And suffer’d him to go displeas’d away,
Even he that had held up the very life
Of my dear friend. What should I say sweet lady?
215
I was enforc’d to send it after him,
I was beset with shame and courtesy,
My honour would not let ingratitude
So much besmear it: pardon me good lady,
For by these blessed candles of the night,
220
Had you been there, I think you would have begg’d
The ring of me to give the worthy doctor.
PORTIA
Let not that doctor e’er come near my house –
Since he hath got the jewel that I loved,
And that which you did swear to keep for me,
225
I will become as liberal as you,
I’ll not deny him any thing I have,
No, not my body, nor my husband’s bed:
Know him I shall, I am well sure of it.
Lie not a night from home. Watch me like Argus, –
230
If you do not, if I be left alone,
Now by mine honour (which is yet mine own),
I’ll have that doctor for my bedfellow.
NERISSA And I his clerk: therefore be well advis’d
How you do leave me to mine own protection.
235
GRATIANO Well do you so: let not me take him then,
For if I do, I’ll mar the young clerk’s pen.
ANTONIO I am th’unhappy subject of these quarrels.
PORTIA
Sir, grieve not you, – you are welcome notwithstanding.
BASSANIO Portia, forgive me this enforced wrong,
240
And in the hearing of these many friends
I swear to thee, even by thine own fair eyes
Wherein I see myself –
PORTIA Mark you but that!
In both my eyes he doubly sees himself:
In each eye one, – swear by your double self,
And there’s an oath of credit.
245
BASSANIO Nay, but hear me.
Pardon this fault, and by my soul I swear
I never more will break an oath with thee.
ANTONIO I once did lend my body for his wealth,
Which but for him that had your husband’s ring
250
Had quite miscarried. I dare be bound again,
My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord
Will never more break faith advisedly.
PORTIA Then you shall be his surety: give him this,
And bid him keep it better than the other.
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ANTONIO Here Lord Bassanio, swear to keep this ring.
BASSANIO By heaven it is the same I gave the doctor!
PORTIA I had it of him: pardon me Bassanio,
For by this ring the doctor lay with me.
NERISSA And pardon me my gentle Gratiano,
260
For that same scrubbed boy (the doctor’s clerk)
In lieu of this, last night did lie with me.
GRATIANO Why this is like the mending of highways
In summer where the ways are fair enough!
What, are we cuckolds ere we have deserv’d it?
265
PORTIA Speak not so grossly, – you are all amaz’d;
Here is a letter, read it at your leisure, –
It comes from Padua from Bellario, –
There you shall find that Portia was the doctor,
Nerissa there her clerk. Lorenzo here
270
Shall witness I set forth as soon as you,
And even but now return’d: I have not yet
Enter’d my house. Antonio you are welcome,
And I have better news in store for you
Than you expect: unseal this letter soon,
275
There you shall find three of your argosies
Are richly come to harbour suddenly.
You shall not know by what strange accident
I chanced on this letter.
ANTONIO I am dumb!
BASSANIO Were you the doctor, and I knew you not?
280
GRATIANO
Were you the clerk that is to make me cuckold?
NERISSA Ay, but the clerk that never means to do it,
Unless he live until he be a man.
BASSANIO Sweet doctor, you shall be my bedfellow, –
When I am absent then lie with my wife.
285
ANTONIO Sweet lady, you have given me life and living;
For here I read for certain that my ships
Are safely come to road.
PORTIA How now Lorenzo?
My clerk hath some good comforts too for you.
NERISSA Ay, and I’ll give them him without a fee.
290
There do I give to you and Jessica
From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift
After his death, of all he dies possess’d of.
LORENZO Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way
Of starved people.
PORTIA It is almost morning,
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And yet I am sure you are not satisfied
Of these events at full. Let us go in,
And charge us there upon inter’gatories,
And we will answer all things faithfully.
GRATIANO Let it be so, – the first inter’gatory
300
That my Nerissa shall be sworn on, is,
Whether till the next night she had rather stay,
Or go to bed now (being two hours to day):
But were the day come, I should wish it dark
Till I were couching with the doctor’s clerk.
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Well, while I live, I’ll fear no other thing
So sore, as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring. Exeunt.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor, despite the fact that it uses some characters from the King Henry IV plays which are set in the early fifteenth century, seems to come as close as Shakespeare ever gets to depicting his own contemporary society. The tavern scenes in the histories are moving in this direction, but in Merry Wives the political context has disappeared altogether and the result feels more like the ‘city comedies’ written by Shakespeare’s contemporaries such as Jonson and Middleton than like his own usual style of romantic comedy with its more remote settings and upper-class characters. Shakespeare’s only comedy set in England (if we exclude Cymbeline with its setting in Ancient Britain) is very much a bourgeois play, with ‘Sir John’ having to adapt to his provincial environment. The main theme is still courtship, and the plot has many precedents in folklore, but the tone is very different from that of Shakespeare’s recent comedies, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merchant of Venice, or the possibly contemporaneous Much Ado About Nothing. Although jokes about cuckolds are a standard element in many plays, it is unusual to find the jealous husband treated as the figure of fun he is here: in Othello, The Winter’s Tale and Cymbeline Shakespeare treats him very differently. Merry Wives may date from 1597; if, however, it was written about 1599, as the most recent Arden editor, Giorgio Melchiori, argues, Shakespeare would have had a model in the comic Thorello in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour (1598), a play Shakespeare himself had acted in.
An early eighteenth-century story claims that Queen Elizabeth encouraged the composition of the play because she wanted to see ‘Falstaff in love’; modern scholars still relate this story while questioning its veracity. Certainly Merry Wives seems to be an Elizabethan play, written after the King Henry IV plays (1596-8) and having some direct connection with the installation of George Carey, the Lord Chamberlain and patron of Shakespeare’s company, as a Knight of the Garter in Windsor in 1597: the Garter ceremonies are referred to quite specifically in Mistress Quickly’s sp
eech at 5.5.55-76. If Merry Wives is to be related to the chronology of the histories, Falstaff’s penury and the absence of Prince Hal might suggest the period of his reported disgrace between King Henry IV, Part 2 and his reported death in King Henry V. Its tone is of course much lighter: despite Falstaff’s attempts to win his way into the Wives’ favours and their husbands’ fortunes, we remain confident of the basic affability and good sense of most of the people of Windsor. Shakespeare does not seem to be aiming for strict consistency with the history plays: it is difficult, for example, to reconcile the Mistress Quickly here with the character in the Henry IV and Henry V plays.
The earliest published text of this play, the First Quarto of 1602 (Q1), is only about half the length of the version in the 1623 First Folio (F1) (where it is the third of the comedies), and has generally been dismissed as a ‘bad’ quarto, or, less judgementally, as a reported text put together from memory of an acting version of the play. The appearance of five further quartos during the seventeenth century (one based on Q1, the others on F1) attests to the popularity of the play. There are records of revivals in 1604, 1613, 1638, 1661 and 1667. Merry Wives continued to be popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although it was often abridged in performance. It has been used as the basis for the libretti of at least nine operas including Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff (1893) and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Sir John in Love (1929). Twentieth-century productions often revelled in the particularity of the Windsor setting which allowed them to celebrate a ‘merry England’ not otherwise notably associated with Shakespeare; the fact that the play was chosen for presentation at the Festival of Britain in 1951 testifies to this tendency.
The 1999 Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.
AT THE GARTER INN
HOST
of the Garter Inn
Sir John FALSTAFF
a Crown pensioner, lodging at the Inn
ROBIN
his page-boy
‘Corporal’ BARDOLPH
Falstaff’s attendant, later a drawer in the Inn
Falstaff’s other attendants
Robert SHALLOW
a justice of the peace
Abraham SLENDER
a young gentleman, his relative
Peter SIMPLE
Slender’s servant
FENTON
a gentleman, former companion of the Prince of Wales
TOWNSPEOPLE
George PAGE
a citizen
MISTRESS Margaret (meg) PAGE
his wife
Anne (Nan) Page
their daughter
WILLIAM Page
a schoolboy, their son
Frank FORD
another citizen
MISTRESS Alice FORD
his wife
servants in Ford’s household
Sir Hugh EVANS
a Welsh parson
Doctor CAIUS
a French physician
Mistress QUICKLY
his housekeeper
John RUGBY
his servant
Children, disguised as Fairies, instructed by Parson Evans
1.1 Enter Justice SHALLOW, SLENDER and
Sir Hugh EVANS.
SHALLOW Sir Hugh, persuade me not: I will make a
Star Chamber matter of it. If he were twenty Sir John
Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow esquire.
SLENDER In the County of Gloucester, Justice of Peace
and Coram.
5
SHALLOW Ay, cousin Slender, and Cust-a-lorum.
SLENDER Ay, and Rato lorum too; and a gentleman
born, master parson, who writes himself Armigero, in
any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation – Armigero.
SHALLOW Ay, that I do, and have done any time these
10
three hundred years.
SLENDER All his successors – gone before him – hath
done’t; and all his ancestors – that come after him – may.
They may give the dozen white luces in their coat.
SHALLOW It is an old coat.
15
EVANS The dozen white louses do become an old coat
well. It agrees well passant. It is a familiar beast to
man, and signifies love.
SHALLOW The luce is the fresh fish – the salt fish is an
old coat.
20
SLENDER I may quarter, coz.
SHALLOW You may, by marrying.
EVANS It is marring indeed, if he quarter it.
SHALLOW Not a whit.
EVANS Yes, py’r lady: if he has a quarter of your coat,
25
there is but three skirts for yourself, in my simple
conjectures. But that is all one: if Sir John Falstaff
have committed disparagements unto you, I am of the
Church, and will be glad to do my benevolence, to
make atonements and compremises between you.
30
SHALLOW The Council shall hear it, it is a riot.
EVANS It is not meet the Council hear a riot. There is no
fear of Got in a riot. The Council, look you, shall
desire to hear the fear of Got, and not to hear a riot.
Take your vizaments in that.
35
SHALLOW Ha, o’my life, if I were young again, the
sword should end it.
EVANS It is petter that friends is the sword, and end it;
and there is also another device in my prain, which
peradventure prings goot discretions with it. There is
40
Anne Page, which is daughter to Master George Page
– which is pretty virginity.
SLENDER Mistress Anne Page? She has brown hair, and
speaks small like a woman?
EVANS It is that ferry person for all the ‘orld, as just as
45
you will desire, and seven hundred pounds of moneys,
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 375