‘Merry Wives of Windsor.’
In all probability ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor,’ a comedy inclining to farce, and unqualified by any pathetic interest, followed close upon ‘Henry IV.’ In the epilogue to the ‘Second Part of Henry IV’ Shakespeare had written: ‘If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story with Sir John in it . . . where for anything I know Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already a’ be killed with your hard opinions.’ Rowe asserts that ‘Queen Elizabeth was so well pleased with that admirable character of Falstaff in the two parts of “Henry IV” that she commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love.’ Dennis, in the dedication of ‘The Comical Gallant’ (1702), noted that the ‘Merry Wives’ was written at the Queen’s ‘command and by her direction; and she was so eager to see it acted that she commanded it to be finished in fourteen days, and
was afterwards, as tradition tells us, very well pleased with the representation.’ In his ‘Letters’ (1721, p. 232) Dennis reduces the period of composition to ten days—‘a prodigious thing,’ added Gildon, [172a] ‘where all is so well contrived and carried on without the least confusion.’ The localisation of the scene at Windsor, and the complimentary references to Windsor Castle, corroborate the tradition that the comedy was prepared to meet a royal command. An imperfect draft of the play was printed by Thomas Creede in 1602; [172b] the folio of 1623 first supplied a complete version. The plot was probably suggested by an Italian novel. A tale from Straparola’s ‘Notti’ (iv. 4), of which an adaptation figured in the miscellany of novels called Tarleton’s ‘Newes out of Purgatorie’ (1590), another Italian tale from the ‘Pecorone’ of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino (i. 2), and a third romance, the Fishwife’s tale of Brainford in the collection of stories called ‘Westward for Smelts,’ [172c] supply incidents distantly resembling episodes in the play. Nowhere has Shakespeare so vividly reflected the bluff temper of contemporary middle-class society. The presentment of the buoyant domestic life of an Elizabethan country town bears distinct impress of Shakespeare’s own experience. Again, there are literal references to the
neighbourhood of Stratford. Justice Shallow, whose coat-of-arms is described as consisting of ‘luces,’ is thereby openly identified with Shakespeare’s early foe, Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote. When Shakespeare makes Master Slender repeat the report that Master Page’s fallow greyhound was ‘outrun on Cotsall’ (I. i. 93), he testifies to his interest in the coursing matches for which the Cotswold district was famed.