MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, The, Shakespeare's greatest prose play. It contains only about 15 per cent of verse lines, and in the spirit of its scenes is equally subdued, save for a flash of the old fire in the fairy poetry at the dose. Dennis and Rowe report a story, cur rent at the opening of the 18th century and inherently plausible, to the effect that this play was written within two weeks to the special order of Queen Elizabeth, who desired to see Falstaff in love. The wish is worthy of the Queen's taste and the manner in which it was satisfied indicates that Shakespeare did not work spontaneously. In point of time the play belongs with the greatest comedies — with (Much Ado about Nothing,' 'Twelfth Night,' and 'As You Like it.' It was licensed for publication in January 1602 and most likely composed shortly before, for it is hard to be lieve that the Falstaff of this play can have been created while recollection of the great Falstaff of 'Henry IV' (1597, 1598) was very fresh in the author's mind. There is a radical difference between the two characters. In the 'Merry Wives' Falstaff loses most of his peculiar wit and all the graver, pathetic side of his char acter. He loses his charm, not ilk spectator but for his companions. is a sense of positive disaster in seeing the invinahh lovable knight of 'Henry IV' and 'Henry % betrayed by his own creatures, Nym and Piaol (II, i), just as there is in hearing the Tuanx liar of the Gadshill episode ignominiously re lating to Brook-Ford (in III, v) the whoa( truth of his discomfiture. do begin IL
perceive that I am made .an ass," he is force,: to say in the final scene, and Shakespeare may have felt as keenly as his readers the pity ci thus reducing Falstaff to the level of W herry and Bottom. The play is brisk and ea tertaining, and is constructed with masted technique, but it deals wholly with the externi of character and with unlikely incidents. I:. type-figures — Slender, Sir Hugh, Dr. Cai-a. compared with Mercutio, Si Toby, or the old Falstaff, are like pygmies after giants. There is no reason to believe that Merry Wives of Windsor' was regarded aid. special favor by the Elizabethans. After th: Restoration it seems to have become one of the most popular of Shakespeare's comecE, though Samuel Pepys registers emphatic dissc when noting in his diary that on 15 Aug lot; he saw Merry Wives of Windsor,' did not please me at all, in no part of it.) Pre cisely a century after its first publication. n 1702, a revised version by Dennis was out with the title, 'The Comical Gallant, c: The Amours of Sir John Falstaffe.' Since the rise of the romantic movement, it has been ont of the least liked of Shakespeare's