Which troubles oft the bed of blesséd marriage, So ends the trilogy that paints the rise of a true manhood, and its closing play that teaches each of us, to whom the war of life brings many a battle, in what spirit to go forth, whom to follow, and to whom alone we should ascribe the victory.. "The Merry Wives of Windsor." Under date of the eighteenth of January, 1602 (new style), John Busby entered in the Register of the Stationers' Company, "for his copie vnder the hand of master Seton, a booke called An excellent Sir IOHN FFAULSTOF Also Arthur Johnson 4 and pleasant conceited Commedie of and the merry wyves of Windesor." "entred for his Copye by assignement from John Busbye" the same book. Here, as in other cases, a book that had been already printed was not entered until the time of its transfer to another publisher. The printing of "The Merry Wives of Windsor" was, therefore, before the eighteenth of January, 1602. But the quarto so printed -and reprinted in 1619*-gave an unauthorised version. of the play, which seems to have been based upon reporter's notes and memory of the performance. The whole play was given first in 1623, in the first folio of Shakespeare's works; but this also had imperfections which can be corrected by help of the quarto, with all its faults of omission and confusion. The title-page of that first quarto records that the play is "entermixed with sundrie variable and pleasing humors, of Syr Hugh the Welch Knight, Justice "A most pleasant and excellent Comedy, of Sir John Falstaffe and the merry wives of Windsor, with the swaggering vaine of Ancient Pistoll and Corporall Nym. Written by W. Shakespeare. Printed for Arthur Johnson. 1619." Shallow, and his wise cousin, M. Slender." This is a form of description for which Shakespeare could have been in no way answerable; for Hugh Evans, the Welsh parson, is not called "Sir" because he is a knight, but because that title -the translation of "Dominus"--was given of old to priests and curates generally. "Dominus" was the academical title of a Bachelor of Arts at the universities, and might be shortened into "Dan," as "Dan John Lydgate," or translated into "Sir." So we have, in "Twelfth Night," Sir Thopas, the curate; and Fuller speaks in his Church History of the days when there were more Sirs than Knights. A tradition, first made current by Nicholas Rowe in 1709, reports that Queen Elizabeth was so well pleased with the character of Falstaff that she commanded Shakespeare to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love. Another tradition, first published by John Dennis in 1702, in his preface to the "Comical Gallant," says that Shakespeare wrote "The Merry Wives of Windsor" in a fortnight. Neither of these traditions can have any value. There is no mention of them until eighty or ninety years after Shakespeare's death, when they appear with other baseless gossip. After the four folios of 1623, 1632, 1663-64, and 1685, in which Shakespeare's works were first collected-four editions in the seventeenth century being enough to meet all the demands of readers-Nicholas Rowe, in Queen Anne's reign, was the first to issue an edition in octavo volumes (seven volumes) of the plays, preceded by a Life. That Life contained traditions current about Shakespeare ninetythree years after his death. If any man now living, prominent either in a nation or a village, will consider the worth of traditions current about himself while he is yet alive, with a general public better educated than it was in Shakespeare's time, he will understand the value of the numerous contributions from the small talk of the seventeenth century to the confusion of our knowledge of the life of Shakespeare. No doubt Shakespeare could have written this play in a fortnight; but there is no clear reason for saying that he did. And for "The Merry Wives of Windsor," as written by Queen Elizabeth's desire to show Falstaff in love, it may be enough to say that the play does not show, or pretend to show, Falstaff in love. It shows him basely endeavouring to raise money through the ruin of two honest women, who outwit him again and again and bring him to disgrace, because his own wit is not founded upon honesty. As he himself says in his last discomfiture, "See, now, how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when 'tis upon ill employment." This play supplements the two parts of "King Henry IV." by showing what Falstaff stands for; the temptation of the flesh-the world, the flesh and the devil-backed to the uttermost with good wit and good humour, that have force to mislead our youth; here brought into relation with a simple, healthy womanhood. Mrs. Page and Mrs. Ford are not heroines with unexampled powers, but ordinary women, cheerful and right-minded, to whose minds Falstaff is as nothing. Quick parts, bent upon ill, fail in a wrestle with the mother-wit of plain folk who live loyally. In the tales out of Italy which have been suggested as having possibly contributed to the invention of the story of "The Merry Wives of Windsor," all, with one exception, are written in sympathy with tricks played by dishonest wives; and all, without exception, want the soul of duty that gives life to the lightest of the works of Shakespeare. Shakespeare wove his own incidents together playfully in this comedy of Falstaff and the Merry Wives; but his incidents were in part based on a knowledge of familiar Italian tales of tricks of women in their relations between lover and husband. The story of Filenio Sisterna, from the "Tredeci Piacevoli Notti" of Giovanni Francesco Straparola, published at Venice in 1569, furnished nothing, unless it contributed insensibly to the idea of a common understanding between Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page. In this story the hero dances at a ball with three married ladies, and makes love to each with the same directness. The ladies compare notes, and agree to punish him. Each makes an assignation. One, on alarm of her husband's return, puts him as soon as he is undressed under the low bed, where he is scratched from top to toe in the endeavour to creep out of sight; another sends him for perfume to a cupboard, where a pitfall causes him to drop far down into a store of cotton, whence he escapes into the street in his shirt by difficult removal of a stone; the third gives him drugged wine, and has him carried out to be laid half-naked on the public pavement, where he awakes in the chill dawn. But the teller of the tale shows his unwillingness to point a moral by giving to his hero, Filenio Sisterna-and gloating over --such a revenge on the three ladies as no English gentleman can read without contempt. The story of Nerino of Portugal, from the same collection of Straparola's "Le Piacevoli Notti," was abridged, with variations, in Tarleton's "News out of Purgatorie," published in 1590 as "The Tale of the Two Lovers of Pisa." Shakespeare is likely to have read it, though it contributes to his "Merry Wives of Windsor" nothing of its incidents beyond suggestion of the secret understanding between Falstaff and "Master Brook," and nothing whatever of its honesty. A story of Lucius and Camillus, from the story of Bucciuolo and Pietro Paolo, is from "Il Pecorone" of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, which is also a chief source of the tale of "The Merchant of Venice." We have here, probably, the first suggestion of the hiding of Falstaff among linen in the buck-basket. "The Fishwife's Tale of Brentford," printed four years after Shakespeare's death in the earliest known edition. (1620) of "Westward for Smelts," is a tale of a deceived husband really based upon one of the stories of Boccaccio's "Decameron," that has not even a remote resemblance to the story of "The Merry Wives of Windsor." Yet, as the English version printed after Shakespeare's death has laid the scene in Windsor, it has been suggested that Shakespeare got from it the idea of Windsor as his place of action. Now the genius of a great poet does not consist in the power of piecing together scraps of ideas out of previously (or subsequently) existing books. "The Merry Wives of Windsor." Shakespeare sets. Falstaff in the close air of a tavern; and he has set his healthy women among fields by the riverside, a part of nature in the wholesome country air. The Court is at Windsor Castle, and this brings Sir John Falstaff into lodging at a Windsor inn. That the Court is at the Castle we learn in the fourth scene of the First Act from Dr. Caius, who has come home for a "green-a box," and bids John Rugby, "Come, take-a your rapier, and come after my heel to de Court." Dr. Caius is a French physician in large practice at Court, who talks French, not broken English, to his noble patients, and is thought by Mistress Page a desirable match for her daughter, because "The doctor is well moneyed, and his friends Again, in the third scene of the Fourth Act we hear how pretended Germans have been living for a week at the "Garter," and go away on the host's horses, pretending that they go to meet a duke, who will be to-morrow at the Court. It was from among his friends at the Court that Fenton, who had been companion with the Prince and Poins, comes to the wooing of Anne Page, first in bad faith for her father's money, and then in good faith for herself. The wooing of Anne Page, that gives rise to all the pleasant incidents interwoven with the discomfitures of Falstaff in his practising on Mrs. Page and Mrs. Ford, serves for dramatic contrast, while it brings in a new flood of wholesome mirth. The wooers of Anne Page all seek her in honest marriage. Her mother is for Doctor Caius ; her father is for Master Slender; she herself is for Master Fenton and |