The Merry Wives of Windsor Read online

  Comedy at the expense of foreigners for their abuse of the English tongue might be described as crudely patriotic or mildly xenophobic. A deeper patriotism and a richer form of comedy come from the capacity of the English language to turn adversity to advantage. That is the art of Falstaff, as it is in a more general sense the art of Shakespeare and his actors. Falstaff is repeatedly humiliated, but his mastery of the English language always gives him the last word. On discovering that he has been pinched and beaten not by real goblins but by Sir Hugh and his class of children, Falstaff magnificently retorts “Have I lived to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of English?” and then “I am not able to answer the Welsh flannel.” He is physically humiliated (“dejected”), but his linguistic gift never fails. Like his creator, he can seemingly conjure anything into language. Again and again, a bodily battering is transformed into the opportunity for a verbal display in which a tone of feigned incredulity creates a unique combination of excess and humility, self-delusion and self-knowledge, that is irresistible to a theater audience:

  But mark the sequel, Master Broom. I suffered the pangs of three several deaths: first, an intolerable fright, to be detected with a jealous rotten bell-wether: next, to be compassed, like a good bilbo in the circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head, and then, to be stopped in like a strong distillation with stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease. Think of that, a man of my kidney, think of that — that am as subject to heat as butter — a man of continual dissolution and thaw: it was a miracle to scape suffocation. And in the height of this bath, when I was more than half stewed in grease like a Dutch dish, to be thrown into the Thames, and cooled, glowing hot, in that surge, like a horse-shoe. Think of that — hissing hot — think of that, Master Broom.

  By redescribing farcical action in words of mock-epic excess, verbally reenacting the ducking from the point of view of the ducked, Falstaff embodies his creator’s greatest achievement: the triumph of the English language.

  ABOUT THE TEXT

  Shakespeare endures through history. He illuminates later times as well as his own. He helps us to understand the human condition. But he cannot do this without a good text of the plays. Without editions there would be no Shakespeare. That is why every twenty years or so throughout the last three centuries there has been a major new edition of his complete works. One aspect of editing is the process of keeping the texts up to date—modernizing the spelling, punctuation, and typography (though not, of course, the actual words), providing explanatory notes in the light of changing educational practices (a generation ago, most of Shakespeare’s classical and biblical allusions could be assumed to be generally understood, but now they can’t).

  Because Shakespeare did not personally oversee the publication of his plays, with some plays there are major editorial difficulties. Decisions have to be made as to the relative authority of the early printed editions, the pocket format “Quartos” published in Shakespeare’s lifetime and the elaborately produced “First Folio” text of 1623, the original “Complete Works” prepared for the press after his death by Shakespeare’s fellow actors, the people who knew the plays better than anyone else. The Merry Wives of Windsor appeared in a Quarto of 1602 of dubious authority (reprinted in 1619), which was apparently a memorial report of a text adapted and shortened for performance, and in a much fuller form in the First Folio. The Quarto text omits much of Act 5, and shows evidence of theatrical adaptation in Acts 3 and 4 in its transposition of scenes and of dialogue. The Folio text was apparently prepared by Ralph Crane, the company scribe, and is unusually clear of profanity in accordance with the 1606 Parliamentary Act to Restrain the Abuses of Players, which forbade theater companies taking God’s name in vain. As Crane’s texts are often not so censorious, the nature of the copy from which he was working was possibly a post-1606 theatrical text that had itself been expurgated.

  The following notes highlight various aspects of the editorial process and indicate conventions used in the text of this edition:

  Lists of Parts are supplied in the First Folio for only six plays, not including The Merry Wives of Windsor, so the list here is editorially supplied. Capitals indicate that part of the name used for speech headings in the script (thus “Master FENTON, a young gentleman, in love with Anne Page”).

  Locations are provided by the Folio for only two plays, of which The Merry Wives of Windsor is not one. Eighteenth-century editors, working in an age of elaborately realistic stage sets, were the first to provide detailed locations (“another part of the town”). Given that Shakespeare wrote for a bare stage and often an imprecise sense of place, we have relegated locations to the explanatory notes at the foot of the page, where they are given at the beginning of each scene where the imaginary location is different from the one before. In the case of The Merry Wives of Windsor, the action is set entirely in the small Berkshire town of Windsor, situated at the foot of one of the oldest of the royal castles.

  Act and Scene Divisions were provided in the Folio in a much more thoroughgoing way than in the Quartos. Sometimes, however, they were erroneous or omitted; corrections and additions supplied by editorial tradition are indicated by square brackets. Five-act division is based on a classical model, and act breaks provided the opportunity to replace the candles in the indoor Blackfriars playhouse which the King’s Men used after 1608, but Shakespeare did not necessarily think in terms of a five-part structure of dramatic composition. The Folio convention is that a scene ends when the stage is empty. Nowadays, partly under the influence of film, we tend to consider a scene to be a dramatic unit that ends with either a change of imaginary location or a significant passage of time within the narrative. Shakespeare’s fluidity of composition accords well with this convention, so in addition to act and scene numbers we provide a running scene count in the right margin at the beginning of each new scene, in the typeface used for editorial directions. Where there is a scene break caused by a momentary bare stage, but the location does not change and extra time does not pass, we use the convention running scene continues. There is inevitably a degree of editorial judgment in making such calls, but the system is very valuable in suggesting the pace of the plays.

  Speakers’ Names are often inconsistent in Folio. We have regularized speech headings, but retained an element of deliberate inconsistency in entry directions, in order to give the flavor of Folio. Thus ROBIN is always so-called in his speech headings, but is often referred to as “Page” in entry directions.

  Verse is indicated by lines that do not run to the right margin and by capitalization of each line. The Folio printers sometimes set verse as prose, and vice versa (either out of misunderstanding or for reasons of space). We have silently corrected in such cases, although in some instances there is ambiguity, in which case we have leaned toward the preservation of Folio layout. Folio sometimes uses contraction (“turnd” rather than “turned”) to indicate whether or not the final “-ed” of a past participle is sounded, an area where there is variation for the sake of the five-beat iambic pentameter rhythm. We use the convention of a grave accent to indicate sounding (thus “turnèd” would be two syllables), but would urge actors not to overstress. In cases where one speaker ends with a verse half line and the next begins with the other half of the pentameter, editors since the late eighteenth century have indented the second line. We have abandoned this convention, since the Folio does not use it, nor did actors’ cues in the Shakespearean theater. An exception is made when the second speaker actively interrupts or completes the first speaker’s sentence.

  Spelling is modernized, but older forms are very occasionally maintained where necessary for rhythm or aural effect.

  Punctuation in Shakespeare’s time was as much rhetorical as grammatical. “Colon” was originally a term for a unit of thought in an argument. The semicolon was a new unit of punctuation (some of the Quartos lack them altogether). We have modernized punctuation throughout, but have given more weight to Folio punctuation
than many editors, since, though not Shakespearean, it reflects the usage of his period. In particular, we have used the colon far more than many editors: it is exceptionally useful as a way of indicating how many Shakespearean speeches unfold clause by clause in a developing argument that gives the illusion of enacting the process of thinking in the moment. We have also kept in mind the origin of punctuation in classical times as a way of assisting the actor and orator: the comma suggests the briefest of pauses for breath, the colon a middling one, and a full stop or period a longer pause. Semicolons, by contrast, belong to an era of punctuation that was only just coming in during Shakespeare’s time and that is coming to an end now: we have accordingly used them only where they occur in our copy texts (and not always then). Dashes are sometimes used for parenthetical interjections where the Folio has brackets. They are also used for interruptions and changes in train of thought. Where a change of addressee occurs within a speech, we have used a dash preceded by a period (or occasionally another form of punctuation). Often the identity of the respective addressees is obvious from the context. When it is not, this has been indicated in a marginal stage direction.

  Entrances and Exits are fairly thorough in Folio, which has accordingly been followed as faithfully as possible. Where characters are omitted or corrections are necessary, this is indicated by square brackets (e.g. “[and Attendants]”). Exit is sometimes silently normalized to Exeunt and Manet anglicized to “remains.” We trust Folio positioning of entrances and exits to a greater degree than most editors.

  Editorial Stage Directions such as stage business, asides, indications of addressee and of characters’ position on the gallery stage are used only sparingly in Folio. Other editions mingle directions of this kind with original Folio and Quarto directions, sometimes marking them by means of square brackets. We have sought to distinguish what could be described as directorial interventions of this kind from Folio-style directions (either original or supplied) by placing them in the right margin in a smaller typeface. There is a degree of subjectivity about which directions are of which kind, but the procedure is intended as a reminder to the reader and the actor that Shakespearean stage directions are often dependent upon editorial inference alone and are not set in stone. We also depart from editorial tradition in sometimes admitting uncertainty and thus printing permissive stage directions, such as an Aside? (often a line may be equally effective as an aside or as a direct address—it is for each production or reading to make its own decision) or a may exit or a piece of business placed between arrows to indicate that it may occur at various different moments within a scene.

  Line Numbers are editorial, for reference and to key the explanatory and textual notes.

  Explanatory Notes explain allusions and gloss obsolete and difficult words, confusing phraseology, occasional major textual cruces, and so on. Particular attention is given to nonstandard usage, bawdy innuendo, and technical terms (e.g. legal and military language). Where more than one sense is given, commas indicate shades of related meaning, slashes alternative or double meanings.

  Textual Notes at the end of the play indicate major departures from the Folio. They take the following form: the reading of our text is given in bold and its source given after an equals sign with “Q” indicating a reading from the First Quarto of 1602, “Q3” a correction introduced in the Third Quarto of 1630, “F2” a correction that derives from the Second Folio of 1632, and “Ed” one that derives from the subsequent editorial tradition. The rejected Folio (“F”) reading is then given. Thus for Act 1 Scene 3 line 46: “1.3.46 legion = Ed. Q = legians. F = legend” means that in the phrase “a legion of angels” we have adopted the editorial “legion” instead of the Quarto’s “legians” or the Folio’s “legend,” possibly the result of a scribal or printing error.

  KEY FACTS

  MAJOR PARTS: (with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes onstage) Falstaff (17%/136/9), Mrs. Page (12%/101/9), Ford (12%/99/9), Mrs. Quickly (10%/74/9), Evans (8%/87/9), Mrs. Ford (6%/85/7), Page (6%/75/11), Slender (5%/56/7), Shallow (4%/59/7), Caius (4%/49/8), Host (4%/46/8), Fenton (4%/20/4), Pistol (2%/29/5), Simple (2%/25/5), Anne Page (1%/19/3).

  LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 10% verse, 90% prose. Highest proportion of prose in the Complete Works.

  DATE: 1597–1601. Allusion to the Order of the Garter in the final scene has led to supposition that the play was performed at, or indeed commissioned for, the Garter Feast held at Whitehall in April 1597, when George Carey, Lord Chamberlain and patron of Shakespeare’s acting company, was elected to the order, as (in absentia) was Frederick Duke of Württemberg (which may account for the allusions to a German duke in the scene involving the Host’s horses). The 1597–98 winter season at court and the Garter festivities for 1599 have also been proposed as the occasion: the argument for the latter, when Henry Brooke, eighth Lord Cobham, was elected Knight of the Garter, is interwoven with the Brooke/Broom crux (see “Text,” below). The argument against 1597 is that it would place the play before 2 Henry IV, which seems counterintuitive: the relationship between Falstaff and Shallow, together with the retinue of “irregular humorists,” is more likely to have been created in the history play and reanimated in the comedy than vice versa (though it has been suggested that The Merry Wives was dashed off when Shakespeare was halfway through the writing of 2 Henry IV). The element of “humoral” comedy suggests a date after Ben Jonson introduced this vogue in Every Man in His Humour (1598). The argument against a special Garter commission is that a full-length comedy, as opposed to a shorter masque or entertainment of a more courtly kind, is unlikely to have been performed on such an occasion. It is possible that the Garter dimension is a vestige of an earlier commissioned work that was expanded into a comedy for the public stage. The play is not mentioned by Meres, suggesting late 1598 or 1599 as the earliest date for public performance. The 1602 Quarto title page clearly indicates performance both before the court and in the public theater. Quarto omits the speech alluding to the Order of the Garter and many other references to Windsor and the court. The major differences between Quarto and Folio texts (see below) suggest several stages of composition and probably performance in different versions.

  SOURCES: No known source for the main plot, but the gallant who attempts to seduce another man’s wife, is interrupted and hidden in a bizarre place, was a traditional comic motif, as was the clever wife who gets the upper hand (there is an example in one of the tales in Barnabe Riche’s Farewell to Military Profession, a book that provided Shakespeare with the main source for Twelfth Night); the Anne Page plot of rival suitors for an attractive daughter also has many analogues. The horse-stealing episode may allude to the Duke of Württemberg’s visit to England in 1592 and has parallels with a comic sequence in Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. Falstaff with his horns in the park combines the folktale of Herne the Hunter with the classical myth (from Ovid’s Metamorphoses) of Actaeon. The pinching Fairies are themselves pinched from Act 4 Scene 3 of John Lyly’s play Endymion, the Man in the Moon (published 1591).

  TEXT: Published in Quarto in 1602, in a version that has the hallmarks of a “reported text” of a stage production. About half the length of the Folio, and with many textual corruptions, the Quarto was reprinted in 1619. The First Folio text of 1623 was set from a transcript by Ralph Crane, professional scribe to the King’s Men, though it is not certain whether he worked from the playhouse “book” or an authorial manuscript.

  The Quarto calls into question two significant details in the Folio. First, the name by which Ford calls himself when disguised: this is “Brooke” in Quarto but “Broom” in Folio. “Brooke” was clearly Shakespeare’s original intention, being an aquatic variation on “Ford” and the occasion for at least one liquid pun (“Such Brooks are welcome to me, that o’erflows such liquor”—2.2.134). The change to “Broom” in Folio may well have been made in order to avoid offending the powerful family with whom Shakespeare had already been in trouble over a name in 1 Henry IV. Lord Cobham had objected to
the name Sir John Oldcastle, with the result that Shakespeare changed it to Sir John Falstaff. The Cobham family name was Brooke, so perhaps they intervened again, or the name was changed for fear that they might. We follow Folio’s Broom, but in production it is probably best to revert to Brook, in order to make the watery jokes work. Falstaff does not, after all, hide in a broom cupboard: he is thrown into a brook.

  The other issue is the color coding at the climactic moment of the play, when Anne’s three suitors come on and take the fairy each of them supposes is her, while the children are singing their song and pinching Falstaff. In Folio, Master Page tells Slender that his daughter will be in white, but when Slender comes on with the humiliating news that he has grabbed and married a boy, he says that he took a fairy in green. With Caius, it is the other way around: Mistress Page tells him that Anne will be in green, but he takes a boy in white. Editors since the eighteenth century have reversed the colors in the dialogue at the end, to make them consistent with those of the initial plan. Since the inconsistency is much more likely to be the author’s than the printer’s, we have not done this, but attention is drawn to this issue in the gloss and the textual notes.