The Play Within the Pay: The Masque of the Fairy Queen

 In the final scene of the play, Mistress Page and Ford, this time in league with their husbands and other members of the community, plot one last act of trickery against Falstaff.  This time their plot involves a play (specifically a masque) in which Mistress Quickly presides in the forest as the Fairy Queen (aided by Sir Hugh and Pistol as hobgoblins) and the children of Windsor pretend to be fairies. 

How is the play within the play related to the play?  What themes or ideas does it reiterate, emphasize or elaborate on?  How does it advance the plot and ploys of the characters or induce the emotions or resolutions of any character (does it, like the famous play within a play in Hamlet, "catch the conscience" of any character)?  What is the meaning of the masque?

Deception and Trickery: Is It Always a "Treachery"?

 The Merry Wives of Windsor is a play about phony identities, false affections, duplicitious trysts, even an elaborate costumed masque.  Some characters like Falstaff use deception to get their way, while others like the Merry Wives use it to play defense and level the playing field.  Mistress Page even argues that deception that leads to public humiliation and moral reform is justified: "Against such lewdsters and their lechery,/Those that betray them do no treachery"(5.4.23-4)

Is Ms. Page correct? Does the play show it is justified in some circumstances and not others?  Does it matter one's motivations and goals?  Does it matter the relative power relations?  Does it matter the nature of the deception?  Or does the play suggest that Ms. Page is wrong?  Is it always (or never) a treachery?

What Makes The Merry Wives a Revenge Comedy (and NOT a Tragedy)?

Revenge is central to the play The Merry Wives of Windsor.  We see plots of revenge with Sir Hugh and Dr. Caius (and later they gang up against the Host of the Garter), Falstaff and his servants, Ford and his alledged unfaithful wife as well as the central acts of the Merry Wives' humiliation of Falstaff.  Yet unlike a revenge tragedy like Hamlet that leaves a host of corpses littering the stage at its conclusion, all the main characters (including Falstaff) party at the end.

What makes the play a Revenge Comedy and not a Tragedy?  Is it just luck -- or does it have something to do with the motivations of the schemers, the nature of the methods of vengeance, or the community in which the play takes place?

The Old Woman of Brentford

 In Act 4, Scene 2 Mistress Ford and Page, the titular merry wives of the play, subject Falstaff to the second of their tricks and humiliations.   In this scene they trick Falstaff into dressing up as a woman, the Old Woman of Brentford, whom Mr. Ford despises because he alleges she is a witch.  Insensed that the woman has appeared at his home despite his prohibition, he takes out his cudgel and gives her a good beating.  Falstaff escapes undetected but in much pain and humiliation. 

What are we to make of this scene, especially for a modern audience (readership)?  What does this scene say about attitudes and values toward woman in Elizabethan England?  How does this fit in with other scenes and speeches in the play?  What does this say about the purpose of deceit and humiliation in the merry wive's tricks?  How should a director depict this scene on stage (how much violence acted out and/or shown? How much of the curses should be spoken and how many cut) ? 

Falstaff: Everyman or Vice? Or the Lord of Misrule?

 Falstaff, play acting as Prince Hal, gives an argument that the King should forgive Falstaff his foibles and not banish him from the Prince's company:

                                                If sack and sugar
         be a fault, God help the wicked. If to be old and

        merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is
        damned . . .  Banish plump Jack, and banish
        all the world. (Henry IV, Part 1 2.4.487-90; 497-8)

In this speech Falstaff positions himeself as an Everyman, a stock character from medieval morality plays that stands in for the ordinary person with all his faults and foibles who is susceptible to temptations.  Yet is he the tempted -- or the tempter?  Is he an Everyman, or another character from medieval morality plays: Vice.  Vice is the personification of all the deadly sins: pride, gluttony, and cowardice among them.  He is a comic figure because ultimately one cannot succeed with such vices.  Yet, he is a dangerous prescence nonetheless.

Or is he more like another character from Christmas celebrations: The Lord of Misrule.  The Lord of Misrule was a peasant chosen to preside over the Feast of Fools when drinking and unreuly partying was the norm. Such a figure personifies the overturning of hierarchies and the subverting of authority, both political and religioius and personal.

Can you see Falstaff in any of these figures?  All of them?  What is the enduring appeal of such a inveterate knave as Falstaff?

Fight the Power!!: Is Merry Wives of Windsor a Feminist Play?

As she reads Falstaff's indecent proposal for an immoral tyrst in Act 2, Scene 1 Mistress Page is outraged and immediately contemplates a response:

    Why, I'll exhibit a bill         
    in the Parliamnent for the putting down of men.    
    How shall I be revenged on him? For revenged I     

    will be, as sure as his guts are made of pudding  (2.1.28-31).                                                                                          

She envisions her revenge as a political action, one that is a direct attack on the arrogence of men.   This pledge, together with a similar one from her friend and accomplice, Mistress Ford, leads to a series of humiliating tricks leveled at Sir John, often utlizing the tools of domestic (and hence female) roles or forcing him to impersonate a woman.  In the process, they also expose the foolishness of Mr. Ford, the jealous husband of Mistress Ford.

What are the political implications of this play? What does it say about the opportunities and power of women in Elizabethean England?  Can this be seen as a feminist play?