A tradition of the seventeenth century thus general in its diffusion, and particular in its circumstances, cannot, and ought not, to be shaken by the mere observations that "she (the Queen) was certainly too feeble in 1601 to think of such toys," and that at this time "she was in no proper mood for such fooleries[435:C];" more especially when we recollect, that at this very period, she was guilty of fooleries greatly more extravagant and out of character, than that of commanding a play to be written. At a "mask at Blackfriars, on the marriage of Lord Herbert and Mrs. Russel," relates Lord Orford, on the authority of the Bacon Papers, "eight lady maskers chose eight more to dance the measures. Mrs. Fritton, who led them, went to the Queen, and wooed her to dance. Her Majesty asked, what she was? 'Affection,' she said. 'Affection!' said the Queen;—'Affection is false.'—Yet her majesty rose and danced.—She was then SIXTY-EIGHT![435:D]" If, at the age of SIXTY-EIGHT, she was not too feeble to dance, nor too wise to fancy herself in love, we may easily conceive, that she had both strength and inclination to attend and to enjoy a play!
Another objection of the same critic to the probability of this tradition, turns upon the extraordinary assumption, that it was not within
the omnipotence of Elizabeth "to bring Falstaff to real life, after being positively as dead as nail in door[436:A];" as if Falstaff had ever possessed a real existence, and the Queen had been expected to have occasioned his bodily resurrection from the dead. In accordance with this supposed impossibility, impossible only in this strange point of view, we are further told, that "whatever a capricious Queen might have wished to have seen, the audience would not have borne to see the dead knight on the living stage;" thus again confounding the dramatic death of an imaginary being, with the physical dissolution incident to material nature! Surely Shakspeare had an unlimited control over the creatures of his own imagination, and had he reproduced the fat knight in half-a-dozen plays, after the death which he had already assigned him in Henry the Fifth, who, provided he had supported the merit and consistency of the character, would have charged him with a violation of probability? When Addison killed Sir Roger de Coverley, in order, as tradition says, to prevent any one interfering with the unity of his sketch, he could only be certain of the non-resumption of his imaginary existence in the very work which had detailed his decease; for if Addison himself, or any of his contemporaries, had reproduced Sir Roger, in a subsequent periodical paper, with the same degree of skill which had accompanied the first delineation, would it have been objected as a sufficient condemnation of such a performance, that the knight had been previously dispatched?
We see no reason, therefore, for distrusting the generally received tradition, and have, accordingly, placed the Merry Wives of Windsor, with Mr. Malone, after the three plays devoted to Henry the Fourth, and Fifth.
In this very entertaining drama, which unfolds a vast display of incident, and a remarkable number of well-supported characters, we are presented with an almost unrivalled instance of pure domestic comedy, and which furnishes a rich draught of English minds and
manners, in the middle ranks of society, during one of the most interesting periods of our annals.
Shakspeare has here achieved, perhaps, the most difficult task which can fall to the lot of any writer; that of resuscitating a favourite and highly-wrought child of the imagination, and, with a success equal to that which attended the original production, re-involving him in a series of fresh adventures. Falstaff has not lost, in this comedy, any portion of his former power of pleasing; he returns to us in the fulness of his strength, and we immediately enter, with unabated avidity and relish, into a further developement of his inexhaustible stores of humour, wit, and drollery.
The self-delusion of Sir John, who conceives himself to be an object of love, and the incongruities, absurdities, and intrigues, into which this monstrous piece of vanity plunges him, form, together with the secondary plot of Fenton and Anne Page, the richest tissue of incident and stratagem that ever graced a stage. The mode, also, in which the two intrigues are interwoven, the happy termination of the second, arising out of the contrivance which brings about the issue of the first, has a just claim to praise both for its invention and execution.
To the comic characters which had formerly been associated with the exploits of the Knight, and which, as accessories or retainers, accompany him in this play, some very laughable and grotesque additions are to be found in the persons of Slender, Sir Hugh Evans, and Dr. Caius, who are deeply implicated in the fable, and who, by the most ludicrous exhibitions of rustic simplicity, provincial accent, and broken English, contribute in a high degree to the variety and hilarity of the scene.
22. Troilus and Cressida: 1601. That this play was written and acted before the decease of Queen Elizabeth, is evident from the manner in which it is entered on the Stationers' Books, being registered on February 7. 1602-3, "as acted by my Lord Chamberlen's men[437:A]," who, in the year of the accession of King James, obtained a