What Others Think
about
The Merry Wives of Windsor
To be honest, I’m so satisfied with my
first text on this play, ‘Wise wives and laundry baskets’ (pp 210-215 in Shakespeare Calling – the book) that I
don’t have anything to add this time. So I’ll let others speak. Not that many
do, at least not in the books I have.
For example, A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare only mentions the play in
passing in a list of plays that use the word ‘whore’. Disappointing. There is
so much more feminist analysis that could have been done.
Marjorie Garber in her Shakespeare after all comes with little that is new, nor does Soliloquy the Shakespeare monologues the
Women. Language is mentioned, as
well it should be, the rise of the ‘middle class’, i.e. the bourgeoisie, is
dealt with slightly, Falstaff’s character is touched upon. Nothing too
thrilling.
A
Companion to Shakespeare’s Works – the comedies offers a more serious
analysis in the essay ‘Unhusbanding Desires in Windsor’ by Wendy Wall. One key
sentence sums it up well: ‘…the play affirms female domestic authority and
middle class ethics over and above an aristocratic male drive for power, while
rooting national identity in bourgeois domestic life’ (p. 378). Well put.
In the introduction to the play in The Complete Works there is an
interesting reference to 17th century author Margaret Cavendish who
‘singled out those wives as particularly strong examples of Shakespeare’s gift
for representing women’ and quotes her: ‘…who could describe Cleopatra better
than he hath done, and many other females in his own creating, as Nan Page, Mrs
Page, Mrs Ford, the Doctor’s Maid, Beatrice, Mrs Quickly, Doll Tearsheet, and
others, too many to relate?’ (p. 102)
The introduction to the Norton Shakespeare based on the Oxford
Edition is, as always, spot on. This time Walter Cohen is the author and he
starts his analysis with a bang, with a quote from a letter from Friedrich
Engels to Karl Marx: ‘The first act of The
Merry Wives of Windsor alone contains more life and reality than all German
literature’ (p. 1255). The whole introduction is filled with Cohen’s pungent
observances: ‘The play takes a jaundiced view of nearly every character with a
claim to social standing’ (p. 1255). ‘Is the wives’ triumph…a victory for middle class women… middle class women, or both? (p.1259) ‘…the result is
not the expected expulsion of the predatory courtier by a unified town but the
undoing of nearly all positions of authority’ (p. 1261). And finally: ‘Its
strength lies in its cheerful capacity to absorb all comers…’ (p. 1262).
Cheerful indeed. This is one of
Shakespeare’s funniest plays and though, like all his other comedies it deals
with darker aspects of human relationships and society oppression, it’s
essentially a kind play, and very very merry.
Works cited:
- Companion to Shakespeare’s Works –
the comedies
(eds Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard, Blackwell Publishing 2006)
- Complete Works (RSC, eds
Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, 2007)
- Feminist Companion to Shakespeare (ed. Dympa
Callighan, 2000)
- Norton Shakespeare based on the
Oxford Edition
(eds Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E Howard and Katherine Eisaman Maus
– what a quartet!)
- Shakespeare after all (Marjorie Garber,
Anchor, 2004)
- Soliloquy the Shakespeare
monologues the Women
(eds Michael Early and Philippa Keil, Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 1988).
Film seen this
time:
- The
Globe version 2012. Director: Christopher Luscombe. Falstaff: Christopher
Benjamin. Mistress Page: Serena Evans. Mistress Ford: Sarah Woodward. Master
Ford: Andrew Havill. Master Page: Michael Garner. Dr Caius: Philip Bird. Hugh
Evans: Gareth Armstrong. Mistress Quickly: Sue Wallace. Ann Page: Ceri-Lyn
Cissone. Fenton: Gerard McCarthy. Slender: William Belchambers. Shallow: Peter
Gale.
- Amusing,
slapstick. We enjoyed it.
Read ‘Wise wives and laundry baskets’ in Shakespeare calling – the book available
here:
