenton, and all go home to laugh together.

Characters

• Sir John Falstaff, knight lodging at the Garter Inn

  Fat, witty and penniless, he plans to court two wives for their husbands' money and is three times outwitted, ending as the willing butt of the whole town's joke.

• Mistress Alice Ford, wife of Frank Ford

  Quick, practical partner in the tricks who must manage both Falstaff's advances and her husband's suspicion.

• Mistress Margaret Page, wife of George Page and mother of Anne

  The chief deviser of the plots against Falstaff, who also schemes to marry her daughter to Doctor Caius.

• Frank Ford, Windsor gentleman

  Jealous husband who disguises himself as Master Brook to test his wife and whose suspicion is cured only when the wives reveal their plot.

• George Page, Windsor gentleman

  Trusting husband and stubborn father who favours Slender as a match for Anne because of his land.

• Anne Page, daughter of the Pages

  Courted by three suitors, she quietly chooses Fenton and marries him in defiance of both parents' plans.

• Fenton, young gentleman

  Anne's suitor, of higher rank and wilder past than her father likes, who admits he first sought her money and then came to love her.

• Mistress Quickly, housekeeper to Doctor Caius

  Busy go-between who carries messages for everyone, mangles words cheerfully, and leads the fairy revels as their queen.

• Sir Hugh Evans, Welsh parson and schoolmaster

  Comic for his accent, earnest in his morality, he tests William Page in Latin and closes the masque telling Falstaff to serve God.

• Doctor Caius, French physician

  Hot-tempered suitor to Anne who challenges Evans to a duel and ends married, by mistake, to a boy.

• Abraham Slender, Justice Shallow's cousin

  Shy, dim country heir who would rather have his book of Songs and Sonnets than his speech when courting Anne.

• The Host of the Garter, innkeeper

  Loud, inventive manager of other people's quarrels who stops the duel and is later cheated of his horses.

Lessons

• Merry and yet honest

  Mistress Page's couplet in Act IV, Scene II states the wives' purpose: to show that cheerfulness and laughter do not mean loose virtue. The wives never consider Falstaff's offer; they use comedy to defend their marriages and their reputations. Students can see chastity presented not as gloom but as a confident, even playful, strength.

  • Why do the wives choose tricks rather than simply telling their husbands at once?
  • What does the identical letter reveal about Falstaff's idea of love?
  • Is there any point at which the wives' revenge goes too far?

• Jealousy as self-made torment

  Ford is never wronged, yet he pays a stranger to tempt his wife, ransacks his own house twice, and beats an old woman he believes is a witch. His soliloquy in Act II, Scene II shows a man thanking God for his jealousy while it destroys his peace. The play sets him against Page, who trusts too easily, and asks what trust in marriage requires.

  • What does Ford gain and what does he lose by becoming Master Brook?
  • Compare Ford's and Page's responses to the same news from Pistol and Nym. Is either man wise?
  • Ford asks pardon in Act IV, Scene IV. Is his repentance complete?

• The fairies' sentence

  The masque at Herne's Oak is a mock trial: fairies sing against lust, pinch the knight and test him with fire. Falstaff confesses that his own guilty mind made him believe the fairies were real. The punishment is shame, not ruin, and it ends at Page's table. The scene invites reflection on correction that aims at amendment and on the place of laughter in moral reproof.

  • What does Falstaff mean when he says wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent when it is upon ill employment?
  • Why does the play invite Falstaff to supper instead of driving him out of Windsor?
  • Evans tells Falstaff to serve God and leave his desires. Is this the play's verdict or one character's?

• Anne Page and the choice of a husband

  Anne's parents bargain over her like the provinces in a treaty: Page values Slender's land, Mistress Page the doctor's connections. Fenton's confession in Act III, Scene IV that money was his first motive, and his defence of the secret marriage in Act V, Scene V, raise the old question of how far parental authority extends in marriage. The play takes Anne's side, but students should weigh both duty and freedom.

  • Fenton says Anne's disobedience is a holy offence because it prevents a forced marriage. Is the argument sound?
  • How does Slender's courtship show what a marriage without love would have been?
  • What does Page's closing line, that what cannot be eschewed must be embraced, say about his character?

• Many tongues in one town

  Windsor is full of accents and errors: Evans's Welsh, Caius's French, Quickly's malapropisms, Pistol's bombast, the Host's catchphrases. Falstaff's final humiliation includes being mocked by a man who makes fritters of English. The comedy delights in language while gently teaching that pride in one's own speech can be another kind of folly.

  • Choose one character's verbal habit and show how it reveals his or her nature.
  • Why might Shakespeare have written this play almost entirely in prose?
  • Is the play's humor about foreign speakers mocking or affectionate? Use a scene as evidence.

Context

The play is set in Windsor, where the royal castle and the Order of the Garter gave the town its standing; the fairy masque in Act V includes the Garter's motto and blessings on the castle. Its world of prosperous townspeople, a local justice, a Welsh parson-schoolmaster, a foreign physician and an innkeeper reflects the middling Elizabethan society that rarely takes centre stage in Shakespeare's other comedies.

Composition

Usually dated between 1597 and 1601. Many scholars, following Leslie Hotson, connect it with the Garter feast of April 1597, at which the company's patron George Carey, Lord Hunsdon, was elected to the Order; others place it nearer 1600. A tradition first recorded in the early eighteenth century by John Dennis and Nicholas Rowe says Queen Elizabeth asked to see Falstaff in love and that the play was written in a fortnight; the story is unproven. A shorter quarto was printed in 1602 and the fuller text in the First Folio of 1623. In the Folio Ford's alias is Broome, but many editions, including the library's text, print Brook, which suits the Host's pun on brooks overflowing with liquor; one reading connects the change with the Brooke family, Lords Cobham.

Reception

Often popular on stage, the play has been more admired by audiences than by critics, some of whom have judged its Falstaff a lesser figure than the Falstaff of the Henry IV plays. It inspired several operas, including Otto Nicolai's Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (1849) and Verdi's Falstaff (1893), with a libretto by Arrigo Boito, and Ralph Vaughan Williams's Sir John in Love (1929). It was included among Shakespeare's plays in the 1990 second edition of Great Books of the Western World (vol. 26).

Comparisons

• Henry IV, Part 1

  The tavern Falstaff of Eastcheap, whose wit dominates a prince's education, becomes in Windsor a would-be adulterer who is out-plotted by two housewives; reading both lets students ask whether the comedy diminishes him or exposes him.

• Henry IV, Part 2

  Shallow, Pistol, Bardolph and Mistress Quickly reappear from the second Henry IV play, but the chronology does not fit neatly; the Windsor play borrows the characters rather than continuing their story.

• Othello

  Ford's jealousy is the same passion that destroys Othello, played as comedy: an imagined betrayal, a confidant who feeds the suspicion, and a wife entirely innocent. Here the wives control the plot, and the jealousy is cured.

• The Taming of the Shrew

  Both comedies show a father bargaining a daughter's marriage, but where Baptista's Padua is ruled by the suitors' contracts, Windsor lets the wives and the daughter direct events while the men are deceived.

• A Midsummer Night's Dream

  Both end with fairies in a wood at night, but Windsor's fairies are townspeople in costume and their spell is a moral correction aimed at one guilty man.

• Much Ado About Nothing

  Both plays turn on a man who believes a woman false without cause; Claudio's public shaming of Hero nearly kills her, while Ford's private searches only embarrass him.

Quotes

Medical Lens

Of limited but real interest for the history of medicine. Doctor Caius is a comic French physician whose authority the Host and Evans mock by invoking Aesculapius, Galen and Hippocrates and by joking about urinals, the flasks used in uroscopy. Falstaff's account of the buck-basket is full of humoral and dietary language about heat, grease, dissolution and cooling the reins. Ford's jealousy is repeatedly called a 'distemper' and his 'old lunes', terms that treat an obsessive passion as something close to illness; reading it as monomania is an interpretation, not the play's own category.

• Act II, Scene III; Act III, Scene I

  The Host hails Caius as his Aesculapius and Galen and calls him a urinal; Evans claims the doctor knows nothing of Hippocrates and Galen and threatens to knock his urinal about his head.

  Physicians Doctors Ancient Medicine
• Act III, Scene I

  The Host reconciles the 'soul-curer and body-curer', saying his doctor gives him 'potions and the motions' and his parson the proverbs.

  Physicians Doctors
• Act III, Scene V

  Falstaff describes being stewed in greasy linen and then quenched in the Thames, calling himself subject to heat as butter and drinking sack to warm a belly cold as if he had swallowed snowballs for pills to cool the reins.

  Humoral Medicine
• Act III, Scene III; Act IV, Scene II

  Ford's jealousy is called a distemper and his 'old lunes' as he searches his house and beats the supposed witch of Brentford.

  Obsession Monomania

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write the letter Mistress Ford and Mistress Page would send to each other the morning after the buck-basket, planning the second trick and judging how the first went.

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation between Ford and Page walking home from Herne's Oak, in which Ford tries to explain why he became Master Brook.

• Essay

  Is Fenton's secret marriage to Anne an act of disobedience or of rightful freedom? Use his speeches in Act III, Scene IV and Act V, Scene V.

• Classroom

  Stage the Latin lesson in Act IV, Scene I with three readers and discuss how the comedy of misheard words works on stage.

• Adaptation

  Reset the buck-basket scene in a modern apartment building, keeping the wives in charge of the plot and Ford's jealousy as its engine.

Further Reading

• Henry IV, Part 2, William Shakespeare

  Introduces Shallow and develops Mistress Quickly, Pistol and Bardolph, who reappear in Windsor.

• Il Pecorone (Day 1, Story 2), Ser Giovanni Fiorentino

  Italian novella in which a lover unknowingly reports his progress to the jealous husband, often cited as an analogue to the Ford-Brook plot.

• Falstaff, Giuseppe Verdi and Arrigo Boito

  Verdi's last opera (1893), drawing chiefly on Merry Wives with additions from the Henry IV plays.

• The Merry Wives of Windsor (Arden Shakespeare, Third Series), William Shakespeare, ed. Giorgio Melchiori

  Annotated edition whose introduction discusses the quarto and Folio texts, the dating debate and the Brook/Broome alias.

• Shakespeare versus Shallow, Leslie Hotson

  Hotson's 1931 archival study, which proposed connecting the play with the Garter feast of 1597.