The Merry Wives of Windsor

About the Show

By William Shakespeare
Directed by Tracy Young

Meet the rotund rascal Sir John Falstaff and the wise wives of Windsor in one of Shakespeare’s most raucous comedies.

The Merry Wives of Windsor Playbill

Director's Note

The end of the Second World War was a particularly galvanizing time in American history. The country as a whole shared great optimism about the future prosperity of the new “Baby Boomer” generation, and yet at the same time experienced a more complicated and darker awareness of humanity overall. America had strong regard for its moral fabric and also an increasing doubt about the durability of that fabric. Tensions between ideals of community and individualism, transformations of accepted notions of status, and evolving expectations of traditional gender roles introduced changes in American society that would unfold over the next fifty years. Soldiers returned home to spouses and both partners often struggled with the distance that had come between them, both literally and figuratively. Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor explores similar expectations and tensions, and this adaptation carries them into the period just after the war, when triumphant feeling struggled with the realities of a threatening world. “Merry Wives” is about feeling like an outsider to a community and finding identity within it, and about how a community can support or inhibit self-expression.

The play good-naturedly, but pointedly skewers our weaknesses. Jealousy is represented in at least three other Shakespeare plays as a potently destructive force, but in “Merry Wives,” we can recognize and grow from it. Lustfulness and a propensity for gossip and deceitfulness appear in this play as potentially but never quite destructive. The play is constructed to a human scale, and with a generosity towards the characters that inhabit its world. Shakespeare’s Falstaff is a paragon of human foibles, and in The Merry Wives of Windsor he is the figure most alien to the play’s community.

What is it about Falstaff? Why is this larger than life figure so memorable and so prone to take up residence in our hearts and imaginations? Referred to as a “fat knight”, he embodies a laundry list of vices; he is lazy, slovenly, a drunkard, a womanizer, a thief, a braggart, a coward and a prevaricator. And yet, we can’t get enough of him. Perhaps it is because Falstaff represents the joy of freely following our impulses without concern for the consequences. But then, inevitably, the consequences of hedonistic living come to pass--obesity, alcoholism, poverty, and perhaps most meaningfully the rejection of one’s community. Falstaff is brought down by his unbridled ways and rejected by the young king in the Henry plays. But there is no delight in watching Falstaff get his comeuppance there, for we still harbor a love for him, and the way he mirrors us in our most childlike selves. Shakespeare is rumored to have been encouraged by Queen Elizabeth I to write a light hearted romp for Falstaff. In Shakespeare’s wisdom, this rollicking work framed Falstaff as an outsider who, by his very way of being, challenges the community to confront its notions about morality and acceptance of difference. Once again, Falstaff suffers rejection and humiliation for his shortcomings, but ultimately Shakespeare uses the community’s embracing of Falstaff as a symbol of enrichment and growth.

Lastly, though, it is useful to remember that Shakespeare titled this play The Merry Wives of Windsor, and for good reason. The play is centered not around Falstaff but around the women of the story, the “Merry Wives”. They are the engines that drive the action of the play, and they seem to relish their role. The ladies Ford and Page are fiercely intelligent, witty and yet also seem content to wield power within their proscribed roles as wives and mothers. These women provide a pointed contrast to other hyper-intelligent Shakespearean women who are often thwarted and limited by their gendered roles (Lady Macbeth and “shrewish” Kate come to mind). In “Merry Wives”, the women find ways to maneuver in their own, albeit limited, milieu. They mete out the standards around which the community rallies and establish the “rules of combat”. At the end of the play, Falstaff is welcomed into the community by one of the wives who can see past his limitations and embrace him with forgiveness that transcends his foolishness. It is ultimately that final grace note that offers the most stirring and heartfelt moment of the play, in recognizing that shortcomings are shared by everyone, and that forgiveness is always possible.

Tracy Young
Director, The Merry Wives of Windsor

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