Three knights upon our party slain today,
A noble earl, and many a creature else,
Had been alive this hour
If like a Christian thou hadst truly borne
Betwixt our armies true intelligence.
WORCESTER
What I have done my safety urged me to,
And I embrace this fortune patiently,
Since not to be avoided it falls on me.
KING HENRY
Bear Worcester to the death, and Vernon too.
Other offenders we will pause upon.
Exeunt Worcester and Vernon, guarded
How goes the field?
PRINCE HARRY
The noble Scot Lord Douglas, when he saw
The fortune of the day quite turned from him,
The noble Percy slain, and all his men
Upon the foot of fear, fled with the rest;
And falling from a hill he was so bruised
That the pursuers took him. At my tent
The Douglas is, and I beseech your grace
I may dispose of him.
KING HENRY With all my heart.
PRINCE HARRY
Then, brother John of Lancaster,
To you this honourable bounty shall belong.
Go to the Douglas, and deliver him
Up to his pleasure ransomless and free.
His valours shown upon our crests today
Have taught us how to cherish such high deeds
Even in the bosom of our adversaries.
JOHN OF LANCASTER
I thank your grace for this high courtesy,
Which I shall give away immediately.
KING HENRY
Then this remains, that we divide our power.
You, son John, and my cousin Westmorland,
Towards York shall bend you with your dearest speed
To meet Northumberland and the prelate Scrope,
Who, as we hear, are busily in arms.
Myself and you, son Harry, will towards Wales,
To fight with Glyndwr and the Earl of March.
Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway,
Meeting the check of such another day;
And since this business so fair is done,
Let us not leave till all our own be won.
Exeunt [the King, the Prince, and their power at one door, Lancaster, Westmorland, and their power at another door]
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
A LEGEND dating from 1702 claims that Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor in fourteen days and by command of Queen Elizabeth; in 1709 she was said to have wished particularly to see Falstaff in love. Whether or not this is true, a passage towards the end of the play alluding directly to the ceremonies of the Order of the Garter, Britain’s highest order of chivalry, encourages the belief that the play has a direct connection with a specific occasion. In 1597 George Carey, Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain and patron of Shakespeare’s company, was installed at Windsor as a Knight of the Garter. The Queen was not present at the installation but had attended the Garter Feast at the Palace of Westminster on St George’s Day (23 April). Shakespeare’s play was probably performed in association with this occasion, and may have been written especially for it. It was first printed, in a corrupt text, in 1602; a better text appears in the 1623 Folio.
Some of the characters—Sir John Falstaff, Mistress Quickly, Pistol, Nim, Justice Shallow—appear also in I and 2 Henry IV and Henry V, but in spite of a reference to ’the wild Prince and Poins’ at 3.2.66-7, this is essentially an Elizabethan comedy, the only one that Shakespeare set firmly in England. The play is full of details that would have been familiar to Elizabethan Londoners, and the language is colloquial and up to date. The plot, however, is made up of conventional situations whose ancestry is literary rather than realistic. There are many analogues to Shakespeare’s basic plot situations in medieval and other tales, some in books that he probably or certainly knew. The central story, of Sir John’s unsuccessful attempts to seduce Mistress Page and Mistress Ford, and of Master Ford’s unfounded jealousy, is in the tradition of the Italian novella, and may have been suggested by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino’s II Pecorone (1558). Alongside it Shakespeare places the comical but finally romantic love story of Anne Page, wooed by the foolish but rich Abraham Slender and the irascible French Doctor Caius, but won by the young and handsome Fenton. The play contains a higher proportion of prose to verse than any other play by Shakespeare, and the action is often broadly comic; but it ends, after the midnight scene in Windsor Forest during which Sir John is frightened out of his lechery, in forgiveness and love.
The Merry Wives of Windsor is known to have been acted for James I on 4 November 1604, and for Charles I in 1638. It was revived soon after the theatres reopened, in 1660; at first it was not particularly popular, but since 1720 it has consistently pleased audiences. Many artists have illustrated it, and it forms the basis for a number of operas, including Otto Nicolai’s Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (1849) and Giuseppe Verdi’s comic masterpiece, Falstaff (1893).
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
The Merry Wives of Windsor
1.1 Enter Justice Shallow, Master 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.
SHALLOW Ay, cousin Slender, and Custalorum.
SLENDER Ay, and Ratolorum 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 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.
EVANS The dozen white louses do become an old coad 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 cod.
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, 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 compromises between you.