Read The Merry Wives of Windsor Online
Authors: William Shakespeare
1599
“To the Queen” (epilogue for a court performance)
1599
As You Like It
1599
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar
1600–01
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
(perhaps revising an earlier version)
1600–01
The Merry Wives of Windsor
(perhaps revising version of 1597–99)
1601
“Let the Bird of Loudest Lay” (poem, known since 1807 as “The Phoenix and Turtle” (turtledove))
1601
Twelfth Night, or What You Will
1601–02
The Tragedy of Troilus and Cressida
1604
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice
1604
Measure for Measure
1605
All’s Well That Ends Well
1605
The Life of Timon of Athens
, with Thomas Middleton
1605–06
The Tragedy of King Lear
1605–08
? contribution to
The Four Plays in One
(lost, except for
A Yorkshire Tragedy
, mostly by Thomas Middleton)
1606
The Tragedy of Macbeth
(surviving text has additional scenes by Thomas Middleton)
1606–07
The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra
1608
The Tragedy of Coriolanus
1608
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
, with George Wilkins
1610
The Tragedy of Cymbeline
1611
The Winter’s Tale
1611
The Tempest
1612–13
Cardenio
, with John Fletcher (survives only in later adaptation called
Double Falsehood
by Lewis Theobald)
1613
Henry VIII (All Is True)
, with John Fletcher
1613–14
The Two Noble Kinsmen
, with John Fletcher
Beiner, G., “The Libido as Pharmakos, or The Triumph of Love:
The Merry Wives of Windsor
in the Context of Comedy,”
Orbis Litteraria
, Vol. 43, 1988, pp. 195–216. Examines play’s comedic structure in relation to other Shakespeare plays.
Ellis, Anthony,
Old Age, Masculinity and Early Modern Drama: Comic Elders on the Italian and Shakespeare Stage
(2009). Chapter 2, “Old Age and the Uses of Comedy: Bibbiena’s
Calenda
and Shakespeare’s
Merry Wives of Windsor,”
sociohistorical study of Falstaff in early modern context.
Erickson, Peter, “The Order of the Garter, the Cult of Elizabeth, and Class-Gender Tension in
The Merry Wives of Windsor,”
in
Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology
, edited by Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O’Connor (1987), pp. 116–40. Influential historicist reading.
Grav, Peter F.,
Shakespeare and the Economic Imperative
(2008). Examines the significance of money in Shakespeare’s plays and society; chapter 2 focuses on
Merry Wives
, “Shakespeare’s England:
The Merry Wives of Windsor’s
Bourgeois Cash Values,” pp. 54–82.
Green, William,
Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor
(1962). Slightly dated but still useful general introduction that covers various aspects of play’s historical context, the Order of the Garter, first performance, and text, with some nice illustrations.
Lamb, Mary Ellen,
The Popular Culture of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Jonson
(2006). Cultural studies foray into the importance of fairies, old wives’ tales, and hobbyhorses in early modern literature and society; chapter 6 on
Merry Wives:
“Domestic Nationalism and the Refuse of the Realm,” pp. 125–59.
Melchiori, Giorgio,
Shakespeare’s Garter Plays: Edward III to Merry Wives of Windsor
(1994). Examines all aspects of historical tradition of play and context.
Miola, Robert S., “The
Merry Wives of Windsor:
Classical and Italian Inter-texts,”
Comparative Drama
, Vol. 27, No. 3, Fall 1993, pp. 364–76. Traces influences on play of comic traditions of Roman New Comedy.
Roberts, Jeanne Addison,
Shakespeare’s English Comedy
(1979). Relatively early critical work discussing play’s lowly historical position in the canon and arguing for its critical revaluation.
Ryan, Kiernan,
Shakespeare’s Comedies
(2009). Excellent introductory account in chapter 7: “Pribbles and Prabbles:
The Merry Wives of Windsor,”
pp. 134–63.
Steadman, John M., “Falstaff as Actaeon: A Dramatic Emblem,”
Shakespeare Quarterly
, Vol. XIV, No. 3, Summer 1963, pp. 231–44. Iconographic study comparing Falstaff to the Renaissance myth of Actaeon.
Theis, Jeffrey S.,
Writing the Forest in Early Modern England
(2009). Ecocritical study exploring the relationship between landscape, culture, and society; chapter 4, “A Border Skirmish: Community, Deer Poaching, and Spatial Transgression in
The Merry Wives of Windsor.”
Wall, Wendy, “ ‘Household Stuff’: The Sexual Politics of Domesticity and the Advent of English Comedy,”
English Literary History
, Vol. 65, No. 1, Spring 1998. Ingenious account which argues for the play as an allegory of the gendered formation of English national culture.
Holland, Peter, “The
Merry Wives of Windsor:
The Performance of Community,”
Shakespeare Quarterly
, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2005, pp. 5–18. Critique of various productions’ failure to attend to Shakespeare’s precisely detailed rural locale.
Tardiff, Joseph E., ed.,
Shakespearean Criticism
18 (1992). Includes stage history, reviews, and retrospective accounts of selected productions.
Chimes at Midnight
directed by Orson Welles (1965, DVD 2000). Condenses all the Falstaff material from both parts of
Henry IV
plus
Henry V
and
The Merry Wives of Windsor
. Multi-award nominated, with a star-studded cast, as eccentric and brilliant as Welles’s own performance as Falstaff. One of the all-time classic Shakespeare films.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
directed by David Jones for the BBC Shakespeare (1982, DVD 2006). Stars Richard Griffiths, Michael Bryant, Ben Kingsley, Alan Bennett, with acting honors going to Prunella Scales and Judy Davis as the Merry Wives.
Falstaff
directed by Richard Jones (2009, DVD 2010). Fine Glyndebourne Festival recording of Verdi’s operatic masterpiece with Christopher Purves as Falstaff.
1.
John Dennis,
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(1702), A2. A famous painting by David Scott,
Queen Elizabeth Viewing the Performance of the “Merry Wives of Windsor” in the Globe Theatre
(1840), captures an imagined version of the first performance, with public figures from across Elizabeth’s reign anachronistically brought together to view the play.
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