Falstaff: drunkard, sloth, and...paramour? This farce follows Sir John Falstaff-of the Henry IV plays-as he tries to woo two wealthy married women.
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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.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
But the important thing is that it's funny.,
By Tam Lin (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Merry Wives of Windsor (Signet Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
Critics have never given much regard to "The Merry Wives of Windsor", except to formulate elaborate theories about why, in their eyes, it's simply not as good as Shakespeare's other plays from the period. And while I suppose it is true that "The Merry Wives of Windsor" lacks the complexity, both in language and narrative, of the truly great comedies, I believe that most of the experts are overlooking one very important thing; that this play is just damn funny. It's not witty or subtle, but in the same style as "The Comedy of Errors", this play treats readers and audiences to broad, farcical, absurd stage comedy in the style of the Commedia Dell'arte. How anyone can consider the image of Falstaff as the would-be ladies man or the animated revulsion of the wives he sets his sights on and not crack a smile is beyond me. It's worth noting that this is Shakespeare's only play about contemporary English life, and his only play to focus primarily on working-class people rather than aristocrats, and the notion that "People are the same all over," certainly creeps into the text. As in "A Midsummer Night's Dream", we see a young woman willfully defy her parents and choose her own husband; as in "Twelfth Night" we see an unsuitable suitor propped up by a benefactor; and as in numerous plays, including "Othello" and "The Winter's Tale", we see a husband consumed by unfounded jealousy. These familiar elements take on new resonance in this most unusual (for Shakespeare) of settings, and it's difficult not to become class conscious by the end. "The Merry Wives of Windsor" is certainly not of the same caliber as most of Shakespeare's better known works, but it is a wild, endearing, hilarious look at the era's particular brand of ribald stage comedy, a distinct entertainment that has been lost in the shuffle of literary hemming and hawing over the last four centuries, and "Windsor" deserves a read, a laugh, and a commendation, in that order. As usual, the Signet editions are concise, portable, affordable, reader-friendly, and intelligently glossed, perfect for most casual readers and for those approaching any Shakespeare play for the first time. Particularly well-suited for students on a budget.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Shakespeare Gets Silly,
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This review is from: Merry Wives of Windsor (Signet Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
Shakespeare wrote some great comedies, even if they aren't read today for easy laughs. People read Shakespeare's comedies for his language, his timeless insights, his vivid characters. So what to do with a play light in all those departments, while heavy on the 414-year-old puns?
If you are like past generations of Shakespeare's fans, you enjoy "The Merry Wives Of Windsor" exactly for the antic, light-hearted spirit. Just think of it as one of those BBC Goon Show episodes before its time. "Merry Wives" kind of puts a spotlight on one of Shakespeare's best remembered characters, Sir John Falstaff, previously consigned to comic relief in the two parts of "Henry IV." He's oddly consigned here into something too substantial to be called a cameo but too spotty to be called much of a lead role. Instead, he serves as a kind of shuttlecock in a battle of the sexes pitting a virtuous but mischievous wife against her hyper-jealous husband, and a background figure in the various antic doings of assorted middle-class English villagers. Cuckoldry is the focus of yet another Shakespeare comedy, though this time by its marked absence: "We'll leave a proof by that which we will do/Wives may be merry, and yet honest too," says Mistress Page, one of the two title characters, as she and Mistress Ford plot another snare for randy, dogged Falstaff. As William Green notes in his excellent, concise introduction to the Signet paperback edition, "Merry Wives" is hardly great Shakespeare even though it is one of his most popular on stage. "Shakespeare's aim in the 'Merry Wives' was to entertain," he writes, pointing out such issues as a slack main plot, dead-end subplots, and a Falstaff that is mostly inconsistent from the "Henraid" plays. The contrivance of him being constantly fooled and coming back for more punishment at the hands of the mercilessly merry wives wears thin for me, especially when one pauses to think of other characters in the play more worthy of abuse than the fat knight showered with false encouragements. But give the play a second reading, and it gets better. It's still slack, yes, especially in the opening scenes where Shakespeare seems to be marking time with talk of missing books and slow dogs that have nothing to do with the rest of the scene, let alone the play. But after a while, a kind of goofy rhythm begins to develop, with a cast of rangy-if-one-note characters all doing their bits at the same time. One character, stupid Shallow, attempts forlornly to woo a young woman with bizarre conversational tangents about mad bulls. Jealous Mr. Ford ensnares himself more than he does Falstaff in his attempts to catch his wife in the act. A French doctor and a Welsh parson take turns mangling English in various colorful ways. These pun-heavy threads don't really gel, but they do amuse once you realize it's basically all you are getting here. "Trust me, he beat him most pitifully," one observes. "Nay, by th' mass, that he did not," is the reply. "He beat him most unpitifully." It probably wasn't all that fresh then, but still made me laugh. Shakespeare was supposedly writing this under a tight deadline for a specific event (Green spells this out very convincingly, giving the play a debut date of 1597) and you sense something less than his usual finesse at work, but for those who come to the play loving Shakespeare anyway, and just wanting to see what he might have produced if writing for "Saturday Night Live" or "30 Rock," "Merry Wives" offers some hints and some laughs. [Extra points for the Signet edition's explanatory notes, which are helpful without laboring one's reading way with too much exposition.]
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