Where is The Merry Wives of Windsor?

The "where" of a play helps fine tune a production and can make all the difference.  We have all seen productions where not nearly enough was done to physically manifest the storytelling; you get a bunch of people saying lines with feeling but there is no sense of place and the play just sits there.  I've also seen productions (Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, for example) where the settings overwhelm the storytelling, minimizing it.

Finding that delicate balance is one of the chief jobs of a director as he is responsible for the visual storytelling of a production.  Too often, a director lets this slide, and the production is hurt for it.  A really good technical director is a must for any director--one that understands visual storytelling and does what he or she can to make the director's visions a reality.

The director must have a clear vision and be able to articulate that vision.  He needs to not only set the course but be willing to take input that will make the vision better.  A director that sets himself up to honor only one point of view fails not only the production but the process and the craft.

With Merry Wives of Windsor we need to examine the specific places that the script calls for and then figure out how we might adapt them for our production.

Earlier I said that Merry Wives was the only contemporary (turn of the 17th century) script Shakespeare wrote.  Yes, he ostensibly set it in the Henriad (the history plays chronicling the rise of Henry V) which were set 200 years before he wrote them, but Shakespeare included too many references to contemporary Windsor for it to be seen as being set in his past.  many of these references have to do with the locations.

Merry Wives has three principal locations:  the Page home, the Ford home and the Garter Inn.  There are a few other places (most notably the woods of Windsor Park), but nearly two thirds of the play takes place in those three settings. 

These were all actual places in Windsor in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.  Legend has it that the Garter Inn is the place that Shakespeare wrote Merry Wives.  John Frederick Stanford (a Shakespeare scholar who devoted himself to Merry Wives of Windsor) had many notes which are included in his introduction to the play about the actual locations and people that the Merry Wives characters were based on.

So, the settings are all real, but what does that mean dramatically?  A faithful recreation could be nice I guess, but the "in jokes" would mean little to audiences today.  I need to determine the specific locations for each scene in Merry Wives and how they function in the script and note what they require.  Then I can start thinking conceptually as far as physical space and how it gets filled.

 Scene Breakdown

ActI

Scene 1:   Outside of Page's house--party for Falstaff
    NEED:  An entrance to the house
Scene 2:  A continuation of the previous scene--very short--blend together
Scene 3:  The Garter Inn
    NEED:   An entrance, a place for Host to take Bardolph
Scene 4:  Room at Dr. Caius' house
    NEED:  An entrance, a "closet" to hide Simple in, place for Dr. Caius to write

Act II

Scene 1:  Outside of Page's house
Scene 2:  The Garter Inn--Day 2--1st Quickly/Falstaff
Scene 3:  A field near Windsor

Act III

Scene 1:  A field near Frogmore, a continuation of the previous scene?
Scene 2:  A street
Scene 3:  Ford's house, interior, buck basket scene
     NEED:  2 entrances
Scene 4:  Outside of Page's house
Scene 5:  The Garter Inn--Day 3--2nd Quickly/Flastaff

Act IV

Scene 1:  A street
Scene 2:  Ford's house, interior, cross-dressing scene
Scene 3:  The Garter Inn, 1st German scene--short
Scene 4:  Ford's house, interior
Scene 5:  The Garter Inn--2nd German scene
Scene 6:  The Garter Inn--Fenton scene, short

Act V

Scene 1:  The Garter Inn--3rd Quickly/Falstaff, short
Scene 2:  Windsor Park--Page/Slender, short
Scene 3:  Windsor Park--Meg/Caius and Meg/Alice, short
Scene 4:  Windsor Park--Evans/Fairies, super short
Scene 5:  Windsor Park--Scooby Doo ending

With this breakdown, I get a clearer passage of time--the whole play takes place in three days.  There's also not a lot of specific set needs, which means we can do almost anything we want with the setting.  The only real problem is the scene in Dr. Caius' house.  It's a location that is only used once, and it needs more set pieces than any other place to make the scene work.  Grrrrr.

When I consider how I want to set this production, there are a few things I know for certain.  I'm pretty much out on a 1950's/1960's sitcom setting.  Visually it could work great, but I get stuck on that whole wandering knight thing.  My original proposal said that I might use a generic fairy tale setting, i.e. no specific time other than yore.  I haven't moved away from that, but I am considering at least one other distinctly American possibility--the Old West.  Lots of cool visuals can come from the Old West.