When is The Merry Wives of Windsor?

When you consider the time of The Merry Wives of Windsor, there are really three things you are considering:

1. The setting of the script;
2. The time we are setting this production;
3. The time the script was written.

With most plays you don't necessarily consider the second point, but because Shakespeare is so "hard to understand" directors sometimes take great strains to translate the story to a setting that will give their audience another "in" to the script.  I wholeheartedly believe that there is nothing wrong with this.

Purists (oh, how I loathe them) cry fowl when directors update a Shakespeare script.  They think that it is a bespoulment of the good works of a master.  I would say to them The Lord Chamberlain's Men and The King's Men did the exact same thing during Shakespeare's time.  They kept their actors in modern, Elizabethan dress, especially for the history plays.  Why should we be any different?

At this time I am not ready to discuss the setting for our production, as it is still percolating in my mind.  I will be working the different thoughts I have in a later journal entry. 



Elizabethan audience watching Merry Wives of Windsor



I do think it is important to discuss the intended setting of the script.  Even though it is firmly a part of Henriad set of history plays (more on that in a moment), The Merry Wives of Windsor is the only contemporary play Shakespeare wrote.  It has a contemporary Elizabethan location, Windsor, where Elizabeth I had a castle; it also has shout outs to Peascod Street and the Garter Inn which were prominent in the late 16th century.  The characters of Falstaff and Ford make direct allusions to the Order of the Garter, an honorary for knights of the realm, which had a major installation in 1597.  The late 16th century allusions are in direct contrast to the other plays in the Henriad which are rooted in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

The Henriad are the Shakespearean plays that deal with the reigns of Richard II (1377-1399), Henry IV (1399-1413) and Henry V (1413-1422).  The Shakespeare plays are then obviously Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, and Henry V.  Characters are shared throughout them, and because Merry Wives shares some of the same characters as the latter plays, it too is considered a part of the Henriad.  When a Shakespeare company does the Henriad in cycle (which isn't as uncommon as you might think), they always do Merry Wives for a spot of comic relief, just as Shakespeare does in his dramas.

The Merry Wives of Windsor is guessed to be written at least two years (and as many as five years) before it was first published in 1602.  And while there is debate over the year, as with all things Shakespeare, 1600 makes the most sense.

Legend has it that Elizabeth I loved the character of Sir John Falstaff from Henry IV Part 1 (guessed to be written in 1596-1597) and Henry IV Part 2 (1957-1959), and was disappointed to find that he wasn't included in Henry V (1599-1600).  Falstaff is mentioned in the play but reduced to an offstage death between acts.  She is said to have asked Shakespeare to write a play about Falstaff, perhaps one where he was in love.  Two weeks later, as the legend goes, Merry Wives was the result.

In addition to Falstaff, Merry Wives shares the characters of Bardolph, Pistol, Nym and Justice Shallow with the Henry plays.  Mistress Quickly also appears in them but there could be debate as to whether or not it is the same Mistress Quickly.  Eventually I will explore the Quickly issue separately, but I prefer to think of it as the same character throughout the plays.  Falstaff's page is also in the Henry plays, and an argument could be made that it is not Robin from Merry Wives, but I will deal with that separately later on as well.



Pistol, Slender and Nym



Henry IV Part 1 has only Bardolph and Hostess Quickly in it.  For Part 2, three years of dramatic time has passed, and the script has added Pistol, Justice Shallow and Falstaff's page.  Pistol is firmly a part of the Falstaff's entourage; Justice Shallow is an old friend of Falstaff's; the page was given to Falstaff by Prince Henry (Hal).

At the end of Henry IV Part 2, Prince Henry (Hal) has become King Henry V.  Falstaff, Bardolph and Pistol have gone to stay with Justice Shallow.  By the beginning of Henry V, Nym has joined the company and he and Pistol have had a falling out over Mistress Nell Quickly--she has "married" Pistol.  Falstaff dies off stage during Henry V, leaving his page to find a new knight to follow.  Justice Shallow isn't mentioned.

The development of the cast of characters (especially the inclusion of the character Nym) adds credence to the school of thought that Merry Wives was written in 1600 after all three Henry plays were written.  Though an argument could be made that the plays were written in the order of their dramatic flow:  Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, The Merry Wives of Windsor and then Henry V.  That school of thought being Nym is introduced in Merry Wives and then we already know him and appreciate his character when he appears in Henry V.

I side on Merry Wives being the last play written (and therefore being 1600) because of the treatment of Nym in both plays.  In Henry V, Nym is introduced in media res--the argument with Pistol over Quickly already has happened and continues for a bit.  However, his signature "humour" lines--in Merry Wives every one of Nym's lines has the word "humour" in it--get their start in Henry V towards the end of his first scene.  The word play on the different meanings of "humour" are just toyed with in Henry V.  I can understand a perspective where Shakespeare saw that this comedy bit was well received in Henry V and then worked it to maximum effect in Merry Wives.  That's just how a writer works.

Now, I could make an interesting argument that the play was in fact written earlier than 1600.  1597 seems to be the other agreed upon year, because of several allusions to the Order of the Garter, an honorary for Knights to which Elizabeth was very attached.  One legend persists that Shakespeare was asked to write Merry Wives for the installation dinner which took place on April 23, 1597.  But that would mean that Merry Wives was written between Parts 1 and 2 of Henry IV.  The character compositions of each play would indicate that couldn't happen:  Nym should then appear in Henry IV Part II.

So what if the Merry Wives character of Falstaff wasn't Falstaff to begin with?  What if he became Falstaff later when, at behest of the Queen, Shakespeare "created" a new play for the beloved character from Henry IV?  It would not surprise me in the least for Shakespeare to have taken an older somewhat funny play and reworked it to include Falstaff for the Queen.  Especially if the first version didn't work as well.  That makes a whole lot more sense than the play being written from scratch in 14 days.

There are even further complications I may explore later when you consider that John Falstaff is a changed version of the name John Fastolf, an actual knight during the Hundred Years War..  In fact the character's name was changed to Falstaff when in the early versions/performances of Henry IV Part 1 he was called Sir John Oldcastle, also another actual knight associated with Henry IV.  In the epilogue to Henry IV Part 2 there is even a decrying of the fact that the character of Falstaff is not Oldcastle.  The popular theory is that Oldcastle's descendants objected to the use of their ancestor's name on a character that was shown to be cowardly.  Fastolf descendants couldn't complain because he didn't have any.