The Merry Wives of Windsor (3 page)

Verse
is indicated by lines that do not run to the right margin and by capitalization of each line. The Folio printers sometimes set verse as prose, and vice versa (either out of misunderstanding or for reasons of space). We have silently corrected in such cases, although in some instances there is ambiguity, in which case we have leaned toward the preservation of Folio layout. Folio sometimes uses contraction (“turnd” rather than “turned”) to indicate whether or not the final “-ed” of a past participle is sounded, an area where there is variation for the sake of the five-beat iambic pentameter rhythm. We use the convention of a grave accent to indicate sounding (thus “turnèd” would be two syllables), but would urge actors not to overstress. In cases where one speaker ends with a verse half line and the next begins with the other half of the pentameter, editors since the late eighteenth century have indented the second line. We have abandoned this convention, since the Folio does not use it, nor did actors’ cues in the Shakespearean theater. An exception is made when the second speaker actively interrupts or completes the first speaker’s sentence.

Spelling
is modernized, but older forms are very occasionally maintained where necessary for rhythm or aural effect.

Punctuation
in Shakespeare’s time was as much rhetorical as grammatical. “Colon” was originally a term for a unit of thought in an argument. The semicolon was a new unit of punctuation (some of
the Quartos lack them altogether). We have modernized punctuation throughout, but have given more weight to Folio punctuation than many editors, since, though not Shakespearean, it reflects the usage of his period. In particular, we have used the colon far more than many editors: it is exceptionally useful as a way of indicating how many Shakespearean speeches unfold clause by clause in a developing argument that gives the illusion of enacting the process of thinking in the moment. We have also kept in mind the origin of punctuation in classical times as a way of assisting the actor and orator: the comma suggests the briefest of pauses for breath, the colon a middling one, and a full stop or period a longer pause. Semicolons, by contrast, belong to an era of punctuation that was only just coming in during Shakespeare’s time and that is coming to an end now: we have accordingly used them only where they occur in our copy texts (and not always then). Dashes are sometimes used for parenthetical interjections where the Folio has brackets. They are also used for interruptions and changes in train of thought. Where a change of addressee occurs within a speech, we have used a dash preceded by a period (or occasionally another form of punctuation). Often the identity of the respective addressees is obvious from the context. When it is not, this has been indicated in a marginal stage direction.

Entrances and Exits
are fairly thorough in Folio, which has accordingly been followed as faithfully as possible. Where characters are omitted or corrections are necessary, this is indicated by square brackets (e.g. “[and
Attendants
]”).
Exit
is sometimes silently normalized to
Exeunt
and
Manet
anglicized to “remains.” We trust Folio positioning of entrances and exits to a greater degree than most editors.

Editorial Stage Directions
such as stage business, asides, indications of addressee and of characters’ position on the gallery stage are used only sparingly in Folio. Other editions mingle directions of this kind with original Folio and Quarto directions, sometimes marking them by means of square brackets. We have sought to distinguish what could be described as
directorial
interventions of this kind from Folio-style directions (either original or supplied) by placing
them in the right margin in a smaller typeface. There is a degree of subjectivity about which directions are of which kind, but the procedure is intended as a reminder to the reader and the actor that Shakespearean stage directions are often dependent upon editorial inference alone and are not set in stone. We also depart from editorial tradition in sometimes admitting uncertainty and thus printing permissive stage directions, such as an
Aside?
(often a line may be equally effective as an aside or as a direct address—it is for each production or reading to make its own decision) or a
may exit
or a piece of business placed between arrows to indicate that it may occur at various different moments within a scene.

Line Numbers
are editorial, for reference and to key the explanatory and textual notes.

Explanatory Notes
explain allusions and gloss obsolete and difficult words, confusing phraseology, occasional major textual cruces, and so on. Particular attention is given to nonstandard usage, bawdy innuendo, and technical terms (e.g. legal and military language). Where more than one sense is given, commas indicate shades of related meaning, slashes alternative or double meanings.

Textual Notes
at the end of the play indicate major departures from the Folio. They take the following form: the reading of our text is given in bold and its source given after an equals sign with “Q” indicating a reading from the First Quarto of 1602, “Q3” a correction introduced in the Third Quarto of 1630, “F2” a correction that derives from the Second Folio of 1632, and “Ed” one that derives from the subsequent editorial tradition. The rejected Folio (“F”) reading is then given. Thus for Act 1 Scene 3 line 46: “
1.3.46 legion
= Ed. Q = legians. F = legend” means that in the phrase “a legion of angels” we have adopted the editorial “legion” instead of the Quarto’s “legians” or the Folio’s “legend,” possibly the result of a scribal or printing error.

MAJOR PARTS:
(
with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes onstage
) Falstaff (17%/136/9), Mrs. Page (12%/101/9), Ford (12%/99/9), Mrs. Quickly (10%/74/9), Evans (8%/87/9), Mrs. Ford (6%/85/7), Page (6%/75/11), Slender (5%/56/7), Shallow (4%/59/7), Caius (4%/49/8), Host (4%/46/8), Fenton (4%/20/4), Pistol (2%/29/5), Simple (2%/25/5), Anne Page (1%/19/3).

LINGUISTIC MEDIUM:
10% verse, 90% prose. Highest proportion of prose in the
Complete Works
.

DATE:
1597–1601. Allusion to the Order of the Garter in the final scene has led to supposition that the play was performed at, or indeed commissioned for, the Garter Feast held at Whitehall in April 1597, when George Carey, Lord Chamberlain and patron of Shakespeare’s acting company, was elected to the order, as (in absentia) was Frederick Duke of Württemberg (which may account for the allusions to a German duke in the scene involving the Host’s horses). The 1597–98 winter season at court and the Garter festivities for 1599 have also been proposed as the occasion: the argument for the latter, when Henry Brooke, eighth Lord Cobham, was elected Knight of the Garter, is interwoven with the Brooke/Broom crux (see “Text,” below). The argument against 1597 is that it would place the play before
2 Henry IV
, which seems counterintuitive: the relationship between Falstaff and Shallow, together with the retinue of “irregular humorists,” is more likely to have been created in the history play and reanimated in the comedy than vice versa (though it has been suggested that
The Merry Wives
was dashed off when Shakespeare was halfway through the writing of
2 Henry IV
). The element of “humoral” comedy suggests a date after Ben Jonson introduced this vogue in
Every Man in His Humour
(1598). The argument against a special Garter commission is that a full-length comedy, as opposed to a shorter masque or entertainment of a more courtly kind, is
unlikely to have been performed on such an occasion. It is possible that the Garter dimension is a vestige of an earlier commissioned work that was expanded into a comedy for the public stage. The play is not mentioned by Meres, suggesting late 1598 or 1599 as the earliest date for public performance. The 1602 Quarto title page clearly indicates performance both before the court and in the public theater. Quarto omits the speech alluding to the Order of the Garter and many other references to Windsor and the court. The major differences between Quarto and Folio texts (see below) suggest several stages of composition and probably performance in different versions.

SOURCES:
No known source for the main plot, but the gallant who attempts to seduce another man’s wife, is interrupted and hidden in a bizarre place, was a traditional comic motif, as was the clever wife who gets the upper hand (there is an example in one of the tales in Barnabe Riche’s
Farewell to Military Profession
, a book that provided Shakespeare with the main source for
Twelfth Night
); the Anne Page plot of rival suitors for an attractive daughter also has many analogues. The horse-stealing episode may allude to the Duke of Württemberg’s visit to England in 1592 and has parallels with a comic sequence in Marlowe’s
Dr. Faustus
. Falstaff with his horns in the park combines the folktale of Herne the Hunter with the classical myth (from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
) of Actaeon. The pinching Fairies are themselves pinched from Act 4 Scene 3 of John Lyly’s play
Endymion, the Man in the Moon
(published 1591).

TEXT:
Published in Quarto in 1602, in a version that has the hallmarks of a “reported text” of a stage production. About half the length of the Folio, and with many textual corruptions, the Quarto was reprinted in 1619. The First Folio text of 1623 was set from a transcript by Ralph Crane, professional scribe to the King’s Men, though it is not certain whether he worked from the playhouse “book” or an authorial manuscript.

The Quarto calls into question two significant details in the Folio. First, the name by which Ford calls himself when disguised: this is “Brooke” in Quarto but “Broom” in Folio. “Brooke” was clearly Shakespeare’s original intention, being an aquatic variation on “Ford” and
the occasion for at least one liquid pun (“Such Brooks are welcome to me, that o’erflows such liquor”—2.2.134). The change to “Broom” in Folio may well have been made in order to avoid offending the powerful family with whom Shakespeare had already been in trouble over a name in
1 Henry IV
. Lord Cobham had objected to the name Sir John Oldcastle, with the result that Shakespeare changed it to Sir John Falstaff. The Cobham family name was Brooke, so perhaps they intervened again, or the name was changed for fear that they might. We follow Folio’s Broom, but in production it is probably best to revert to Brook, in order to make the watery jokes work. Falstaff does not, after all, hide in a broom cupboard: he is thrown into a brook.

The other issue is the color coding at the climactic moment of the play, when Anne’s three suitors come on and take the fairy each of them supposes is her, while the children are singing their song and pinching Falstaff. In Folio, Master Page tells Slender that his daughter will be in white, but when Slender comes on with the humiliating news that he has grabbed and married a boy, he says that he took a fairy in green. With Caius, it is the other way around: Mistress Page tells him that Anne will be in green, but he takes a boy in white. Editors since the eighteenth century have reversed the colors in the dialogue at the end, to make them consistent with those of the initial plan. Since the inconsistency is much more likely to be the author’s than the printer’s, we have not done this, but attention is drawn to this issue in the gloss and the textual notes.

BARDOLPH

PISTOL

NIM

running scene 1

Enter Justice Shallow, Slender [and]
Sir
Hugh Evans