Merry Wives of Windsor

Court and Sparks
Word has it that Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) was so amused by Falstaff in Henry IV Part 1 she asked William Shakespeare to write a play with Falstaff in love. The Bard obliged, but on his own terms. "The Merry Wives of Windsor" is the result. Thought to be written in two weeks, it's Shakespeare's only play to use England's emerging middle-class as a backdrop. The subject is courting, and the state of protestant marriage in Elizabethan England.

Falstaff is a knight, but hardly young or dashing. In Henry IV Part 1 he describes himself as "A goodly portly man, i'faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage . . .." Prince Hal describes him as "a stuffed cloak-bag of guts" and "an old white-bearded Satan." Needless to say, he's hardly a catch. His idea of love is to find a woman who will fund his considerable appetite for food, fun and drink.

Falstaff has his attention focused on two such women, both of whom are...

Excellent performance
The performance is excellent and the video quality, superb.
The character of Falstaff is as grotesque, cunning, gullible, and fat as Shakespeare devised him. The very Robert Green, who supposedly Falstaff is drawn after, would have envied this performance of his character.
I have seen an excellent performance of _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and this Globe performance on DVD is up to speed with the best. It is funny; it stays alive throughout its five acts; and all the characters come alive as they were most likely meant to be. Mistress Page and Mistress Ford are fantastic, and so is the jealous husband who can't pin down any wrongdoers.
This is women's power at its best. So much for a society that did not allow women to perform on stage. Still, I would love to see an original practices performance by an all-male cast one day. For the time being, this performance does what it is meant to do: make you laugh at the characters and...

An Elizabethan "I Love Lucy"
XXXXX

This is the third play in William Shakespeare's (1564 to 1616) dramatic canon that has Sir John Falstaff, one of the playwright's comedic masterpieces, but this time as the lead character. He also appears in both parts of the history play "Henry the Fourth." (He is mentioned in another history play, "Henry the Fifth.")

This is regarded as a "minor" play perhaps because this comedy sounds so un-Shakespearean. However, scholars laud the creation yet again of the Falstaff character. He is both glorious and fun. And the "wives" are indeed "merry."

This play (written circa 1600) is the most purely farcical of all of Shakespeare's plays. It depends on lightening-quick timing between the actors and carefully choreographed actions. The "meaning" cannot be separated from the "performance."

This play is one of those plays that works better in performance than on the page, since it's filled with sight gags and spoken humour, including...

Click to Editorial Reviews