and inexhaustibly various character he has substituted an elementary generic figure. The characters at large are sketched with the same simple breadth. The second plot, so ingeniously interwoven with the Falstaff intrigue, is set going by a pleasant variation of the same motive. Slender and Caius flutter round Anne Page's dowry, as Falstaff about her mother's purse; and their claims are gravely considered instead of being merrily repelled. Hence the pleasant irony of the situation in which these excellent burghers are finally entangled. Mistress Page, who never dreams of selling her husband's honour, and Master Page, who never dreams of suspecting that she may, both plot independently to sell their daughter's happiness. And Anne Page outwits her parents, as her mother outwits Falstaff, in the name of true love, and adds her name by a two-fold title to the number of the Merry Wives. But these two stories by no means exhaust the comic material of the play. The comedy is, as the title-page of the Quarto puts it, 'entermixed with sundrie variable and pleasing humors,' and the phrase describes, with an aptness not usual in pirated titlepages, the crowd of amusing personages who mingle with, rather than carry on, the plot. Shallow and Simple, Bardolph and Pistol and Nym are 'variable and pleasing humors,' types of particular eccentricities, which it is their rôle to exhibit. The enterprising publisher of the Quarto probably felt, what has often since been noticed, that the Merry Wives has a close affinity to the Jonsonian Comedy of Humours, and in particular to the epoch-making masterpiece of the previous year, Every Man in His Humour, in which Shakespeare himself had played, and which he is said to have specially recommended to his company. Every Man in His Humour is without doubt a greater comedy than the Merry Wives, richer and more various, more penetrated with the intimate mind-stuff of its writer, less brilliant and facile, but at bottom more spontaneous. Shakespeare's wonderfully mobile genius dallied a moment with a manner which was not his own. He has painted Windsor and its burghers with the sympathetic touch of one who well remembered another antique country-town, with another wide sylvan river lapping its meads and parks; but also with the obtrusive realism of detail, the artifice and symmetry of plan, and the simple incisive characterisation which distinguish Jonson's picture of humorous' London. The Garter Inn, Frogmore, Datchet Mead (and doubtless also the Pittie of iii. 1. 6) were real localities; the names of Ford, Page, Evans, Brook, Miller are found in the Windsor registers of Shakespeare's time; tradition still points out the houses of Page and Ford.1 the realism is qualified, as in Jonson, by alien elements most skilfully assimilated. Falstaff's intrigue is Italian in conception, the fairy finale under Herne's oak is a masque, the fantastic quality of which eludes us to the last. And the 'regularity,'-or observance of the unities-which Jonson so powerfully promoted in English comedy, is so strikingly exemplified in the Merry Wives that Dryden, a sharp critic of the romantic plays of Shakespeare, singled it out for exceptional praise, and even suggested that Jonson, 'who first reformed those errors,' had been prompted to his reform by this 'the first regular comedy.' 2 Several individual figures, without being borrowed from Jonson, are imagined in his vein. The jealous But Tighe and Davies, Annals of 2 The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy, 1679. R Ford has often been compared to Kitely. Slender even seems to owe here and there a trait to Master Stephen, the country gull; as in his cautious retreat before the threatening ferocities of Bardolph and Pistol in i. I. : Slen. Marry, sir, I have matter in my head against you; and against your cony-catching rascals, Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol. Bard. You Banbury cheese! Slen. Ay, it is no matter. Pist. How now, Mephostophilus ! Slen. Ay, it is no matter. Master Stephen executes a similar volte-face still more effectively (i. 2.): Steph. I thought you had laughed at me, cousin. Know. Nay, I did laugh at you, coz. Steph. Did you indeed? Know. Yes indeed. Steph. Why then Know. What then? Steph. I am satisfied; it is sufficient. Slender does his wooing 'by the book'; and when, on the verge of the critical interview with Anne Page, he longs for his forgotten 'book of songs and sonnets,' one cannot but recall how Master Stephen bought him a hawk and a hood and bells and all,' and lacked 'nothing but a book to keep it by' (i. 1.). THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR ACT I. SCENE I. Windsor. Before PAGE's house. Enter JUSTICE SHALLOW, SLENDER, and SIR Shal. 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. Slen. In the county of Gloucester, justice of peace and 'Coram.' Shal. Ay, cousin Slender, and ‘Custalorum.' Slen. Ay, and 'Rato-lorum' too; and a gentleman born, master parson; who writes himself 'Armigero,' in any bill, warrant, quittance, or 10 obligation, Armigero.' Shal. Ay, that I do; and have done any time these three hundred years. Slen. 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. Shal. It is an old coat. Evans. The dozen white louses do become an old coat well; it agrees well, passant; it is a 20 familiar beast to man, and signifies love. Shal. The luce is the fresh fish; the salt fish is an old coat. Slen. I may quarter, coz. Shal. You may, by marrying. Evans. It is marring indeed, if he quarter it. If 30 Evans. Yes, py'r lady; if he has a quarter of your coat, there is but three skirts for yourself, in my simple conjectures: but that is all one. 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. Shal. The council shall hear it; it is a riot. |