The Merry Wives of Windsor

Sir John Falstaff, the roguish knight audiences first met in Henry IV, has arrived in Windsor with a new scheme: seducing not one but two respectable married women simultaneously. Mistress Ford and Mistress Page are no naive maidens, however. When Falstaff dispatches identical love letters to both women, they compare notes, laugh at his audacity, and devise a merciless campaign of retribution. What follows is a dazzling parade of disguises, mistaken identities, and escalating humiliation as the wives trap the bloated knight in a laundry basket, convince him a jealous husband approaches, and lead him on a moonlit chase through Windsor forest dressed as a Herne the Hunter. Shakespeare unleashes his most purely farcical instincts, skewering the pretensions of a ageing knight who believes his reputation precedes him when it only precedes his embarrassments. The play pulses with the energy of Elizabethan middle-class life, populated by bustling servants, comic constables, and scheming suitors competing for the hand of the clever Anne Page. Though critics have ranked it among Shakespeare's lesser works, those who encounter it onstage discover a comedy that earns its mirth through sheer theatrical invention and the satisfying sight of a braggart brought low.