wrote. As to the question of the order in which this comedy, the two parts of Henry IV., and Henry V. should be read, it is one which should not be considered, and hardly could be by one who justly apprehends the purpose with which Shakespeare The events of the four plays, if we except the death of Falstaff, have no chronological sequence, no biographical relation or significance as far as regards the characters common to them. It is natural to suppose, with Verplanck and Knight, that Shakespeare intended us to refer the events of The Merry Wives of Windsor to a period of Falstaff's life somewhat earlier than that at which we see him in Henry IV.; but in the comedy he is represented as "well nigh worn to pieces with age," which expression indicates at least as far an advance in life as the "fifty or, by 'r lady, inclining to three score," of the historical play. And so it is evident that Shakespeare presented Falstaff to his audience just as they knew him, without troubling himself or them with considerations of times and periods. More than this: The Merry Wives of Windsor was plainly produced by Shakespeare as a local comedy of contemporary manners: the allusions, as well as the general cast and air of the piece, show this to the close examiner as well as to the superficial reader: certain characters the Host for instance - have the expression of portraits; and the traditions of Windsor which point out the place where stood the Garter Inn and the houses of Page and Ford seem hardly to be the fruit of mere wanton fabrication. This being the case, the reader of The Merry Wives of Windsor must take it as its hero would have his sack 66 - simply, of itself"; isolating it entirely from the historical plays, between which and it there is really a gulf of two hundred years, and giving himself up without a question to the enjoyment of its humour, its whimsical characters, and skilfully constructed plot. The merit of this plot is Shakespeare's own. Two Italian help of some other playwright, whose work was rejected on a revision of the comedy, to which we owe the version printed in the folio of 1623." (R) stories have been discovered, between which and The Merry Wives of Windsor there is as much, or as little, similarity as results from the existence in one of them of a husband who learns his wife's dishonour and the manner in which he was deceived, from the man who wronged him, and in the other of a like revelation on the part of a successful intriguer whom his mistress concealed from her husband under a heap of clothes from the wash. Both these tales are from Le Tredeci Piacevoli Notti of Straparola, and they are printed by Mr. Halliwell in the Appendix to his reprint of the first quarto of this play, published by the Shakespeare Society. With them, and also in Malone's edition and Collier's Shakespeare's Library, is printed the tale of The Two Lovers of Pisa from Tarlton's Newes out of Purgatorie, published at London in 1590, which is founded upon the second of the two Italian tales, but in which the incidents are modified to a much greater likeness to those of the affair between Falstaff and Mrs. Ford. The lover makes three bootless appointments, at each of which he is interrupted by the husband, and from one of which he is carried away in a chest of papers by the order of the husband himself, to whom, not knowing his relation to the lady, he recounts all his misadventures. But although there can hardly be a doubt that Shakespeare had hints from this story, the development and nice conduct of the plot of The Merry Wives of Windsor, and the skilful interweaving of the affairs of Shallow, and Slender, and Dr. Caius, and Fenton with those of the principal personages, so as to make the interest single although the action is various, are entirely Shakespeare's own. [Another Italian tale from Il Pecorone, of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, is cited in this connection, as well as one from the collection of stories entitled Westward for Smelts (1603 ? 1620). Lee, op. cit., p. 172.] The true text is of course found in the folio, and it exists there in tolerable purity. The quarto supplies us with some passages which accident or haste excluded from the folio; but as the play received such important additions and underwent such modifications after the publication of the quarto, and as the text of that impression is so imperfect in itself, its aid, whether in correcting errors or supplying deficiencies, must be doubtfully accepted. Of the period of the action and the costume of this comedy, it is hardly necessary to say, that to those for whom the connection of some of its characters with Henry IV. is the paramount consideration, the close of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth will furnish their externals and their surroundings; but those who can free themselves from the bondage of dates will see in this comedy the manners, the costume, and the humours of the little town that nestles under the royal towers of Windsor as William Shakespeare saw them in the days of Good Queen Bess.1 1 It is worth noting that Ward cites from C. E. Turner (cf. Fraser's Magazine, January, 1877) the fact that the Empress Catherine II. of Russia made an adaptation of The Merry Wives under the title of A Pretty Basketful of Linen. According to Ward the librettos of Nicolai's and Verdi's operas follow Shakespeare closely. (R) ANNE PAGE, her Daughter, in love with Fenton. Mrs. QUICKLY, Housekeeper to Dr. Caius. Servants to Page, Ford, &c. SCENE: Windsor, and the Parts adjacent. The Merry Wives ACT ONE. SCENE I. Windsor. Before PAGE's House. 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 Glocester, Justice of Peace, and coram. Shal. Ay, cousin Slender, and cust-alorum. Slen. Ay, and ratolorum too; and a gentleman born, Master Parson; who writes himself, armigero, in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation — armigero. 10 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, |