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Playlist Merry Wives | Dramatis Personea | Sitemap Scenes The Merry Wives of Windsor does not rank high among the dramas of Shakespeare; and we cannot help feeling a little depressed at the unrelieved discomfitures of Falstaff. On this account I am inclined to regard the play as a most striking illustration of the power and the versatility of Shakespeare’s genius. And this the more if, as we may reasonably suppose, the piece was produced in haste, and with some impatience both of the task and the subject. But if the vivid imagination, the ready wit, and all that appertains to the indefinable gift of genius is strikingly displayed, the comedy will fill us with scarcely less astonishment as we recognize the writer’s mastery of material, especially of contemporary literature, and his intimate acquaintance Shakespeare’with s Works contemporary . life.— Lucs, Handbook to Shakespeare’s Work Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff. Though nominally set in the reign of Henry IV, the play makes no pretence to exist outside contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life. It has been adapted for the opera on several occasions. |
