When did Shakespeare write The Merry Wives of Windsor?
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare first published in 1602, though believed to have been written in or before 1597. The Windsor of the play's title is a reference to the town of Windsor, also the location of Windsor Castle, in Berkshire, England. Though nominally set in the reign of Henry IV, the play makes no pretense to exist outside contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life. It features the character Sir John Falstaff, the fat knight who had previously been featured in "Henry IV, Part 1" and "Part 2". It has been adapted for the opera on several occasions. The play is one of Shakespeare's lesser-regarded works among literary critics.
Frederick I, Duke of Württemberg
Several references are made to him in Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor", in which a series of anti-German jokes start with a horse theft, several references are made to German travellers in England and to a German duke who is "not" expected to come to Windsor.
Frederick of Mömpelgard was heir apparent to the dukedom of Württemberg when he visited Windsor and other English cities in 1592. He developed a desire to be made a Knight of the Garter and solicited Queen Elizabeth for the honor repeatedly. After he had inherited the dukedom and become more prominent in affairs, she admitted him to the order. In a calculated slight, he was not informed of his admission in time to attend the investiture in spring 1597, the ceremony for which "The Merry Wives of Windsor" was written. Thus references to Mömpelgard's earlier visit and his "not" being in Windsor were jokes intended for the play's first audience, and appear in the First Folio edition of the play, taken from the first private performance, but not in the 1602 Quarto derived from public theatrical production.
American Shakespeare Center
In April 2017, the American Shakespeare Center launched an international playwrighting competition to develop a canon of new plays that are inspired by and in conversation with the work of William Shakespeare. Each new play will be performed in rotating repertory with the Shakespeare play it corresponds with. The first round of submissions are for "The Merry Wives of Windsor"; "Henry IV, Part 1"; "The Comedy of Errors"; and "The Winter's Tale".
Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship
Because Shakespeare lived until 1616, Oxfordians question why, if he were the author, did he not eulogise Queen Elizabeth at her death in 1603 or Henry, Prince of Wales, at his in 1612. They believe Oxford's 1604 death provides the explanation. In an age when such actions were expected, Shakespeare also failed to memorialise the coronation of James I in 1604, the marriage of Princess Elizabeth in 1612, and the investiture of Prince Charles as the new Prince of Wales in 1613.
Henry IV, Part 2
"Henry IV, Part 2" is believed to have been written sometime between 1596 and 1599. It is possible that Shakespeare interrupted his composition of "Henry IV, Part 2" somewhere around Act 3-Act 4, so as to concentrate on writing "The Merry Wives of Windsor", which may have been commissioned for an annual meeting of the Order of the Garter, possibly the one held on 23 April 1597.
Shakespeare Theatre Company Free For All
The first Free For All production in 1991 was "The Merry Wives of Windsor", starring Paul Winfield as Falstaff. More recent shows have included "Much Ado about Nothing", "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" and "Pericles". "A Midsummer Night’s Dream", the Free For All production for 2005, traveled to the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival in Colorado that same summer.
Chiltern Shakespeare Company
The Chiltern Shakespeare Company is a Shakespearean theatre company founded in 1989 that produces Shakespearean plays annually in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. Recent productions include "Much Ado about Nothing", "Twelfth Night", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "As You Like It", "The Taming of the Shrew", "The Merchant of Venice" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor".
Spelling of Shakespeare's name
The un-hyphenated spelling "Shakespeare" (or Shakeſpeare, with a long s) appears on 22 of the 58 quartos. It is spelled this way in the first quartos of "The Merchant of Venice" (1600), "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1600), "Much Ado About Nothing" (1600), "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (1602), "Pericles, Prince of Tyre" (1609), "Troilus and Cressida" (1609), "Othello" (1622). The second, or "good", quarto of "Hamlet" (1604) also uses this spelling. It is also spelled this way on the misattributed quarto of "Sir John Oldcastle" (1600; 1619) and on the verse collection "The Passionate Pilgrim" (1599).
Elizabethan literature
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) stands out in this period both as a poet and playwright. Shakespeare wrote plays in a variety of genres, including histories, tragedies, comedies and the late romances, or tragicomedies. His early classical and Italianate comedies, like "A Comedy of Errors", containing tight double plots and precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his greatest comedies, "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Much Ado About Nothing", "As You Like It", and "Twelfth Night". After the lyrical "Richard II", written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, "Henry IV, parts 1" and "2", and "Henry V". This period begins and ends with two tragedies: "Romeo and Juliet", and "Julius Caesar", based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's "Parallel Lives", which introduced a new kind of drama.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
In his 2008 edition of the play for the Oxford Shakespeare, Roger Warren argues that the play is the oldest surviving piece of Shakespearean literature, suggesting a date of composition as somewhere between 1587 and 1591. He hypothesizes that the play was perhaps written before Shakespeare came to London, with an idea towards using the famous comic actor Richard Tarlton in the role of Launce (this theory stems from the fact that Tarlton had performed several extremely popular and well known scenes with dogs). However, Tarlton died in September 1588, and Warren notes several passages in "Two Gentlemen" which seem to borrow from John Lyly's "Midas", which wasn't written until at least late-1589. As such, Warren acknowledges that 1590/1591 is most likely the correct date of composition.
Richard Meighen
While he issued a wide range of works of various types — including an edition of John Stow's "Annals" in 1631 — Meighen's volumes of drama are his most significant works, judged in retrospect. Meighen appears to have been only a minor partner in the 1632 Shakespeare Second Folio (he'd obtained the rights to "The Merry Wives of Windsor" in 1630); but he was a prime mover of the 1640/1 Jonson volume, which collected most of the post-1616 plays, masques, and miscellaneous works of the poet/dramatist. In publishing this volume, Meighen collaborated with Philip Chetwinde, who would publish the Shakespeare Third Folio of 1663/4. William Stansby, the printer/publisher of the first Jonson folio, also printed the second.
William Shakespeare
Published in 1609, the "Sonnets" were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be printed. Scholars are not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership. Even before the two unauthorised sonnets appeared in "The Passionate Pilgrim" in 1599, Francis Meres had referred in 1598 to Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets among his private friends". Few analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence. He seems to have planned two contrasting series: one about uncontrollable lust for a married woman of dark complexion (the "dark lady"), and one about conflicted love for a fair young man (the "fair youth"). It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals, or if the authorial "I" who addresses them represents Shakespeare himself, though Wordsworth believed that with the sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart".
Pendley Open Air Shakespeare Festival
1947 Scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream & King Richard II
1948 "If music be the food of love..." Famous scenes
1949 King Henry VIII. The first Festival
1950 Falstaff ...combining the many scenes from Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2
1951 Twelfth Night
1952 The Tempest
1953 Romeo and Juliet
1954 Julius Caesar & A Midsummer Night's Dream
1955 Macbeth & As You Like It
1956 Henry V & The Merry Wives of Windsor
1957 King John & Twelfth Night
1958 King Lear & A Midsummer Night's Dream
1959 Henry VIII & The Merchant of Venice
1960 Richard II & The Taming of the Shrew
1961 As You Like It & The Winter's Tale
1962 Much Ado About Nothing & Macbeth
1963 Othello & The Merry Wives of Windsor
1964 Romeo and Juliet & Twelfth Night
1965 Love's Labour's Lost & The Tempest
1966 King Lear & A Midsummer Night's Dream
1967 Anthony and Cleopatra & The Taming of the Shrew
1968 Richard III & The Comedy of Errors
1969 Much Ado About Nothing & The Winter's Tale
1970 Twelfth Night & The Merchant of Venice
1971 As You Like It & Richard II
1972 Love's Labour's Lost & The Merry Wives of Windsor
1973 Hamlet & A Midsummer Night's Dream
1974 Romeo and Juliet & The Comedy of Errors
1975 The Tempest & King Henry IV; part II
1976 Twelfth Night & Henry V
1977 The Taming of the Shrew & Julius Caesar
1978 The Winter's Tale & As You Like It
1979 Much Ado About Nothing & Macbeth
1980 Love's Labour's Lost & The Merry Wives of Windsor
1981 The Merchant of Venice & Two Gentlemen of Verona
1982 A Midsummer Night's Dream & King Henry IV; part I
1983 Twelfth Night & Romeo and Juliet
1984 Much Ado About Nothing & The Tempest
1985 Richard III & The Taming of the Shrew
1986 As You Like It & King Lear
1987 Macbeth & A Midsummer Night's Dream
1988 No Festival
1989 The Merchant of Venice
1990 The Merry Wives of Windsor
1991 Romeo and Juliet & The Comedy of Errors
1992 Henry VIII & A Midsummer Night's Dream
1993 The Tempest & Twelfth Night
1994 As You Like It & Henry V
1995 Much Ado About Nothing & Richard III
1996 Two Gentlemen of Verona & The Merchant of Venice
1997 The Taming of the Shrew & Macbeth
1998 Love's Labour's Lost & Twelfth Night
1999 Romeo and Juliet & A Midsummer Night's Dream
2000 The Comedy of Errors & The Tempest
2001 Much Ado About Nothing & Henry V
2002 The Taming of the Shrew & Macbeth
2003 Sir John Falstaff and the Merry Wives & The Winter's Tale
2004 A Midsummer Night's Dream & Twelfth Night
2005 Much Ado About Nothing & Romeo and Juliet
2006 The Comedy of Errors & King Lear
2007 As You Like It & The Tempest
2008 Twelfth Night & The Merchant of Venice
2009 A Midsummer Night's Dream & Macbeth
2010 The Taming of the Shrew & Richard III
2011 The Winter's Tale & The Merry Wives of Windsor 
2012 Romeo and Juliet & Much Ado About Nothing 
2013 As You Like It & Love's Labour's Lost
2014 The Comedy of Errors & Hamlet
History of the Shakespeare authorship question
As early as 1820 it had been suggested that, because of their "habitual resemblance of style", Shakespeare had in fact written the works of the poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe, but it was not until 1895 that this theory was reversed, and Marlowe himself proposed as the most likely author of the Shakespeare canon, with a serious case for this being made by Wilbur G. Zeigler in the foreword and notes to his novel, "It Was Marlowe: A Story of the Secret of Three Centuries". He was followed by T. C. Mendenhall who, in February 1902, wrote an article based upon his own stylometric work titled "Did Marlowe write Shakespeare?"
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The play is nominally set in the early 15th century, during the same period as the "Henry IV" plays featuring Falstaff, but there is only one brief reference to this period, a line in which the character Fenton is said to have been one of Prince Hal's rowdy friends (he "kept company with the wild prince and Poins"). In all other respects, the play implies a contemporary setting of the Elizabethan era, c. 1600.
Sonnet 101
Sonnet 101 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. The three other internal sequences include the procreation sonnets (1–17), the Rival Poet sequence (78–86) and the Dark Lady sequence (127–154). While the exact date of composition of Sonnet 101 is unknown, scholars generally agree that the group of Sonnets 61–103 was written mainly in the first half of the 1590s and was not revised before being published with the complete sequence of sonnets in the 1609 Quarto.
Giorgio Melchiori
Another invaluable formative experience during this first post-war immersion in English culture was a six-week intensive course on editing organised by the British Council for a small group of international students held in Barford, near Stratford-on-Avon in 1945 where Melchiori came into close personal contact with John Dover Wilson, Clifford Leech, C.J.Sisson and a number of other greatly experienced editors of Elizabethan texts. This early training in philology laid the foundation for his editions many years later of The Merry Wives of Windsor (2000) and Edward III (1998) for Arden, of Henry IV part 2 (2000) for the New Cambridge, of John Marston’s The Insatiate Countess (1984) for Manchester University Press and, together with Vittorio Gabrieli, of Anthony Munday’s The Book of Sir Thomas More (1990) for Manchester University Press.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
The only work that the composer designated as an opera is the comedy "Sir John in Love" (1924–1928). It is based on Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor". Folk song is used, though more discreetly than in "Hugh the Drover", and the score is described by Saylor as "ravishingly tuneful". Although versions of the play had already been set by Nicolai, Verdi, and Holst, Vaughan Williams's is distinctive for its greater emphasis on the love music rather than on the robust comedy. In 1931, with the Leith Hill Festival in mind, the composer recast some of the music as a five-section cantata, "In Windsor Forest", giving the public "the plums and no cake", as he put it.
Purl
Shakespeare mentions purl in his play, "The Merry Wives of Windsor". Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary entry for February 19, 1660, "Thence forth to Mr Harper's to drink a draft of purle, whither by appointment Monsieur L'Impertinent..." On March 21, 1662, he writes, "Thence to Westminster Hall ... Here I met with Chetwind, Parry, and several others, and went to a little house behind the Lords' house to drink some wormwood ale, which doubtless was a bawdy house, the mistress of the house having the look and dress".
Falstaff (opera)
Boito was doubly pleased with "The Merry Wives" as a plot. Not only was it Shakespearian, it was based in part on Trecento Italian works – "Il Pecorone" by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, and Boccaccio's "Decameron". Boito adopted a deliberately archaic form of Italian to "lead Shakespeare's farce back to its clear Tuscan source", as he put it. He trimmed the plot, halved the number of characters in the play, and gave the character of Falstaff more depth by incorporating dozens of passages from "Henry IV".
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is a 16th-century play written by William Shakespeare in which a merchant in Venice (Antonio) must default on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock. It is believed to have been written between 1596 and 1599. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is most remembered for its dramatic scenes, and it is best known for Shylock and the famous "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech on humanity. Also notable is Portia's speech about "the quality of mercy". Critic Harold Bloom listed it among Shakespeare's great comedies.
Shakespearean problem play
In Shakespeare studies, the problem plays are three plays that William Shakespeare wrote between the late 1590s and the first years of the seventeenth century: "All's Well That Ends Well", "Measure for Measure" and "Troilus and Cressida". Shakespeare's problem plays are characterised by their complex and ambiguous tone, which shifts violently between dark, psychological drama and more straightforward comic material; compare tragicomedy.
William Shakespeare
In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on sexual themes, "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece". He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In "Venus and Adonis", an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus; while in "The Rape of Lucrece", the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin. Influenced by Ovid's "Metamorphoses", the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust. Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third narrative poem, "A Lover's Complaint", in which a young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the "Sonnets" in 1609. Most scholars now accept that Shakespeare wrote "A Lover's Complaint". Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects. "The Phoenix and the Turtle", printed in Robert Chester's 1601 "Love's Martyr", mourns the deaths of the legendary phoenix and his lover, the faithful turtle dove. In 1599, two early drafts of sonnets 138 and 144 appeared in "The Passionate Pilgrim", published under Shakespeare's name but without his permission.
The Merry Wives of Windsor (1950 film)
In Elizabethan England, Sir John Falstaff is embroiled in attempting to have a love affair with several women, which soon turns into a humorous adventure.The film is an adaptation of the 1849 opera "The Merry Wives of Windsor" composed by Otto Nicolai with a libretto by Salomon Hermann Mosenthal which was based on William Shakespeare's play of the same title. It was made by the state-owned DEFA studio on a large budget.
Mander and Mitchenson
Mander and Mitchenson met in February 1939, and later in that year they were both cast in a production of "The Merry Wives of Windsor", Mander as Master Page and Mitchenson as Fenton. They toured with Neilson's company, playing small roles. During the Second World War Mander worked for the BBC, presenting radio programmes including a series called "Actors Remember" in which he interviewed veteran performers, such as Walter Passmore reminiscing about Richard D'Oyly Carte, Ada Reeve about George Edwardes, and Leslie Henson about George Grossmith Jr. He also wrote material for other presenters, usually in collaboration with Mitchenson. Mitchenson served in the army, until being invalided out in 1943. He resumed his stage career for a few years, before giving up regular acting in 1948.
William Shakespeare
Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May 1583. Over the centuries, some readers have posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical, and point to them as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same passages as the expression of intense friendship rather than romantic love. The 26 so-called "Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
According to Dorothea Kehler, the writing period can be placed between 1594 and 1596, which means that Shakespeare had probably already completed "Romeo and Juliet" and had yet to start working on "The Merchant of Venice". The play belongs to the early-middle period of the author, when Shakespeare devoted his attention to the lyricism of his works.
Life of William Shakespeare
He appears to have moved across the River Thames to Southwark sometime around 1599. In 1604, Shakespeare acted as a matchmaker for his landlord's daughter. Legal documents from 1612, when the case was brought to trial, show that Shakespeare was a tenant of Christopher Mountjoy, a Huguenot tire-maker (a maker of ornamental headdresses) in the northwest of London in 1604. Mountjoy's apprentice Stephen Bellott wanted to marry Mountjoy's daughter. Shakespeare was enlisted as a go-between, to help negotiate the details of the dowry. On Shakespeare's assurances, the couple married. Eight years later, Bellott sued his father-in-law for delivering only part of the dowry. During the "Bellott v. Mountjoy" case, Shakespeare was called to testify, but said he remembered little of the circumstances.
Three Shakespeare Songs
Three Shakespeare Songs is a piece of classical choral music written for an a cappella SATB choir. It was written in 1951 by the British classical composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. The work comprises three short pieces which are settings of text from two plays by the English playwright William Shakespeare. It is published by Oxford University Press.
Characters of Shakespear's Plays
The character of Sir John Falstaff appeared in three of Shakespeare's plays, "Henry IV, Part 1", "Henry IV, Part 2", and "The Merry Wives of Windsor". The bulk of Hazlitt's commentary on the two history plays is devoted to Falstaff, whom he considers to be "perhaps the most substantial comic character ever invented".
Percy Anderson
Among Anderson's other successes were "Trelawny of the 'Wells'" (1898), "Merrie England" (1902), "Véronique" (1904), the hit British premiere of "The Merry Widow" in 1907, "Fallen Fairies" (1909), "Kismet" (1911) and "Chu Chin Chow" (1916). He designed the costumes for various productions of Edwardian musical comedies for George Edwardes, such as the hit musical "San Toy" in 1899 and "The Duchess of Dantzic" in 1903. The Royal Opera House commissioned Anderson to design costumes in 1900. Anderson's designs were also used in a number of Broadway productions.
Kissing Shakespeare
Kissing Shakespeare is a debut novel of a former American teacher and librarian-turned-writer Pamela Mingle. It was published as a young adult literature book in August 14, 2012 by Delacorte Books. There are no records of William Shakespeare's life between his birth in 1564 to his arrival in London in 1590, although he was speculated to be a schoolteacher before becoming a playwright. Mingle's novel sets during what historians referred as Shakespeare's "lost years," using clues from 1580s, to create a romantic fantasy centering on a love triangle composed of a contemporary teenage girl from the 21st century, a time traveler from the past, and William Shakespeare. Mingle remains true to the history and events of the era, revealing the challenges of living in a time of religious persecution and suppression of women.
Bear-baiting
One bear named Sackerson was written into in a Shakespearean comedy "The Merry Wives of Windsor". By the late 17th century "the conscience of cultivated people seems to have been touched", but it was not until 1835 that baiting was prohibited by Parliament by the Cruelty to Animals Act 1835. The ban was soon extended across the Empire.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
"Merry Wives" was one of the first Shakespearean plays to be performed once the theatres re-opened in 1660 after the Interregnum. Samuel Pepys saw the King's Company act it on 5 Dec. 1660, and again in 1661 and 1667 (though he didn't like it on any occasion). In 1702 John Dennis offered an adaptation (it has been called a "perversion") of the play, titled "The Comical Gallant, or the Amours of Sir John Falstaff" – which flopped. In 1824 Frederick Reynolds included "Merry Wives" in his series of operatic adaptations, with music by Henry Bishop. Charles Kean returned to Shakespeare's text in an 1851 production. Arthur Sullivan composed incidental music for use in Act V of an 1874 production at the Gaiety Theatre, London, which was also used in the 1889 Haymarket Theatre production.
William Shakespeare
In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem plays" "Measure for Measure", "Troilus and Cressida", and "All's Well That Ends Well" and a number of his best known tragedies. Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of his art. The titular hero of one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, "Hamlet", has probably been discussed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which begins "To be or not to be; that is the question". Unlike the introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, the heroes of the tragedies that followed, Othello and King Lear, are undone by hasty errors of judgement. The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws, which overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves. In "Othello", the villain Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him. In "King Lear", the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the events which lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester and the murder of Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia. According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play-offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty". In "Macbeth", the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies, uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the rightful king and usurp the throne until their own guilt destroys them in turn. In this play, Shakespeare adds a supernatural element to the tragic structure. His last major tragedies, "Antony and Cleopatra" and "Coriolanus", contain some of Shakespeare's finest poetry and were considered his most successful tragedies by the poet and critic T.S. Eliot.
List of Shakespeare plays in quarto
Nineteen of William Shakespeare's plays first appeared in quarto before the publication of the First Folio in 1623, eighteen of those before his death in 1616. One play co-authored with John Fletcher, "The Two Noble Kinsmen", was first published in 1634, and one play first published in the First Folio, "The Taming of the Shrew", was later published in quarto. Following are listed the Shakespeare plays that appeared in quarto up to 1642 with complete title page information from each edition.
Sonnet 102
Sonnet 102 is one of the 154 sonnets written by English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is one of the Fair Youth sonnets, in which Shakespeare writes of an unnamed youth with whom the poet is enamored. Sonnet 102 is among a series of seemingly connected sonnets, from Sonnet 100 to Sonnet 103, in which the poet speaks of a silence between his Muse and himself. The exact date of writing is unknown, and there is contention among scholars about when they were written. Paul Hammond among other scholars believes that sonnets 61-103 were written primarily during the early 1590s, and then being edited or added to later, during the early 1600s (decade). Regardless of date of writing, it was published later along with the rest of the sonnets of the 1609 Quarto.
H. G. Wells
In 1891, Wells married his cousin Isabel Mary Wells. The couple agreed to separate in 1894 when he fell in love with one of his students, Amy Catherine Robbins (later known as Jane), with whom he moved to Woking, Surrey in May 1895. They lived in a rented house, 'Lynton', (now No.141) Maybury Road in the town centre for just under 18 months and married at St Pancras register office in October 1895. His short period in Woking was perhaps the most creative and productive of his whole writing career, for while there he planned and wrote "The War of the Worlds" and "The Time Machine", completed "The Island of Doctor Moreau", wrote and published "The Wonderful Visit" and "The Wheels of Chance", and began writing two other early books, "When the Sleeper Wakes" and "Love and Mr Lewisham".
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Most critics consider "Merry Wives" to be one of Shakespeare's weakest plays, and the Falstaff of "Merry Wives" to be much inferior to the Falstaff of the two "Henry IV" plays. That Shakespeare would so stumble with one of his greatest creations is puzzling and a satisfactory reason for this remains to be found. The most obvious explanation is that it was written very quickly. Leslie Hotson wrote that "it is certain that the play bears the earmarks of hasty writing."
Anita Dobson
In 2012, Dobson played the role of Mistress Quickly in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of "The Merry Wives of Windsor".
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The play is centred on the class prejudices of middle-class England. The lower class is represented by characters such as Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol (Falstaff's followers), and the upper class is represented by Sir John Falstaff and Master Fenton. Shakespeare uses both Latin and misused English to represent the attitudes and differences of the people of this era. For example, much humor is derived from the exaggerated accents of Dr. Caius and Sir Hugh Evans. For example, Caius speaks in an exaggerated French dialect ; when he finds out he has married a page instead of Mistress Anne he exclaims that he has married "oon garcon", and Evans speaks in a thick Welsh accent to the point that Falstaff complains that he "makes fritters of English" (5,5,135) Much of the comedic effect of the play is derived from misunderstandings between characters.
Falstaff (Salieri)
Falstaff, ossia Le tre burle ("Falstaff, or The Three Jokes") is a "dramma giocoso" in two acts by Antonio Salieri, set to a libretto by Carlo Prospero Defranceschi after William Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor".
Debra Paget
Paget had her first professional job at age 8, and acquired some stage experience at 13 when she acted in a 1946 production of Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor".
The Winter's Tale
The play was not published until the First Folio of 1623. In spite of tentative early datings (see below), most critics believe the play is one of Shakespeare's later works, possibly written in 1610 or 1611. A 1611 date is suggested by an apparent connection with Ben Jonson's "Masque of Oberon", performed at Court 1 January 1611, in which appears a dance of ten or twelve satyrs; "The Winter's Tale" includes a dance of twelve men costumed as satyrs, and the servant announcing their entry says "one three of them, by their own report, sir, hath danc'd before the King." (IV.iv.337-38). Arden Shakespeare editor J.H.P. Pafford found that "the language, style, and spirit of the play all point to a late date. The tangled speech, the packed sentences, speeches which begin and end in the middle of a line, and the high percentage of light and weak endings are all marks of Shakespeare's writing at the end of his career. But of more importance than a verse test is the similarity of the last plays in spirit and themes."
Willow song
The Willow song is an anonymous Elizabethan or earlier folk song used in the penultimate act of Shakespeare's "Othello". The earliest record of The Willow Song is in a book of lute music from 1583, while Shakespeare's play was not written until 20 years later in 1604. The song in Shakespeare's play is sung by Desdemona, Othello's wife, when she has begun to fear her jealous husband.
City comedy
Emerging from Ben Jonson's late-Elizabethan comedies of humours (1598–1599), the conventions of city comedy developed rapidly in the first decade of the Jacobean era, as one playwright's innovations were soon adopted by others, such that by about 1605 the new genre was fully established. Its principal playwrights were Jonson himself, Thomas Middleton, and John Marston, though many others also contributed to its development, including Thomas Heywood, Thomas Dekker, John Day, and John Webster. Once the companies of boy players—the Children of Paul's and the Children of the Chapel—had resumed public performances from 1600 onwards, most of their plays were city comedies. The closest that William Shakespeare's plays come to the genre is the slightly earlier "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (c. 1597), which is his only play set entirely in England; it avoids the caustic satire of city comedy, however, in preference for a more bourgeois mode (with its dual romantic plots governed by socio-economics not love or sex), while its setting, Windsor, is a town rather than a city.
Sonnet 154
As the last in the famed collection of sonnets written by English poet and playwright William Shakespeare from 1592 to 1598, Sonnet 154 is most often thought of in a pair with the previous sonnet, number 153. As A. L. Rowse states in "Shakespeare's Sonnets: The Problems Solved", Sonnets 153 and 154 "are not unsuitably placed as a kind of coda to the Dark Lady Sonnets, to which they relate." Rowse calls attention to the fact that Sonnets 153 and 154 "serve quite well to round off the affair Shakespeare had with Emilia, the woman characterized as the Dark Lady, and the section of the Dark Lady sonnets". Shakespeare used Greek mythology to address love and despair in relationships. The material in Sonnets 153 and 154 has been shown to relate to the six-line epigram by the Byzantine poet known as Marianus Scholasticus, who published a collection of 3,500 poems called "The Greek Anthology". When translated, the epigram resembles Sonnets 153 and 154, addressing love and the story of Cupid, the torch, and the Nymph's attempt to extinguish the torch.
Albert Edward Anson
As a member of the "New Theatre Company", which included many English actors, he was in the first play produced in the New Theatre in New York, opening on 6 November 1909, playing Octavian in Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra", and was in Galsworthy's "Strife", opening on 17 November. The company produced Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor", which opened on 7 November 1910, Anson playing Master Ford. This last play came in December 1910 to Toronto, where a reviewer wrote, "Mr. Anson was especially fine as the jealous husband Ford. Indeed his was a performance that deepened the significance of the play."
Gerard McCarthy
On stage, McCarthy made his Shakespearean debut as Fenton in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" at Shakespeare's Globe in London. The production received widespread critical acclaim and subsequently transferred to New York and Los Angeles with McCarthy reprising his role in both cities. 2012 also saw him return to the stage in a highly acclaimed production of Joe Penhall's Olivier Award-winning play Blue/Orange.
List of Shakespeare plays in quarto
THE | MERRY VVIVES | OF WINDSOR. | With the humours of Sir "Iohn Falstaffe", | As also the swaggering vaine of Ancient | "Pistoll", and Corporall "Nym". | Written by "William Shake-Speare". | "Newly corrected". | "LONDON": | Printed by "T. H." for "R. Meighen", and are to be sold | at his Shop, next to the Middle-Temple Gate, and in | S. "Dunstans" Church-yard in "Fleet-street", | 1630.
Cotswold Olimpick Games
Some historians have suggested that the Games were alluded to in playwright William Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor", and used that as evidence to suggest that Shakespeare may have seen the Games. But the allusion is not present in the quarto edition of 1602, making its first appearance in the posthumous First Folio of 1623, edited by Henry Condell and John Hemminges. It is therefore uncertain whether or not it was written by Shakespeare.
Herne the Hunter
In English folklore, Herne the Hunter is a ghost associated with Windsor Forest and Great Park in the English county of Berkshire. He is said to naturally have antlers upon his head, ride a horse, torment cattle, and rattle chains. The earliest mention of Herne comes from William Shakespeare's 1597 play "The Merry Wives of Windsor", and it is impossible to know how accurately or to what degree Shakespeare may have incorporated a real local legend into his work, though there have been several later attempts to connect Herne to historical figures, pagan deities, or ancient archetypes.
Memorial reconstruction
The theory first appeared during the 19th century, and it was more fully defined by W. W. Greg in 1909, when he analysed the quarto text of "The Merry Wives of Windsor" by systematically comparing the divergences from the Folio version. He concluded that scenes with the character of the Host are much closer to the Folio version than the other scenes are. He therefore deduced that the actor playing the Host had played a significant role in creating the text of the quarto publication. In 1915, Henry David Gray analysed the first quarto of "Hamlet" using the same method. He concluded that the actor who played Marcellus was responsible for the reconstruction. He explained the fact that the "mousetrap" scene in which Marcellus does not appear was also accurate by suggesting that the same actor must have also played one of the roles in that scene.
George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon
Both Henry and George Carey were patrons of the professional theatre company in London known as "the Lord Chamberlain's Men". Talents such as William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage were among the writers and performers of the company. In 1597 George was invested as a Knight of the Garter, and it is generally agreed that the first performance of William Shakespeare's "Merry Wives of Windsor" was held to commemorate the occasion.
Derbyite theory of Shakespeare authorship
"The Merry Wives of Windsor" was based on events in Derby's life and the character of Malvolio in "Twelfth Night" was a parody of William ffarrington, a steward who worked for the Stanley family.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
It has been argued that "Two Gentlemen" may have been Shakespeare's first work for the stage. This theory was first suggested by Edmond Malone in 1821, in the "Third Variorum" edition of Shakespeare's plays, edited by James Boswell based on Malone's notes. Malone dated the play 1591, a modification of his earlier 1595 date from the third edition of "The Plays of William Shakespeare". At this time, the dominant theory was that the "Henry VI" trilogy had been Shakespeare's first work. More recently, the play was placed first in "The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works" of 1986, and again in the 2nd edition of 2005, in "The Norton Shakespeare" of 1997, and again in the 2nd edition of 2008, and in "The Complete Pelican Shakespeare" of 2002.
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots and precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his most acclaimed comedies. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic "Merchant of Venice", contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, which reflects Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern audiences. The wit and wordplay of "Much Ado About Nothing", the charming rural setting of "As You Like It", and the lively merrymaking of "Twelfth Night" complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies. After the lyrical "Richard II", written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, "Henry IV, parts 1" and "2", and "Henry V". His characters become more complex and tender as he switches deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his mature work. This period begins and ends with two tragedies: "Romeo and Juliet", the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death; and "Julius Caesar"—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's "Parallel Lives"—which introduced a new kind of drama. According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in "Julius Caesar," "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to infuse each other".
The Comedy of Errors
The play contains a topical reference to the wars of succession in France, which would fit any date from 1589 to 1595. Charles Whitworth argues that "The Comedy of Errors" was written "in the latter part of 1594" on the basis of historical records and textual similarities with other plays Shakespeare wrote around this time. The play was not published until it appeared in the First Folio in 1623.
Billingbear House
With the identification in 2005 of the younger Sir Henry Neville as a candidate for the authorship of the Shakespearean plays and sonnets, it is conceivable that some of those works might have been composed at Billingbear. It has been noted that the play "The Merry Wives of Windsor" displays a knowledge of local towns, a Windsor inn, and a local tale called "Herne the Hunter".
Christopher Benjamin
Predominantly a stage actor, he has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He appeared at Shakespeare's Globe from 17 June to 5 October 2008 as Falstaff in "The Merry Wives of Windsor".
Shakespeare in Love
In 1593 London, William Shakespeare is a sometime player in the Lord Chamberlain's Men and poor playwright for Philip Henslowe, owner of The Rose Theatre. Shakespeare is working on a new comedy, "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter". Suffering from writer's block, he has barely begun the play, and is further distracted by attempts both to seduce Rosaline, the mistress of Richard Burbage, owner of the rival Curtain Theatre and to convince Burbage to buy the play from Henslowe. Shakespeare receives helpful advice on his play from rival playwright Christopher "Kit" Marlowe, but becomes despondent when he learns Rosaline is sleeping with Edmund Tilney, the powerful Master of the Revels. Henslowe, who is in debt to the ruthless moneylender Fennyman and in desperate need for a new play, begins auditions anyway.
Robert Johnson (English composer)
Johnson joined the Carey household at an interesting time in their patronage of the arts. In 1597 Dowland dedicated his "First book of songs and ayres" to George Carey.
As well as supporting musicians, Carey was patron of a theatre company to which William Shakespeare belonged. In 1596/7 the company was briefly known as "Baron Hunsdon's Men", but is better known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men (the name they used after Carey became Lord Chamberlain in 1597), or their subsequent name, the King's Men. It is not known whether Johnson worked with this theatre company on any of their productions in the 1590s, such as "The Merry Wives of Windsor". However, he certainly provided music for the King's Men in a later stage of his career.
Sonnet 56
Sonnet 56 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. The exact date of its composition is unknown, it is thought that the Fair Youth sequence was written in the first half of the 1590s and was published with the rest of the sonnets in the 1609 Quarto.
Reputation of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare as far it can be established never went any further from Stratford-upon-Avon than London, but he made a reference to the visit of Russian diplomats from the court of Tsar Ivan the Terrible to the court of Elizabeth I in "Love Labor Lost" in which the French aristocrats dress up as Russians and make fools of themselves." Shakespeare was first translated into Russian by Alexander Sumarokov, who called Shakespeare an "inspired barbarian", who wrote of the Bard of Avon that in his plays “there is much that is bad and exceedingly good”. In 1786, Shakespeare's reputation in Russia was greatly enhanced when the Empress Catherine the Great translated a French version of "The Merry Wives of Windsor" into Russian (Catherine did not know English) and had it staged in St. Petersburg. Shortly afterwards, Catherine translated "Timon of Athens" from French into Russian. The patronage of Catherine made Shakespeare an eminently respectable author in Russia, but his plays were rarely performed until the 19th century, and instead he was widely read.
English drama
Though most of his plays met with success, it was in his later years, that Shakespeare wrote what have been considered his greatest plays: "Hamlet", "Othello", "King Lear", "Macbeth", "Antony and Cleopatra". In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays: "Cymbeline", "The Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest", as well as the collaboration, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre". Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, "Henry VIII" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen", probably with John Fletcher.
Sonnet 129
Sonnet 129 is one of the 154 sonnets written by William Shakespeare. The 154 sonnets are typically divided between the "Fair Youth" sonnets (1–126) and the "Dark Lady" sonnets (127–152). There is no evidence that this division follows the chronology of the sonnets. The composition date is unknown but it was published along with the rest of the sonnets in the 1609 Quarto.
Two River Theater
Next was Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (Feb. 25–March 26, 2017), a comedy about the raucous Sir John Falstaff and his attempts to seduce two wives of the wealthiest men in Windsor. Eric Tucker directed. A group of high school students performed a 70-minute version of the play as part of Two River's education program (March 7–12, 2017).
Samuel Phelps
Phelps other great creation was his Falstaff, which the German publication "Gesammelte Werke" called his finest role. He first played Shakespeare's fat knight in "Henry IV, Part I" in 1846. While not suited for the sensuality typically associated with the role, Phelps relied on his intelligence and aristocratic suaveness in his interpretation which he altered slightly in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," portraying a gentlemanly knight who observed the standards of decorum regardless of the vulgarity of his current surroundings. His production of "Pericles, Prince of Tyre", the first regular revival of that play since the seventeenth century, emphasized spectacle in a way that set the pattern for many future productions. In 1864, as part of the celebrations of Shakespeare's tricentennial, he played the title role in "Cymbeline" at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane; Helen Faucit was Imogen.
Otto Nicolai
Carl Otto Ehrenfried Nicolai (9 June 1810 – 11 May 1849) was a German composer, conductor, and one of the founders of the Vienna Philharmonic. Nicolai is best known for his operatic version of Shakespeare's comedy "The Merry Wives of Windsor" as "". In addition to five operas, Nicolai composed lieder, works for orchestra, chorus, ensemble, and solo instruments.
William Shakespeare
The first recorded works of Shakespeare are "Richard III" and the three parts of "Henry VI", written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date precisely, however, and studies of the texts suggest that "Titus Andronicus", "The Comedy of Errors", "The Taming of the Shrew," and "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" may also belong to Shakespeare's earliest period. His first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's "Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland", dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty. The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca. "The Comedy of Errors" was also based on classical models, but no source for "The Taming of the Shrew" has been found, though it is related to a separate play of the same name and may have derived from a folk story. Like "The Two Gentlemen of Verona", in which two friends appear to approve of rape, the "Shrew's" story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics, directors, and audiences.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The play's date of composition is unknown; it was registered for publication in 1602, but was probably several years old by that date. In the Fairy pageant in Act 5 Scene 5 (lines 54-75), Mistress Quickly, as the Queen of the Fairies, gives a long speech giving an elaborate description of the Order of the Garter. The play also alludes to a German duke, who is generally thought to be Frederick I, Duke of Württemberg, who had visited England in 1592 and was elected to the Order of the Garter in 1597 (but was eventually only installed in Stuttgart on 6 November 1603). These facts led commentators starting with Edmond Malone in 1790 to suggest that the play was written and performed for the Order of the Garter festival. William Green suggests that the play was drawn up when George Carey, as Lord Chamberlain and patron of Shakespeare's company, was elected Order of the Garter in April 1597. If this is so, it was probably performed when Elizabeth I attended Garter Feast on 23 April.
The Garter theory is only speculation, but it is consistent with a story first recorded by John Dennis in 1702 and Nicholas Rowe in 1709: that Shakespeare was commanded to write the play by Queen Elizabeth, who wanted to see Falstaff in love. This theatrical tradition was first recorded by Dennis in the prologue to his adaptation of the play, "The Comical Gallant". He states that Queen Elizabeth "commanded it to be finished in fourteen days." Rowe wrote that Elizabeth "was so well pleased with that admirable character of "Falstaff", in the two parts of "Henry the Fourth", that she commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to shew him in love." T.W. Craik suggests that these stories may simply be fantasies occasioned by the Quarto's title page which says of the play "As it hath diuers times Acted...Both before her Maiestie, and else-where." Nevertheless, Carey would have been well placed to pass on the queen's wishes to his players, which could account for the tradition.
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1610–1611, and thought to be one of the last plays that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where the sorcerer Prospero, rightful Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place using illusion and skillful manipulation. He conjures up a storm, the eponymous tempest, to cause his usurping brother Antonio and the complicit King Alonso of Naples to believe they are shipwrecked and marooned on the island. There, his machinations bring about the revelation of Antonio's lowly nature, the redemption of the King, and the marriage of Miranda to Alonso's son, Ferdinand.
The Merry Wives of Windsor (opera)
Otto Nicolai composed the music from 1845 to 1849. He had previously achieved great success with a few Italian operas, but this opera was to become his masterpiece in the German language. The composer himself made some changes to the libretto.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy written by William Shakespeare in 1595/96. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta (the former queen of the Amazons). These include the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors (the mechanicals) who are controlled and manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set. The play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across the world.
Hugh Thomson
His works were featured in a number of exhibitions during his lifetime, including an 1899 exhibit at the Birmingham and Midland Institute and a 1910 exhibit of his watercolor drawings for Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor at The Leicester Galleries in London. His illustrations were also featured in an 1891 exhibit with fellow illustrator Kate Greenaway at the Fine Art Society.
Shakespeare authorship question
In 1598, Francis Meres named Shakespeare as a playwright and poet in his "Palladis Tamia", referring to him as one of the authors by whom the "English tongue is mightily enriched". He names twelve plays written by Shakespeare, including four which were never published in quarto: "The Two Gentlemen of Verona", "The Comedy of Errors", "Love's Labour's Won", and "King John", as well as ascribing to Shakespeare some of the plays that were published anonymously before 1598—"Titus Andronicus", "Romeo and Juliet", and "Henry IV, Part 1". He refers to Shakespeare's "sug[a]red Sonnets among his private friends" 11 years before the publication of the Sonnets.
The Fairy-Queen
The Fairy-Queen (1692; Purcell catalogue number Z.629) is a masque or semi-opera by Henry Purcell; a "Restoration spectacular". The libretto is an anonymous adaptation of William Shakespeare's wedding comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream". First performed in 1692, "The Fairy-Queen" was composed three years before Purcell's death at the age of 35. Following his death, the score was lost and only rediscovered early in the twentieth century.
Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Tree also mounted critically acclaimed productions of "Hamlet" (1892), "Henry IV, Part 1" (1896) and "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (1889), establishing himself as a Shakespearean leading man. "The Times" thought his Hamlet a "notable success", but not everyone agreed: W. S. Gilbert said of it, "I never saw anything so funny in my life, and yet it was not in the least vulgar." His Haymarket seasons were broken by visits to the United States in January 1895 and November 1896, and occasional visits to the provinces.
Falstaff (opera)
The extent to which "Falstaff" is a "Shakespearian" opera has often been debated by critics. Although the action is taken from "The Merry Wives of Windsor", some commentators feel that Boito and Verdi have transmuted Shakespeare's play into a wholly Italian work. The soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf believed there was nothing English or Shakespearian about the comedy: "it was all done through the music". In 1961 Peter Heyworth wrote in "The Observer", "Because of Shakespeare we like to think of "Falstaff" as a work that has a certain Englishness. In fact the opera is no more English than "Aida" is Egyptian. Boito and Verdi between them transformed the fat knight into one of the archetypes of "opera buffa"." Verdi himself, however, felt that the Falstaff of the opera is not a conventional Italian "buffo" character, but portrays Shakespeare's fuller, more ambiguous Falstaff of the "Henry IV" plays: "My Falstaff is not merely the hero of "The Merry Wives of Windsor", who is simply a buffoon, and allows himself to be tricked by the women, but also the Falstaff of the two parts of "Henry IV". Boito has written the libretto in accordance." A contemporary critic argued that the text "imitated with marvellous accuracy the metre and rhythm of Shakespeare's verse", but Hepokoski notes Boito's use of traditional Italian metric conventions.
The Merry Widow
In its English adaptation by Basil Hood, with lyrics by Adrian Ross, "The Merry Widow" became a sensation at Daly's Theatre in London, opening on 8 June 1907, starring Lily Elsie and Joseph Coyne and featuring George Graves as the Baron, Robert Evett as Camille and W. H. Berry as Nisch, with costumes by Lucile and Percy Anderson. Gabrielle Ray was a replacement as the Maxim's dancer Frou-Frou. It was produced by George Edwardes. The production ran for an extraordinary 778 performances in London and toured extensively in Great Britain.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The title page of Q1 states that the play was acted by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, "Both before Her Majesty, and elsewhere." The earliest definitely dated performance occurred on 4 November 1604, at Whitehall Palace. The play is also known to have been performed on 15 November 1638, at the Cockpit in Court.
Overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor
Overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor (also known as The Merry Wives of Windsor Overture) is a 1953 American short musical film produced by Johnny Green. It won an Academy Award in 1954 for Best Short Subject (One-Reel).
Sonnet 109
Sonnet 109 was originally published in 1609 with the rest of Shakespeare's sonnets as a collection dedicated to "Mr. W.H." and now referred to as the 1609 Quarto or Quarto 1. Sonnet 109 belongs to the group of sonnets (1-126) that are commonly categorized as "sonnets to a fair youth." This group of sonnets, according to Arthur F. Marotti, "consists of poems written to a younger man who is clearly treated as a patron". The identity of this young patron, who is likely the "Mr. W.H." to whom Shakespeare dedicated the sonnets, is considered by many historians and Shakespearean analysts to be Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. Martin Green supports this hypothesis with the evidence that Shakespeare never wrote dedications in of his works to any person besides Wriothesley. Shakespeare's relationship with this young man as interpreted from this group of sonnets is not entirely clear; his words of love and affection could be a bid for more favor, or as Judith Kegan Gardiner maintains, a true love that surprised and startled Shakespeare. Even if Shakespeare's sonnets are accepted as an expression of genuine love, there is still no consensus in academia whether this love was sexual in nature. Many critics argue that Shakespeare was homosexual, while others maintain that he was heterosexual, including the noteworthy Shakespeare analyst A. L. Rowse, who has claimed "Shakespeare is the bawdiest of the Elizabethan dramatists, with the natural bawdy of the highly sexed normal heterosexual".
Shakespeare attribution studies
The Shakespeare canon is generally defined by the 36 plays published in the First Folio (1623), some of which are thought to be collaborations or to have been edited by others, and two co-authored plays, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre" (1609) and "The Two Noble Kinsmen" (1634); two mythological narrative poems, "Venus and Adonis" (1593) and "The Rape of Lucrece" (1594); a collection of 154 sonnets and "A Lover's Complaint", both published 1609 in the same volume; two passages from the manuscript play "Sir Thomas More", and a few other works In recent years, the anonymous history play "The Reign of King Edward III" (1596) has been added to the official canon, with Brian Vickers proposing that 40% of the play was written by Shakespeare, and the remainder by Thomas Kyd (1558–1594).
Heinrich Lossow
His was an illustrator for publishers, including one for an edition of William Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor".
Falstaff's Wedding
Kenrick was a well known commentator on Shakespeare in the 18th century, who took the common view at the time that Shakespeare's plays were only acceptable to modern audiences in heavily adapted versions. "Falstaff's Wedding" contains very little directly derived from Shakespeare apart from a few phrases and the characters themselves. The ending of the second version, however, is a pastiche of the final scene of "The Merry Wives of Windsor". The play was one of several adaptations of Shakespeare centring on the character of Falstaff, but is "the most remarkable" of them according to critic Adam Hansen. Hansen describes the first version of the play as "an ingenious exploitation of some hints and inconsistencies in the Shakespearean original". In particular Kenrick picks up on the hint that Hal has a relationship with Poins' sister, who is portrayed in "Falstaff's Wedding" as the king's "quondam mistress".
Windsor, Berkshire
Most accounts of Windsor in the 16th and 17th centuries talk of its poverty, badly made streets and poor housing. Shakespeare's play "The Merry Wives of Windsor" is set in Windsor and contains many references to parts of the town and the surrounding countryside. Shakespeare must have walked the town's streets, near the castle and river, much as people still do. The play may have been written in the Garter Inn, opposite the Castle, but this was destroyed by fire in the late 17th century. The long-standing – and famous – courtesan of king Charles II, Nell Gwyn, was given a house on St Albans Street: Burford House (now part of the Royal Mews). Her residence in this house, as far as it is possible to tell, was brief. Only one of her letters addressed from Burford House survives: it was probably intended as a legacy for her illegitimate son, the Earl of Burford, later the Duke of St Albans.
Theatre of the United Kingdom
The reign of Elizabeth I in the late 16th and early 17th century saw a flowering of the drama and all the arts. Perhaps the most famous playwright in the world, William Shakespeare, wrote around 40 plays that are still performed in theatres across the world to this day. They include tragedies, such as "Hamlet" (1603), "Othello" (1604), and "King Lear" (1605); comedies, such as "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1594—96) and "Twelfth Night" (1602); and history plays, such as "Henry IV, part 1—2". The Elizabethan age is sometimes nicknamed "the age of Shakespeare" for the amount of influence he held over the era. Other important Elizabethan and 17th-century playwrights include Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and John Webster.
Shakespeare authorship question
In the rigid social structure of Elizabethan England, William Shakespeare was entitled to use the honorific "gentleman" after his father was granted a coat of arms in 1596. This honorific was conventionally designated by the title "Master" or its abbreviations "Mr." or "M." prefixed to the name. The title was included in many contemporary references to Shakespeare, including official and literary records, and identifies William Shakespeare of Stratford as the author. Examples from Shakespeare's lifetime include two official stationers' entries. One is dated 23 August 1600 and entered by Andrew Wise and William Aspley:
Lone Star Love
Lone Star Love, or, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Texas is a musical based on Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor". The score is by Jack Herrick (of the Red Clay Ramblers), and the book is by John L. Haber and Robert Horn. The setting of the piece has been moved to the Wild West shortly after the American Civil War, and the musical features country and bluegrass music.
The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow () is an operetta by the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play, ("The Embassy Attaché") by Henri Meilhac.
A Waste of Shame
1597: Shakespeare receives a bag of money from Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, for writing the procreation sonnets, to encourage her son, the young William Herbert to marry. He meets the young aristocrat and becomes strangely attracted to him. Herbert says that he will meet Shakespeare again when he comes to London.
Robert Shallow
It has been speculated that Shallow, at least as portrayed in "The Merry Wives of Windsor", is a parody of Sir Thomas Lucy, a local landowner in Charlecote, near Stratford upon Avon, with whom Shakespeare is supposed to have had conflicts when he was young. Nicholas Rowe records a story that the young Shakespeare was prosecuted for poaching deer from Lucy's land. This corresponds to the accusation Shallow makes against Falstaff, but finds himself unable to follow up. The play also appears to contain a pun on the name "Lucy", similar to a ballad that circulated in Stratford, in which Lucy's name was altered to "lousy". When Shallow and his dim-witted relative Slender discuss their family coat of arms, they mention that it depicted "luces" (pike). Their family symbols unintentionally become literally lice-ridden when this is misinterpreted as a "dozen white louses". Thomas Lucy's coat of arms contained "luces".
The Merry Wives of Windsor (1918 film)
The Merry Wives of Windsor (German:Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor) is a 1918 German silent comedy film directed by William Wauer. It is an adaptation of William Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor".
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Two Gentlemen of Verona is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1589 and 1593. It is considered by some to be Shakespeare's first play, and is often seen as showing his first tentative steps in laying out some of the themes and motifs with which he would later deal in more detail; for example, it is the first of his plays in which a heroine dresses as a boy. The play deals with the themes of friendship and infidelity, the conflict between friendship and love, and the foolish behaviour of people in love. The highlight of the play is considered by some to be Launce, the clownish servant of Proteus, and his dog Crab, to whom "the most scene-stealing non-speaking role in the canon" has been attributed.
Life of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an actor, playwright, poet, and theatre entrepreneur in London during the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras. He was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, in the Holy Trinity Church. At age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway with whom he had three children. He died in his home town of Stratford on 23 April 1616 at the age of 52. Though more is known about Shakespeare's life than those of most other Elizabethan and Jacobean writers, few personal biographical facts survive, which is unsurprising in the light of his social status as a commoner, the low esteem in which his profession was held, and the general lack of interest of the time in the personal lives of writers. Information about his life derives from public instead of private documents: vital records, real estate and tax records, lawsuits, records of payments, and references to Shakespeare and his works in printed and hand-written texts. Nevertheless, hundreds of biographies have been written and more continue to be, most of which rely on inferences and the historical context of the 70 or so hard facts recorded about Shakespeare the man, a technique that sometimes leads to embellishment or unwarranted interpretation of the documented record.
Sexuality of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's sonnets are cited as evidence of his bisexuality. The poems were initially published, perhaps without his approval, in 1609. One hundred twenty-six of them appear to be love poems addressed to a young man known as the 'Fair Lord' or 'Fair Youth'; this is often assumed to be the same person as the 'Mr W.H.' to whom the sonnets are dedicated. The identity of this figure (if he is indeed based on a real person) is unclear; the most popular candidates are Shakespeare's patrons, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton and William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, both of whom were considered handsome in their youth.
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy by William Shakespeare thought to have been written in 1598 and 1599, as Shakespeare was approaching the middle of his career. The play was included in the "First Folio", published in 1623.
Serena Evans
In 2010, Evans appeared in the role of Mistress Page in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London.
William Shakespeare
In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays: "Cymbeline", "The Winter's Tale," and "The Tempest", as well as the collaboration, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre". Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Some commentators have seen this change in mood as evidence of a more serene view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the day. Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, "Henry VIII" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen", probably with John Fletcher.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
18 January 1602 was the date the play was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company. The first quarto was published later that year, in an inferior text, by bookseller Arthur Johnson. It was published in a second quarto in 1619, as part of William Jaggard's False Folio; the superior First Folio text followed in 1623.