THE MERRY WIVES OF

WINDSOR

First printed in Quartos, 1602, 1619

The First Folio, 1623, gives a better and fuller text, supplying acts and scenes missing in the Quartos

"THE

INTRODUCTION

ARGUMENT OF THE PLAY

HE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR' is a broad comedy of contrivance and characterization. Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, two worthy matrons of Windsor, are simultaneously besieged by the former companion of Prince Hal (now Henry IV), Sir John Falstaff.

He writes each a love-letter (Act II), which they compare and find similar in tenor. They thereupon plot to make sport of the doughty knight as well as bring him to shame. Mistress Ford makes an appointment with him, which appointment is also heard of by her husband, who does not know it to be a jest.

In Act III the two women plan to have a basket of soiled linen in readiness to hide Falstaff, under the pretense that Ford is at hand. The knight keeps his appointment, and the jest turns earnest when the suspicious husband really arrives. Falstaff is carried out

safely in the basket and dumped into the river. Shortly afterward, he receives invitation for a second interview with Mistress Ford.

This he follows up also, in Act IV, and again is surprised by Ford. The basket is sent down as before; and while Ford is going through it, Falstaff escapes disguised as a woman. Ford and Page are then told the secret of the pranks played upon Fal

staff, and a final one is prepared, with their approval, for a night in Windsor Park.

In Act V Falstaff is sent to the park disguised under a buck's head, where he is set upon by pretended fairies and burned with tapers. The two merry wives' and

their husbands then reveal themselves to their victim, upbraid him for his amorous schemes, and pardon him.

A secondary episode of the play likewise culminates here. Anne Page, daughter of Mr. and Mistress Page, has had four suitors, of whom her father has favored one, her mother another, and herself a third. Anne utilizes this night masquerade, despite counterschemes, to marry the man of her choice.

SOURCES

6

The plot is Shakespeare's own, although it contains situations which were current in other stories of the time. Two Italian stories have come to light, in Il Tredeci Piacevoli Notti' of Strapola, which resemble Merry Wives' only in the baffling of suspicious husbands. A similar incident is recorded in the tale of Two Lovers of Pisa,' in Tarlton's Newes out of Purgatorie' (1590), which was probably founded on the Italian tales, and which resembles Merry Wives' even more nearly in containing three fruitless appointments made by a lover who comes to grief through unwittingly telling the husband of his plan. But even though Shakespeare may have been indebted for his leading chain of episodes to this or other stories, the machinery of his plot, the development of character, and the interweaving of the love-affairs of Anne Page with the main story are certainly his own.

The play is a comedy of contemporary society, written, according to generally accepted tradition, upon