QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION
Is any incident of Act V without relevance to the plot?
Is the Play the nobler or the weaker dramatically for the poetic and symbolic influence shed upon it by Act V?
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
If this Comedy was written, as tradition reports at the bidding of Queen Elizabeth in order to show Falstaffe in love, it is interesting to see that Shakespeare confines his love-making to mercenary motives, and by causing him to make love to two at once renders him as a lover merely a cheat.
So keeping the word of promise to the ear, he obeys by breaking it to the sense. To show Falstaffe as a lover amounts to showing him as no lover at all.
In this sense, the Play might be called a courteous satire upon the
Queen's request.
THE STORY OF ACT I
FALSTAFFE IS FORCED TO "CONICATCH"
How Falstaffe falls into trouble, turns away his followers and begins a new enterprise: How do his followers take revenge? What light upon this opening of the story do scenes i. and iii. show?