CRITICISM

Battenhouse, Roy. “Falstaff as Parodist and Perhaps Holy Fool.” PMLA 90, No. 1 (January 1975): 32-52.

Explores Falstaff's role as a jester in The Merry Wives of Windsor and the Henry IV plays.

Clark, Sandra. “‘Wives may be merry and yet honest too’: Women and Wit in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Some Other Plays.” In “Fanned and Winnowed Opinions”: Shakespearean Essays Presented to Harold Jenkins, edited by John W. Mahon and Thomas A. Pendleton, pp. 249-67. London: Methuen, 1987.

Uses The Merry Wives of Windsorto demonstrate that women's wit in the Renaissance was based on action, in contrast to men's wit which was based on speech.

Foley, Stephen. “Falstaff in Love and Other Stories from Tudor England.” Exemplaria 1, No. 2 (Fall 1989): 227-46.

Looks at The Merry Wives of Windsorin relation to contemporary stories of courtship, deceit, and marriage.

Marcus, Leah S. “Purity and Danger in the Modern Edition: The Merry Wives of Windsor.” In Unediting the Renaissance: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton, pp. 68-100. London: Routledge, 1996.

Examines the folio and quarto versions of The Merry Wives of Windsor and argues that rather than trying to find a definitive version of the play, scholars should treat each one as a separate entity worthy of study.

Scolnicov, Hanna. “The Zoomorphic Mask in Shakespeare.” Assaph: Studies in the Theatre 9 (1993): 63-74.

Remarks on Shakespeare's very limited use of masks in his plays, and suggests that Falstaff's Herne the Hunter mask is meant first to reinforce and then subvert the playgoers' assumptions about male virility and female infidelity.

Wall, Wendy. “‘Household Stuff’: The Sexual Politics of Domesticity and the Advent of English Comedy.” ELH 65, No. 1 (Spring 1998): 1-45

Defines The Merry Wives of Windsoras a typical English comedy by focusing principally on an earlier Renaissance play, Gammer Gurton's Needle.