The Merry Wives of Windsor: The Oxford Shakespeare (The Oxford Shakespeare; Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

William Shakespeare (Author), T. W. Craik (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2008 | Series: The Oxford Shakespeare; Oxford World's Classics

When a new play was required at short notice for a court occasion in 1597, Shakespeare created The Merry Wives of Windsor, a warm-hearted and spirited "citizen comedy" filled with boisterous action, situational irony, rich characterization--and the likes of Falstaff, Pistol, Mistress Quickly, and Justice Shallow. In his introduction and commentary, Craik examines a wide range of topics, including the play's probable occasion, its relationship to Shakespeare's English history plays and to other sources, its textual history, with particular reference to the widely diverging 1623 Folio and 1602 Quarto, and its quality as drama. In light of various topical, critical, and theatrical interpretations of the play, Craik pays particular attention to defining the literal sense, proposing some new readings, and evoking the many aspects of the stage business.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Editorial Reviews

Review

`T.W. Craik's edition of The Merry Wives is excellent ... can be recommended as one of the most scholarly, helpful, and authoritative texts so far to appear in the Oxford series.' The Review of English Studies

`One of the strengths of Craik's edition is his careful and subtle analysis of the construction of the play ... Professor Craik's close attention to structure and staging is particularly valuable in dealing with the conundrums of the last act in Windsor Forest ... The commentary to this edition is as careful and thoughtful as the introduction, and, in its scrupulous distinction between material accepted from earlier editors and new material, it shows a scholarly responsibility that is now positively old-fashioned. The commentary is particularly helpful on the double meanings which so many characters accidentally stumble into.' Durham University Journal

'Craik is as good an advocate as one could wish for The Merry Wives, ... his disapproval of 'irony-obsessed' critics who are determined to deny it a happy ending is admirable' English Studies, Volume 72, Number 6, December 1991

'Stanley Wells' OUP Complete Works of Shakespeare is now eight years old and has spawned a new Oxford Shakespeare which appears now in splendidly affordable volumes in that nonpareil of libraries of good reading The World's Classics.' The Oxford Times

About the Author

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English poet and playwright widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language, as well as one of the greatest in Western literature, and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (August 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199536821
• ISBN-13: 978-0199536825
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #532,749 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, and his birth is traditionally celebrated on April 23. The facts of his life, known from surviving documents, are sparse. He was one of eight children born to John Shakespeare, a merchant of some standing in his community. William probably went to the King's New School in Stratford, but he had no university education. In November 1582, at the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, who was pregnant with their first child, Susanna. She was born on May 26, 1583. Twins, a boy, Hamnet ( who would die at age eleven), and a girl, Judith, were born in 1585. By 1592 Shakespeare had gone to London working as an actor and already known as a playwright. A rival dramatist, Robert Greene, referred to him as "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers." Shakespeare became a principal shareholder and playwright of the successful acting troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later under James I, called the King's Men). In 1599 the Lord Chamberlain's Men built and occupied the Globe Theater in Southwark near the Thames River. Here many of Shakespeare's plays were performed by the most famous actors of his time, including Richard Burbage, Will Kempe, and Robert Armin. In addition to his 37 plays, Shakespeare had a hand in others, including Sir Thomas More and The Two Noble Kinsmen, and he wrote poems, including Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. His 154 sonnets were published, probably without his authorization, in 1609. In 1611 or 1612 he gave up his lodgings in London and devoted more and more time to retirement in Stratford, though he continued writing such plays as The Tempest and Henry VII until about 1613. He died on April 23 1616, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford. No collected edition of his plays was published during his life-time, but in 1623 two members of his acting company, John Heminges and Henry Condell, put together the great collection now called the First Folio.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not my favourite of Shakespeare but an excellent edition, July 21, 2009

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Christopher H. (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Merry Wives of Windsor: The Oxford Shakespeare (The Oxford Shakespeare; Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

One cannot do much better than the Oxford World Classics series for reading copies of Shakespeare's plays. The Oxford edition of 'Merry Wives' is especially satisfactory; Craik provides voluminous notes, which, especially those dealing with textual and linguistic issues, are excellent. An entire appendix is devoted to the issues surrounding the word 'luces' in Act I, and the lengthy introduction is very good reading. This is par for the course for the Oxford series.

As a play, 'Merry Wives' has never captured me; the humour often, though not always falls flat, the plot, though it is masterfully constructed (we can hardly expect anything else from Shakespeare in 1596ish) strikes me as trivial and banal compared to a masterpiece like 'Twelfth Night', and the characters of Evans and Caius seem to me more irritating than laughable. My low opinion of the play cannot have been bettered by the one ghastly production I have seen of 'Wives', in which half the characters were represented by oversize puppets; indeed, the play's sheer insubstantiality seems apt to lend itself to such vapid devices. Still, if you are embarking on a read through the entirety of Shakespeare's oeuvre, or are approaching the play for any other reason, the Oxford World Classics edition is an ideal choice.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Slapstick for the Intelligentsia, March 12, 2010

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Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Merry Wives of Windsor: The Oxford Shakespeare (The Oxford Shakespeare; Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

Sir John Falstaff, the fat inveterate rogue, is surely the most enduring and best-known of Shakespeare's comic characters. A boaster, a corrupter of youth, a petty scoundrel at best, a coward besides, Falstaff is nevertheless the most "human' of characters in the two history plays, Henry IV and Heny V, where he first appears. Many a reader has felt his/her heart go out to the pitiable old lard-bucket when that cold opportunist "Hal" spurns his old friend. Odious as Falstaff is from any respectable point of view, "we" all love him, don't we? Honestly? And don't we secretly wish, at least once, to see him triumph over the lords of propriety?

Triumph is not his lot in "The Merry Wives of Windsor", where he is dumped in the river with a load of smelly laundry, beaten in the street, pinched and humiliated by children. Rather rough treatment for a 'character' who must be over 200 years old, having 'survived' from the reign of Henry IV to that of Elizabeth I ! There is a persistent legend that Queen Elizabeth commissioned Shakespeare to write a play in which Falstaff would be caught falling in love; the claim is that Falstaff was the Queen's favorite figure of drama. Whether that legend is true or not, it's very obvious that "Merry Wives" was intended for a sophisticated audience. For a work of bawdy slapstick, it's a remarkably intellectual comedy, replete with puns and allusions that only people of considerable education could have grasped even in Shakespeare's era. The humor of the first scene alone, with its absurdist parody of legal terms and its mockery of the Welsh accent of the character Evans, would take a whole scholarly essay to explicate. It's no wonder that the play is considered "weak" by some modern critics; they just don't get the jokes! And "Merry Wives" is impossible to stage for a modern audience without strenuous adaptation and cuts! People won't laugh at jokes which require footnotes. Frankly, after 400 years of being revered as a classic, "The Merry Wives of Windsor" -- like most of Shakespeare's plays -- is a Pleasure for the few educated readers who can appreciate its wit... and homework for the rest of us. (If you think I'm discounting the "universality" of the Bard, you're correct. Shakespeare wrote for his own time and audience, and most of his plays are meaningful only in the context of an Elizabethan world-view.)

I took out my musty copy of the Complete Works in one volume, which I've had for over half a century now, to re-read "Merry Wives" after watching the opera "Falstaff" by Antonio Salieri. I've reviewed that opera, as well as one production of Giuseppe Verdi's "Falstaff". Both operas extract one story, that of Falstaff's ill-fated wooing of two wealthy wives, from Shakespeare's comedy. That is, they simplify the play, reducing it to elegant slapstick, replacing the poet's "play of words" with the playing of the orchestra. Most modern stagings of the full play, even those that present the full text, give it roughly the same treatment. Inevitably, I suppose! But an edition like this Oxford World's Classic -- with print large enough for aging eyes, with ample notes, and without the stench of mildew -- can make READING "Merry Wives" a laundry basket full of laughs, as it should be.