The Merry Wives of Windsor

The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy in which Sir John Falstaff tries to seduce two married women for their money, and they turn the tables on him. It is Shakespeare's only comedy set in the England of his own day.

Main characters

• Sir John Falstaff
• Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, the merry wives
• Master Ford, a jealous husband
• Master Page
• Anne Page, their daughter, and her suitors Fenton, Slender and Doctor Caius
• Mistress Quickly
• Sir Hugh Evans, a Welsh parson
• The Host of the Garter Inn

Plot summary

This summary gives away the ending.

Short of money, Falstaff sends identical love letters to Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, hoping to get at their husbands' purses. The two women compare letters and plot revenge. Master Ford, suspecting his wife, disguises himself as 'Master Brook' and pays Falstaff to report on his progress, torturing himself with jealousy.

The wives lure Falstaff to Ford's house three times. The first time he escapes in a basket of dirty laundry and is tipped into the Thames; the second he is disguised as an old woman and beaten by Ford. Finally, with their husbands now in on the joke, the wives persuade him to meet them at night in Windsor Forest dressed as Herne the Hunter, where townsfolk dressed as fairies pinch and burn him. In the confusion, Anne Page slips away to marry Fenton, the man she loves, rather than either of the suitors her parents favoured.

Themes

• Marriage, trust and jealousy
• Social class in a market town
• Comic revenge
• Love against parental choice

Famous lines

Why, then the world's mine oyster, Which I with sword will open.

Pistol, Act 2 Scene 2

More in our collection of famous Shakespeare quotes.

Sources

No direct source is known. A tradition first recorded in 1702 claims Queen Elizabeth I wanted to see Falstaff in love and the play was written in a fortnight at her command, but there is no contemporary evidence for it.

On stage and screen

The play is full of references to Windsor and the Order of the Garter, and may have been written for a Garter celebration. It inspired Giuseppe Verdi's final opera, Falstaff (1893).

See where The Merry Wives of Windsor sits in Shakespeare's career on the timeline, or read about the playhouses it was written for.