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Critical Comments.

I.

Argument.

I. Sir John Falstaff has forsaken the warlike pursuits familiar to his friend Prince Hal, afterwards Henry V. of England, and is now devoted to the peaceful occupations of poaching and love-making, though not neglecting the drinking-cups of the tavern. Two women of Windsor, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, engage his attention at the same time; and he resolves to lay siege to their affections, notwithstanding both are married.

Mistress Page's daughter Anne is sought in marriage by Slender-largely through his friends; by Hugh Evans, a Welsh curate and schoolmaster; by Dr. Caius, a French physician; and by Fenton, a courtier.

II. Mistress Page and Mistress Ford each receive a love-letter from Falstaff, and upon comparing their missives they find them almost identical. Being women of wit as well as of virtue, they agree to work together towards humiliating the knight for his presumption. Mistress Ford makes an appointment with him. His servants inform the husbands of the two women. Ford, under an assumed name, meets Falstaff and, pretending to be a suitor also for Mistress Ford, worms from the boastful Falstaff the secret of his appointment with her.

III. Falstaff is punctual to his meeting with Mistress Ford. But before he arrives, she and Mistress Page prepare a large basket of soiled linen in which Falstaff is to be conveyed to the river, under the pretense that this is the only way he can escape from the house. The pre

tense turns to reality when Ford actually arrives. And the ruse of the clothes-basket deceives both gallant and husband. Falstaff is dumped into the Thames, whence he emerges much bedraggled, but with ardor so slightly quenched as to become enkindled again upon receipt of a message from Mistress Ford granting him a second interview. Nor has he gained discretion from his first mishap, for he unwittingly informs Ford of this rendezvous also, and of the means whereby he escaped his former predicament. The thoroughly aroused husband redoubles his vigilance.

IV. Falstaff keeps his second appointment with Mistress Ford. Her husband again surprises them. The clothes-basket is sent down as before; and while Ford is ransacking it under the firm belief that it again conceals Falstaff, the latter is dressed in woman's clothes and escapes thus disguised, though not avoiding sundry blows from the irate husband. Mistress Ford and Mistress Page then tell their husbands the truth about the Falstaff episodes. The men are delighted to find their wives faithful, and the four conjointly arrange a third and final hoax which contemplates a night meeting in Windsor Park.

Meanwhile Anne Page's love-affairs are becoming tangled. She loves Fenton. Her father has chosen Slender. Her mother privately favors Dr. Caius. When the third prank on Falstaff is prepared, Anne and her parents make conflicting plans to utilize the meeting for bringing their separate matrimonial schemes to a head.

V. Falstaff is persuaded to go to Windsor Park, wearing a buck's head. Anne Page and her friends impersonate fairies and burn him with tapers. Ford, Page, and their wives reveal themselves to him, reproach him for his attempted villainy, and finally pardon him. The wretched Falstaff finds his only satisfaction in hearing that Anne Page has married Fenton, despite the counterschemes of her father and mother.

MCSPADDEN: Shakespearian Synopses.

II.

The Request of Queen Elizabeth.

Old Queen Bess can scarcely have been a great judge of art, or she would not have conceived the extravagant notion of wanting to see Falstaff in love; she would have understood that if there was anything impossible to him it was this. She would also have realized that his figure was already a rounded whole and could not be reproduced. It is true that in the Epilogue to Henry IV. (which, however, is probably not by Shakespeare) a continuation of the history is promised, in which, “for anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions;" but no such continuation is to be found in Henry V., evidently because Shakespeare felt that Falstaff had played out his part. Neither is The Merry Wives the promised continuation, for Falstaff does not die, and the action is conceived as an earlier episode in his life, though it is entirely removed from its historical setting and brought forward into the Poet's own time, so unequivocally that there is even in the fifth Act a direct mention of our radiant queen" in Windsor Castle.

The Poet must have set himself unwillingly to the fulfilment of the "radiant queen's" barbarous wish, and tried to make the best of a bad business. He was compelled entirely to ruin his inimitable Falstaff, and degrade the fat knight into an ordinary avaricious, wine-bibbing, amatory old fool. Along with him, he resuscitated the whole merry company from Henry V., who had all come to an unpleasant end-Bardolph, Pistol, Nym, and Dame Quickly-making the men repeat themselves with a difference, endowing Pistol with the splendid phrase "The world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open," and giving to Dame Quickly softened and more commonplace lineaments. From the Second Part of Henry IV., too, he introduces Justice Shallow, placing him in a less

friendly relation to Falstaff, and giving him a highly comic nephew, Slender, who, in his vanity and pitifulness, is like a first sketch for Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night.

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BRANDES: William Shakespeare.

III.

Delineation of the Play.

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The principal action of this comedy-the adventures of Falstaff with the Merry Wives-sweeps on with a rapidity of movement which hurries us forward to the dénouement as irresistibly as if the actors were under the influence of that destiny which belongs to the empire of tragedy. No reverses, no disgraces, can save Falstaff from his final humiliation. The net is around him, but he does not see the meshes; he fancies himself the deceiver, but he is the deceived. He will stare Ford "out of his wits," he will awe him with his cudgel," yet he lives to be carried in a basket like a barrow of butcher's offal, and to be thrown into the Thames." But his confidence is undaunted: "I will be thrown into Etna, as I have been into the Thames, ere I will leave her "; yet "since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipped top, I knew not what it was to be beaten till lately." Lastly, he will rush upon a third adventure: "This is the third time, I hope good luck lies in odd numbers"; yet his good luck ends in "I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass." The real jealousy of Ford most skilfully helps on the merry devices of his wife; and with equal skill does the Poet make him throw away his jealousy, and assist in the last plot against the "unclean knight." The misadventures of Falstaff are most agreeably varied. The disguise of the old woman of Brentford puts him altogether in a different situation from his suffocation in the buck basket; and the fairy machinery of Herne's Oak car

ries the catastrophe out of the region of comedy into that of romance.

The movement of the principal action is beautifully contrasted with the occasional repose of the other scenes. The Windsor of the time of Elizabeth is presented to us, as the quiet country town, sleeping under the shadow of its neighbour the castle. Amidst its gabled houses, separated by pretty gardens, from which the elm and the chestnut and the lime throw their branches across the unpaved road, we find a goodly company, with little to do but gossip and laugh, and make sport out of each other's cholers and weaknesses. We see Master Page training his "fallow greyhound"; and we go with Master Ford "a-birding." We listen to the "pribbles and prabbles " of Sir Hugh Evans and Justice Shallow, with a quiet satisfaction; for they talk as unartificial men ordinarily talk, without much wisdom, but with good temper and sincerity. We find ourselves in the days of ancient hospitality, when men could make their fellows welcome without ostentatious display, and half a dozen neighbours could drink down all unkindness over a hot venison pasty." The more busy inhabitants of the town have time to tattle, and to laugh, and be laughed at. Mine Host of the Garter is the prince of hosts; he is the very soul of fun and good temper; he is not solicitous whether Falstaff sit at ten pounds a week" or at two; he readily takes the withered serving man for a fresh tapster "; his confidence in his own cleverness is delicious-" am I politic, am I subtle, am I a Machiavel?"-the Germans" shall have my horses, but I'll make them pay, I'll sauce them." When he loses his horses, and his "mind is heavy," we rejoice that Fenton will give him "a hundred pound in gold" more than his loss. His contrivances to manage the fray between the furious French doctor and the honest Welsh parson are productive of the happiest situations.

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KNIGHT: Pictorial Shakspere.

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