[In the following excerpt, Frantz studies the bawdy language of The Merry Wives of Windsor, and maintains that a reader's understanding of the play is enriched by a knowledge of Renaissance erotica.]

Imagine a course in Renaissance drama devoid of erotica in one form or another, and you eliminate most of the great (and a good many of the mediocre) plays of the era. Renaissance dramatists exploited sex and sexual innuendo to its utmost; a study on lust alone would run volumes, as would one on sexual innuendo. Sexual action and sexual innuendo are inseparable in Renaissance drama, since there could have been little realistic heterosexual action on the stage with an audience always aware that boys were playing the parts of women.¹ A knowledge of plots of sexual intrigue found in a variety of sources, from novelle to jests, and a knowledge of the language of sexuality are essential for a full understanding of Renaissance drama, as both are used masterfully by a number of Renaissance dramatists to develop character, theme, and setting as well as plot. For example, the language of sexuality and the lust of certain characters become the means by which Malevole gains his revenge in The Malcontent; both elements turn out to be unmasking devices for Volpone in his attempted seduction of Celia, and our understanding of Volpone's world is greatly informed by our knowledge of Italian erotica. The love of Romeo and Juliet is put into focus not only by the early posturings of Romeo as a Petrarchan lover but also by the bawdy humor of the Nurse and Mercutio; even in King Lear the subject of lust plays an important role; one could go on and on, for sex is everywhere in Renaissance drama in both major and minor ways. In Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor we can see both the jest literature and sexually suggestive language used in an exemplary manner.

It is true that there is no pornographic action in The Merry Wives of Windsor; there is bawdy language in good plenty, but it is not used to shock or arouse. On the surface, then, it would seem an unpromising play for study even under the category of “the context of erotica.” But the actions of the play, the plots, are everywhere informed by a knowledge of ribald stories, especially in the form of jests or merry tales; and the English language, “hacked” and made “fritters” of, is bawdy run rampant to great comic effect.

The commonplace with regard to the sources for The Merry Wives is that there is no one known source for the plot of Falstaff and the wives, but there are many analogues.² Editors have singled out stories from Ser Giovanni, Straparola, and Tarlton. Surely the merry tales and jests of the kind examined in chapters 1 and 6 of this book are what inform Shakespeare's plots, particularly the variations Shakespeare plays on them. Obviously, Shakespeare counted on his audience's familiarity with the jest material; his title was undoubtedly meant to remind playgoers of the many collections of “merry tales” that continued to be printed throughout the English Renaissance. We recall that the conventional sexual jest story is one of cuckoldry in which a lusty wife usually manages to trick a foolish husband as she has an affair with a virile young lover. What Shakespeare does in the Falstaff-wives line of his play is to invert the conventional plot in several ways. In The Merry Wives of Windsor both the lover (an aging, money-grubbing lecher) and the jealous husband are duped and shamed by wives who are chaste.

It is confusing to talk about main plot and subplots in this play. The action might be described as follows. The play opens with Justice Shallow and his cousin Slender complaining to the Welsh parson, Sir Hugh Evans, about wrongdoings perpetrated on them by Sir John Falstaff. As has been noted many times, Shakespeare quickly drops this line of the plot and puts before the audience the question of the marriage of Anne Page. Shallow pushes his reluctant cousin to pursue this young maiden. The wooing of Anne Page thus provides the play with one major plot line, the conventional story of romantic comedy. In quick succession we understand that in addition to Slender, Anne Page has as suitors Dr. Caius, the French physician, and Fenton, the rake. This plot is complicated not only by the conventional parental intervention (Page on behalf of Slender, Mrs. Page on behalf of Dr. Caius), but also by the use of go-betweens. Slender engages Sir Hugh Evans on his behalf (who in turn solicits the help of Mistress Quickly), and both Dr. Caius and Fenton engage Mistress Quickly. This use of go-betweens in turn leads to conflict between Sir Hugh and Dr. Caius, a conflict fanned on to comic effect by the Host of the Garter Inn. The bringing together of these would-be combatants by the Host and the exposure of their foolishness leads ultimately to the cozenage of the Host by Sir Hugh and Dr. Caius.³ So much for the bare bones of the romantic comedy plot.

The jest plot of Sir John and the merry wives also springs from the opening scene, where we see Sir John having troubles not only with Shallow but with his own followers as well. Falstaff discharges Nym and Pistol in the opening scenes and launches his campaign to seduce the wives with his page, Robin, as go-between. The wives in turn counterplot, using Mistress Quickly as their messenger. Mistress Quickly is thus involved as a go-between in both plots, and other characters interact as well. Early in the play Nym and Pistol, discarded by Falstaff, reveal the fat knight's plan to the jealous Mr. Ford. From this follows Ford's plot to revenge himself on Falstaff by disguising himself as Brook and using the Host as an entree to the knight. The Host thus operates in both plots. Within the Falstaff-wives plot there are two major jests before act V—the basket jest and the old woman jest. By the beginning of act V, the two major plot lines have come together with one additional factor: Fenton has engaged the Host to aid him in his plot to secure Anne Page. The minor conflicts between the Host and Sir Hugh and Dr. Caius have been played out, the wives and Ford are working together, and only the final unmasking of Falstaff and marrying of Anne Page are left to be accomplished.

Such an accounting of the plots of The Merry Wives does not do justice to the sprightliness of the action, but it is necessary, I think, in making the central point about the plot or plots of the play—they are joined thematically throughout by being precisely that, plots or schemes of the kind found in jest books. Even in a play with so notable a character as Falstaff, all, even characterization, seems subordinated to plot.⁴ This is not to say that the characters are not well drawn, but it does emphasize the primacy of the plot and plotting. References to “jest,” “cosenage,” “revenge,” “plot,” “trick,” “invention,” “device,” “knaveries,” “deceit,” “foppery,” “comedy,” “scene,” and “sport” abound in the play.⁵ Our attention is constantly drawn to the “jest,” the “comedy,” the “sport” of the action, and of course the “sport” that all would play involves sexual intercourse—for the Anne Page plot within marriage, for the Falstaff plot in adultery. This is also a play in which Shakespeare creates a good deal of the humor from verbal sport, especially in his use of bawdy, which, given the nature of the plot, is never gratuitous but is always reminding us of the “sporting” game here. It is not insignificant that most of this very earthy play is in prose. To say all of this about the plots and language is not to deny the emphasis given The Merry Wives in earlier studies, studies that have approached the work as Shakespeare's Garter play or Shakespeare's only fully domestic comedy; rather, it is to emphasize what the plots and language of the play itself emphasize.⁶

Let us focus first on the plots of the play. In her introduction to the Riverside edition of the play Anne Barton makes the salient point that Shakespeare's Merry Wives is a “play which extends and, in a sense, violates the calculatedly limited form the merry tale.”⁷ She is not precisely clear on how the form is violated. She correctly points out that the wives are merry but chaste (as they are not in the analogous Italian stories), but she goes on to say that in Shakespeare's play. “It is the would be lover … who is cleverly deceived, not the husband.”⁸ The fact is that Shakespeare has it both ways; both the husband (the typical jealous type) and the lover (here transformed into a fat, old, money-seeking lecher) are deceived, and the wives remain chaste.

Shakespeare uses two major jest traditions, I think, in developing the plots of The Merry Wives—the Italian sexual jest and the English cony-catching jest exemplified by Greene's cony-catching pamphlets. Playgoers familiar with jest books, merry tales, and stories of cozenage would have seen from the outset that there was more than mere complication of the plots going on in terms of the thematic significance of such actions.⁹ Even in the first plot, Shallow's argument with Falstaff, which goes nowhere in the play, the trouble has come from the cozenage of Slender by Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol, characters Slender calls “cony-catching rascals” (I.i.124). In Falstaff's plot to gain the merry wives the two jest traditions are joined. Falstaff tells his cronies, “I must cony-catch, I must shift” (I.iii.33-34), and the way in which he will cony-catch leads him into the machinations of a comic Italian sexual jest.

Falstaff's language as he describes his project is instructive. He tells his cronies “what he is about,” and a series of puns follow:

PIST.
Two yards, and more.
FAL.
No quips now, Pistol! Indeed I am in the waist two yards about; but I am now about no waste; I am about thrift. Briefly—I do mean to make love to Ford's wife. I spy entertainment in her. She discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitation. I can construe the action of her familiar style, and the hardest voice of her behavior (to be English'd rightly) is, “I am Sir John Falstaff's.”
PIST.
He hath studied her well, and translated her will, out of honesty into English.

(I.iii.40-50)

Shakespeare seems to have been fascinated with the possibilities of punning on the language of grammar in the play, and this scene gives an early indication of what proves to be a rich mine for him. Falstaff wishes he were in a “waist” (we are reminded of “The expense of spirit in a waste of shame”) with his yard, but he is not. He spies “entertainment” like a grammarian, for she discourses, and he construes her style and voice. Falstaff continues by employing some of the typically suggestive geographic imagery of Renaissance love poetry as he describes what he has taken to be Mrs. Page's affection for him:

O, she did so course o'er my exteriors with such a greedy intention, that the appetite of her eye did seem to scorch me up like a burning-glass! Here's another letter to her. She bears the purse too; she is a region in Guiana, all gold and bounty. I will be cheaters to them both, and they shall be exchequers to me. They shall be my East and West Indies, and I will trade to them both. Go, bear thou this letter to Mistress Page; and thou this to Mistress Ford. We will thrive, lads, we will thrive.

(I.iii.65-74)

Traditional love imagery, yes, but we notice more in this speech. “Purse” may well have sexual connotations here, but the primary meaning for Falstaff is the financial one, and we note throughout this speech that Falstaff is at least as interested in money as in sex. It is financial cozenage above all that he wishes to practice, and this is surely a departure from the norm of Italian jests; it is in fact the typical concern of English cony-catching jests.¹⁰

What follows on the stage is not lewd behavior on the part of Falstaff; he never even gets as close as Volpone to stealing any secret fruits. What follows is intrigue upon intrigue, messengers, disguises, ruses—all the manipulation of foolish men by clever women. We know from the very moment that we see Mistresses Ford and Page together that Falstaff will not victimize them. They are not squeamish; their own conscious verbal dexterity as they compare their letters from Falstaff shows us this:

MRS. Page.
Letter for letter; but that the name of Page and Ford differs! To thy great comfort in this mystery of ill opinions, here's the twin-brother of thy letter; but let thine inherit first, for I protest mine never shall. I warrant he hath a thousand of these letters, writ with blank space for different names (sure, more!); and these are the second edition. He will print them, out of doubt; for he cares not what he puts into the press, when he would put us two. I had rather be a giantess, and lie under Mount Pelion. Well—I will find you twenty lascivious turtles ere one chaste man.
MRS. Ford.
Why, this is the very same: the very hand; the very words. What doth he think of us?
MRS. Page.
Nay, I know not; it makes me almost ready to wrangle with mine own honesty. I'll entertain myself like one that I am not acquainted withal; for sure unless he know some strain in me that I know not myself, he would never have boarded me in this fury.
MRS. Ford.
“Boarding,” call you it? I'll be sure to keep him above deck.
MRS. Page.
So will I; if he come under my hatches, I'll never to sea again. …

(II.i.70-93)¹¹

Falstaff of course is not the only victim; Ford, the jealous husband, must also learn a lesson. Both would-be lover and husband are to be victims of chaste wives; that is the marked departure from norms we have seen from Poggio on.

Ford furthers his own victimization by conceiving his plot of going to Falstaff as Brook, a would-be lover of Mrs. Ford's. Brook's approach to Falstaff highlights the issue of financial cozenage. Falstaff, we recall, noted that the wives would be “exchequers” to him, but until they become so, he has been spending, paying Mistress Quickly to help him (II.ii.131), but he has hopes: “Wilt thou, after the expense of so much money, be now a gainer?” (II.ii.140-41). Brook offers first sack and then money, “Such Brooks are most welcome,” to Sir John. Whether the primary motivation for Falstaff is avarice or lust is not important; both are surely there, and the entrance of Ford as Brook into the plot reminds us that this is basically a cuckoldry story of the kind found in Poggio or Ser Giovanni or Tarlton. And Shakespeare keeps the business of cuckoldry before us by his use of the plot, the language, and visual presentations. By having Brook press Falstaff about Ford in their initial meeting, Shakespeare contrives to let the jealous fool fry in Falstaff's verbal fire. Does Falstaff know Ford?

Hang him, poor cuckoldy knave, I know him not. Yet I wrong him to call him poor. They say the jealous wittolly knave hath masses of money, for the which his wife seems to me well-favor'd. I will use her as the key of the cuckoldly rogue's coffer, and there's my harvest-home.

(II.ii.270-75)

This speech would seem to reemphasize the financial motivation in Falstaff, and it does do that, but there is more. Falstaff sees Ford as a “cuckoldly knave,” “a jealous wittolly knave,” and he does hope to “use” Mrs. Ford; thus the image of the key and coffer is one of interesting transformation here. Falstaff parts from Brook speaking thus of Ford, “Hang him, mechanical salt-butter rogue! I will stare him out of his wits; I will awe him with my cudgel; it shall hang like a meteor o'er the cuckold's horns. Master Brook, thou shalt know I will predominate over the peasant, and thou shalt lie with his wife” (II.ii.278-83). Ford is left to contemplate “Terms! names!”:

Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer, well; Barbason, well; yet they are devils' additions, the names of fiends; but Cuckold! Wittol!—Cuckold! the devil himself hath not such a name. Page is an ass, a secure ass; he will trust his wife, he will not be jealous. I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my cheese, an Irishman with my aquavitae bottle, or a thief to walk my ambling gelding, than my wife with herself. Then she plots, then she ruminates, then she devises; and what they think in their hearts they may effect, they will break their hearts but they will effect. God be prais'd for my jealousy! Eleven o'clock the hour. I will prevent this, detect my wife, be reveng'd on Falstaff, and laugh at Page. I will about it; better three hours too soon than a minute too late. Fie, fie, fie! cuckold, cuckold, cuckold!

(II.ii.297-314)

We see here the power of the term “cuckold.” Shakespeare is careful to maintain a comic tone throughout this speech; we never sympathize with Ford, but we are conscious of the horror the epithet holds for Ford. What Shakespeare makes comic here, he is able to turn frighteningly horrible in his later tragedies and tragicomedies with characters like Othello and Leontes.¹²

Through the meeting of Brook and Falstaff, the plot is prepared for the knight's first visit to Mrs. Ford. Ford has invited his friends to accompany him home, “You shall have sport; I will show you a monster” (III.ii.81), but the women have already made their plans to use the “buck” or wash basket. The entrance of Mrs. Page with news of the arrival of Ford cuts short Falstaff's first attempts at seduction, and he is quickly stuffed into the buck basket with the foulest of linen, taken past Ford and dumped into the Thames. Ford enters the scene with:

FORD.
Pray you come near. If I suspect without cause, why then make sport at me, then let me be your jest, I deserve it. How now? Whither bear you this?
SERV.
To the landress, forsooth.
MRS. Ford.
Why, what have you to do whither they bear it? You were best meddle with buck-washing.
FORD.
Buck! I would I could wash myself of the buck! Buck, buck, buck! ay, buck! I warrant you, buck, and of the season too, it shall appear. Gentlemen, I have dream'd to-night; I'll tell you my dream. Here, here, here be my keys. Ascend my chambers, search, seek, find out. I'll warrant we'll unkennel the fox. …

(III.iii.149-64)

As Parson Evans notes, “This is fery fantastical humors and jealousies,” and Ford is the obvious object of the jest here; he wishes he were rid of his horns, and of course we know that he is not one of the forked order. But Falstaff must not be forgotten; Mrs. Ford later says, “I know not which pleases me better, that my husband is deceiv'd, or Sir John” (III.iii.178-79), and the wives decide to “lay a plot” to try Ford's jealousy and “have more tricks with Falstaff” (III.iii.190-91).

Falstaff's reaction to his ducking in the Thames is recorded first in conversation with Mistress Quickly, sent once again as a go-between by the wives. Mistress Quickly announces that she has come from Mrs. Ford, and Falstaff exclaims, “Mistress Ford? I have had ford enough. I was thrown into the ford; I have my belly full of ford” (III.v.35-37). Mistress Quickly responds with a wonderfully appropriate malapropism: “Alas the day! good heart, that was not her fault. She does so take on with her men; they mistook their erection” (III.v.38-40). Falstaff plays upon the nonbawdy sense of “erection” in his rejoinder. “So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman's promise” (III.v.41-42), but we understand this in a sexual sense as well, knowing that Falstaff has indeed mistaken his “erection.” Falstaff blames the failure of his mission to Brook on the jealousy of “the peaking cornuto,” Ford. He has escaped, he explains, through a clever “invention” of the ladies, but he promises Brook he will carry on his plan, for he is on his way to Mrs. Ford's again, having received word that the jealous Ford has gone birding. Ford repairs to his house once more, hoping to catch his wife and Falstaff in flagrante, and this time he is tricked as Falstaff passes out of his house disguised as the old lady of Brainford. In this disguise Falstaff is roundly beaten as “an old cozening quean.” The wives decide, finally, to reveal all to their husbands, for they have not yet done with Falstaff:

MRS. Ford.
I'll warrant they'll have him publicly sham'd and methinks there would be no period to the jest, should he not be publicly sham'd.
MRS. Page.
Come, to the forge with it, then shape it. I would not have things cool.

(IV.ii.220-24)

Thus does the cuckoldry plot move toward its great final scene, where it is joined by the wooing plot of Anne Page. The wives plan to have Falstaff meet them in Windsor forest at the oak disguised as Herne the Hunter with his “great ragg'd horns.” Page asks that the “plot go forward. Let our wives / Yet once again (to make us public sport) Appoint a meeting with this old fat fellow …” (IV.iv.12-14). The “device” (l. 42), the “plot” (l. 46), is set, and Sir Hugh delightedly comments, “Let us about it. It is admirable pleasures and fery honest knaveries” (IV.iv.80-81). This has been one of Shakespeare's ironic reversals throughout, that the virtuous characters are the ones duping the plotting sinners; these have indeed been “honest knaveries,” and this ironic reversal is brought home visually in the final scene in the forest.

Shakespeare links the cuckoldry and wooing plots through the very notion of plotting. With the scheme to humiliate Falstaff set, Page plans to have Slender steal his daughter away in the confusion. Mistress Page also plans to take advantage of the situation by having Dr. Caius carry off Anne. But Fenton is not to be caught off guard. He tells the Host that “Fat Falstaff / Hath a great scene; the image of the jest … (IV.vi.16-17). He knows of Page's plan to take advantage “While other jests are something rank on foot” (IV.vi.22) and Mrs. Page's plot “While other sports are tasking of their minds” (IV.vi.30), but he himself has what the Host calls a “device.” Before this scene can be played out, however, indeed, before Fenton hatches his plot, Shakespeare introduces the scene where the Host learns he has been cozened. Whether we see the scene as unrelated to the Host's trickery practiced on Dr. Caius and the Parson or as part of an undeveloped revenge plot is not so important as the plot itself.¹³ The scene opens with an apparently curious exchange between Simple, Slender's servant, and Falstaff, where Simple asks Falstaff if the old lady of Brainford knows “whether one Nym, sir, that beguil'd him of a chain, had the chain or no” (IV.v.32-33). Falstaff replies that the old lady said “that the very same man that beguil'd Master Slender of his chain cozen'd him of it” (IV.v.36-38). Is Shakespeare at the eleventh hour resurrecting the Falstaff-Shallow plot? I think not. His concern here is to remind us of the thematic importance of plotting, for in rushes Bardolph shouting “cosenage! mere cozenage” (IV.v.63), and the Host Story follows. The scene draws to a conclusion with Falstaff's nothing:

I would all the world might be cozen'd, for I have been cozen'd and beaten too. If it should come to the ear of the court, how I have been transform'd, and how my transformation hath been wash'd and cudgell'd, they would melt me out of my fat drop by drop, and liquor fishermen's boots with me. I warrant they would whip me with their fine wits till I were as crestfall'n as a dried pear. I never prosper'd since I forswore myself at primero. Well, if my wind were but long enough to say my prayers, I would repent.

(IV.v.93-103)

The greatest transformation is yet to come, of course, as the “sport” devised by the citizens moves to a conclusion.

The final scene of the play begins with Falstaff's excursus on transformations brought on by lust, and here for once we see him motivated more by lust than greed:

The Windsor bell hath strook twelve; the minute draws on. Now the hot-bloodied gods assist me! Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa, love set on thy horns. O powerful love, that in some respects makes a beast a man; in some other, a man a beast. You were also, Jupiter, a swan for the love of Leda. O omnipotent love, how near the god drew to the complexion of a goose! A fault done first in the form of a beast (O Jove, a beastly fault!) and then another fault in the semblance of a fowl—think on't, Jove, a foul fault! When gods have hot backs, what shall poor men do? For me, I am here a Windsor stag, and the fattest, I think, i'th' forest. Send me a cool rut-time, Jove, or who can blame me to piss my tallow? Who comes here? My doe?

(V.v.1-15)

Mrs. Ford enters, and Falstaff thinks he will finally play out his adulterous act:

My doe with the black scut? Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of “Green-sleeves,” hail kissing-comfits, and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.

(V.v.18-21)

As Anne Barton comments, “scut” is a slang term “for the female pudenda,” “sweet potatoes” were thought to stimulate sexuality, “Green-sleeves” was a popular love song, kissing-comfits were “perfumed candies, used by women to sweeten their breath,” eringoes were thought an aphrodisiac, and “provocation” here means “sexual incitement.”¹⁴ Falstaff is ready for sexual action, and the entrance of Mrs. Ford only incites him further:

Divide me like a brib'd-buck, each a haunch. I will keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow of this walk—and my horns I bequeath your husbands. Am I a woodman, ha? Speak I like Herne the hunter? Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience, he makes restitution. As I am a true spirit, welcome!

(V.v.24-29)

But the horns, which Falstaff would graft upon the husbands' heads, are his indeed as a sign of one who has been fooled. He learns that he is the object of the jest as the “faeries” assault him.¹⁵ When the jest is revealed, Mrs. Ford says, “Sir John, we have had ill luck; we could never meet. I will never take you for my love again, but I will always count you my deer.” Falstaff replies, “I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass”; to which Ford adds, “Ay, and an ox too” (V.v.116-20), so that transformations, which began verbally with Falstaff's invocation to the gods, then were brought visually into play on the stage, are reinforced verbally once again as the scene draws to a close. The play ends with the revelation of the “cosenage” of Slender and Dr. Caius, and Fenton notes that since all has been for the good “this deceit loses the name of craft” (V.v.226). Ford remarks that “In love, the heavens themselves do guide the state; / Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate” (V.v.232-33). Mrs. Page wishes Fenton well and bids “us every one go home / And laugh this sport o'er by a country fire” (V.v 241-42). All has been turned to “admirable pleasures and fery honest knaveries”; the would-be horner wears the horns, although even he is included in the festive circle at the end in Shakespeare's reworking of the typical cuckold jest.

If reversal of the cuckold jest explains much of The Merry Wives of Windsor, it does not explain a scene like IV.i, where young William Page is run through his schoolboy's paces by his teacher, Parson Evans. The scene is one filled with sexual innuendo provided by the Welsh accent of the Parson and the bawdy inferences of Mistress Quickly. The scene is not gratuitous bawdy provided for the groundlings, as has been suggested (when commented on at all; most editors leave much of the scene conspicuously uncommented); rather, it is a scene that plays upon the already developed comic characteristics of the Parson and Mistress Quickly and upon the “sport” that this play is about. Parson Evans provides comedy throughout the play as one who “makes fritters of English,” but Mistress Quickly provides humor as one who both inadvertently speaks bawdy and willfully hears bawdy where none is intended. As Anne Barton has noted, “Mistress Quickly is scandalized by what seem to her to be the bawdy syllables uttered by a small boy rehearsing his Latin declension, but herself habitually blunders into unconscious obscenities about which Freud might have had a good deal to say.”¹⁶

In Act I scene iv, Mistress Quickly is caught by her master, Dr. Caius, with Simple at the Doctor's house. Simple is soliciting her aid in Slender's pursuit (through Parson Evans) of Anne Page. Quickly assures the Doctor that the young man “is an honest man” and that he need fear nothing. Dr. Caius decides that he will handle this situation initially by writing a letter to Sir Hugh, and a relieved Mistress Quickly (unaware that Dr. Caius is penning a “shallenge”) speaks to Simple in an aside:

QUICK.
I am glad he is so quiet. If he had been throughly mov'd, you should have heard him so loud and so melancholy. But notwithstanding, man, I'll do you your master what good I can; and the very yea and the no is, the French doctor, my master (I may call him my master, look you, for I keep his house; and I wash, wring, brew, bake, scour, dress meat and drink, make the beds, and do all myself)—
SIM.
'Tis a great charge to come under one body's hand.
QUICK.
Are you avis'd o' that? You shall find it a great charge; and to be up early and down late; …

(I.iv.89-102)

How much of the bawdy play is intended here on the part of Mistress Quickly is not entirely clear. Shortly after, her penchant for malapropisms leads her into a bawdy blunder when she says to Fenton, now come to enlist her aid:

QUICK.
… Have not your worship a wart above your eye?
FENT.
Yes, marry, have I, what of that?
QUICK.
Well, thereby hangs a tale. Good faith, it is such another Nan; but (I detest) an honest maid as ever I broke bread.

(I.iv.146-51)

Mistress Quickly thinks she is a mistress of language, one attuned to nuances, for when she comes to Falstaff in Act II he greets her:

FAL.
Good morrow, goodwife.
QUICK.
Not so, and't please your worship.
FAL.
Good maid then.
QUICK.
I'll be sworn
As my mother was the first hour I was born.

(II.ii.34-38)¹⁷

Falstaff's response is that he believes the swearer, for he senses she is no maid. Mistress Quickly's erring tongue leads her into other comic blunders; she tells Falstaff that Mrs. Page is “as fartuous a civil modest wife … as any is in Windsor,” and that Mrs. Page wants Falstaff to send his little page to her for “Her husband has a marvellous infection to the little page …” (II.ii.97 and 114-15).¹⁸ Mistress Quickly worries about the use of the page as go-between, however. She urges Falstaff to use care so that “the boy never need to understand any thing; for 'tis not good that children should know any wickedness. Old folks, you know, have discretion, as they say, and know the world” (II.ii.127-30).

It is as the protector of children from licentiousness that Mistress Quickly reads into the innocent drilling of William Page by Parson Evans in Act IV scene i a host of dirty meanings. Through the Parson's Welsh renderings and Mistress Quickly's bawdy inferences, Shakespeare presents a scene entirely in keeping with the business of the play. We have seen elsewhere his propensity for punning on grammar, printing, and books themselves. In this scene he reminds us of Harington's presentation of dictionary searching as he gives us a rollicking bawdy scene. Mistress Quickly, the child-protector with the mind ready to see bawdy anywhere, is the key to the scene, for it is she who invests the contextually innocent terms with “dirty” meanings. Shakespeare shows us that he understands precisely how a “dirty” mind works, for it can invest anything with a bawdy meaning. Evans's fractured pronunciation is partly to blame, of course, and critics, especially Colman, have stressed Parson Evans's unconscious use of sexual innuendo, but it is Mistress Quickly, with her willful mishearings, who provides most of the humor.

Mistress Quickly begins mishearing innocently enough. When William Page says there are two numbers in nouns, Mistress Quickly thrusts in with “Truly, I thought there had been one number more, because they say, ‘Od's nouns’” (IV.i.23-24). Thereafter, it is bawdy she hears. At William's rendering of “fair” as “pulcher” she interrupts. “Poulcats? There are fairer things than poulcats sure” (IV.i.28-29). She understands “poulcats” as a cant term for whores. Mistress Quickly does not comment on a rare pun by Shakespeare on “fuck.” Evans asks William, “What is the focative case, William?,” and William replies, “O-vocativo, O.” (IV.i.50-52). In Colman's opinion “there is the jingle focative/fuck, arising through Evan's Welshified pronunciation. And … there is the coital suggestion, in such a context, of case (as meaning vagina) and of the repeated O sound, which can be thought of as either a pudendal symbol or the echo of an orgasmic cry.”¹⁹ Mistress Quickly does supply the bawdy when Parson Evans tells William that “focative is caret.” This elicits from Mistress Quickly the idea that “that's a good root” (IV.i.53-54). And when William gives the “genitive case plural,” “Genitivo, horum, harum, horum,” Mistress Quickly cannot contain herself: “Vengeance of Jinny's case! Fie on her! never name her, child, if she be a whore” (IV.i.56-63). Mistress Quickly invests “case” with its bawdy meaning of vagina, as she hears “horum” as whore and “genitive” as Jinny. She tells the parson:

You do ill to teach the child such words. He teaches him to “hic” and to “hac,” which they'll do fast enough of themselves, and to call “horum,”—fie upon you!

(IV.i.65-68)²⁰

As the scene draws toward a conclusion, Evans asks William to decline pronouns, something William has forgotten how to do. This elicits some final unintentional bawdy from the Parson, who tells William, “It is qui, quae, quod: if you forget your qui's, your quae's, and your quod's, you must be preeches” (IV.i.77-79). Colman is dubious about allowing a pun on “qui's” (keys/penises); “quod's” (cods/testicles) he feels is likely. Given what we have in this scene an argument for the pun, as made by Helge Kökeritz, does not seem at all far-fetched.²¹

Colman has commented on this scene as a whole that “Although we are nowadays too many removes from Lily's Latin Grammar to enjoy Sir Hugh Evans and Mistress Quickly to the full, it is easy to imagine that some word-conscious theatergoers of 1597 or 1598 would have found them funny. If, also, we bear in mind that the audience at any court performance—during a Feast of the Garter, for example—would have had a great deal more than ‘small Latine’, it becomes easy to envisage Shakespeare indulging himself and them by returning, at least for one short scene, to bawdy for simple laughter's sake.”²² It may be that we as casual theatergoers are too many removes from the propensities of the past to appreciate this scene fully, but those knowledgeable in the kinds of literature examined in this study can of course appreciate the humor fully. This scene may be bawdy “for simple laughter's sake,” but it is not at all out of place in a play that is informed by bawdy literature throughout.²³ And it is a brilliant example of Shakespeare's ability to create a mind bound to see bawdiness everywhere, as he does with Mistress Quickly.

The reader of Shakespeare's Merry Wives finds his understanding of the play enriched throughout by a knowledge of Renaissance erotica, for such a reader understands the variations Shakespeare plays on the typical jest plot, appreciates the rich punning throughout, and admires the comic use Shakespeare makes of a mind bound to see bawdiness even in the most innocent of places. Even if The Merry Wives is not one of Shakespeare's great plays, it is one that we can still enjoy immensely, and it is one in which the enjoyment grows within the context of erotica. …

Notes

1. For an illuminating discussion of this problem see Gordon Lell, “‘Ganymede’ on the Elizabethan Stage: Homosexual Implications of the Use of Boy-Actors,” Aegis (1973): 5-15.

2. Editors have cited Ser Giovanni's Il Percorone, Day I story 2; Straparola's Le tredici piacevoli notti, “The Story of Nerisio of Portugal”; and Tarlton's Newes out of Purgatorie, “The Tale of Two Lovers of Pisa.”

3. See note [13] below.

4. Commenting on the play as farce in his introduction to the Pelican edition, Fredson Bowers notes that in such plays “The plot itself—usually of the intrigue variety—is the normal center of interest, and characters are necessarily subordinate … the plot concerns itself with being a plot—with the rapidity, absurdity, and ingenuity of its twists and turns—and scarcely at all with holding a mirror up to life” (The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, ed. Alfred Harbage [Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969], p. 336).

5. Words meaning “trick” appear at least fifty-eight times in the play.

6. One may call this a Garter play in terms of the occasion of composition, setting, and topicality of allusions, but the notion of the Order of the Garter has little to do with the central actions of the play. Even William Green, who argues most strongly for the play's being Shakespeare's Garter play in his book Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1962), admits at one point that “not one of the Court-Garter passages is essential to the action of the Merry Wives” (p. 96).

7. Anne Barton in her introduction to Riverside edition, [Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. Edited by G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974] p. 288.

8. Ibid.

9. Some very early punning by Falstaff is important in reminding us that many of the jest books built their jokes on precisely the kinds of misunderstandings Shakespeare presents in Act I scene i. At the outset we see that Slender has little mastery of English and Parson Evans even less, so that when Sir Hugh warns Sir John in his accented Latin and English, “Pauca verba; Sir John, good worts,” Sir John replies, “Good worts? Good cabbage” (I.i.120-21). As readers familiar with The Sackful of News know, the whole of jest 16 is built around a foreigner's misunderstanding of the word “coleworts.”

10. [E.A.M. Colman. The Dramatic Use of Bawdy in Shakespeare. London: Longman Group, 1974] p. 78, notes that Falstaff “has a surprisingly small share of the bawdy lines in the earlier scenes. This may be because his plans to subvert the two wives are at this stage less lustful than financially interested: he spies entertainment (which means employment as well as sexual amusement), and he proposes to trade (sexually, but also for profit).”

11. Colman, p. 85, argues, “The bourgeois wives, although ‘merry’ enough for an occasional vulgar quip, are essentially too prim to be outspoken on sexual matters.”

12. See Othello, III.iii.258-77 and IV.i.60-73; and The Winter's Tale, I.ii.179-207.

13. This scene has troubled all commentators on the play. Green dismisses the idea that this is the culmination of an undeveloped plot by Dr. Caius and Parson Evans to get even with the Host, and he explains it as topically related to events surrounding the Duke of Wurtemberg's election to the Order of the Garter and some notorious horse-stealing affairs of the time. I myself think that it is part of an undeveloped plot by Dr. Caius and Parson Evans because they both appear to “warn” the Host, one right after the other, and they both assure the Host that they do this for “good will”:

    EVANS.

    Have a care of your entertainments. There is a friend of mine come to town, tells me there is three cozen-germans that has cozen'd all the hosts of Readins, of Maidenhead, of Colebrook, of horses and money. I tell you for good will, look you. You are wise and full of gibes and vlouting-stocks, and 'tis not convenient you should be cozen'd. Fare you well.

    CAIUS.

    Vere is mine host de Jarteer?

    HOST.

    Here, Master Doctor, in perplexity and doubtful dilemma.

    CAIUS.

    I cannot tell vat is dat, but it is tell-a-me dat you make grand preparation for a duke de Jamany. By my trot, dere is no duke that the court is know to come. I tell you for good will; adieu.

    (IV.v.75-89)

    That both men should come out of “good will” within ten lines makes it look suspiciously like an agreed-upon phrase, bound to hit the Host where he feels most proud, in his “good will.” Nothing evil need be thought of the Doctor and the Parson, for nothing in fact need to have happened except for them to have employed Bardolph.

14. Riverside Shakespeare, p. 319n.

15. Colman, pp. 79-80, sees the scene in terms of ritual.

16. Riverside Shakespeare, p. 288.

17. We are reminded here of the exchange between Mistress Quickly as hostess of the Boar's Head Tavern and Falstaff in 1 Henry IV:

    HOST.

    I am no thing to thank God on, I would thou shouldst know it. I am an honest man's wife, and setting thy knighthood aside, thou art a knave to call me so.

    FAL.

    Setting thy womanhood aside, thou art a beast to say otherwise.

    HOST.

    Say, what beast, thou knave, thou?

    FAL.

    What beast? why, an otter.

    PRINCE.

    An otter, Sir John, why an otter?

    FAL.

    Why? she's neither fish nor flesh, a man knows not where to have her.

    HOST.

    Thou art an unjust man in saying so. Thou or any man knows where to have me, thou knave, thou!

    (III.iii.118-30)

18. In Act III scene iii ll. 236-37, Dr. Caius, because of his accent, is made to say, “If there be one or two, I shall make-a turd.”

19. Colman, p. 82.

20. Colman, p. 82, points out that the “puns genitive case/Jenny's case and horum/whore are straightforward enough. Less obvious to the modern ear is what may also be a pun Harum/hare—assuming, that is, that in Shakespeare's own day the Latin word would have been given the pronunciation ['hearan]. From classical times, and very extensively in medieval art, both the hare and the rabbit have enjoyed associations with lust and fecundity, and if a director of The Merry Wives were to ask his Mistress Quickly to register indignation over William's Harum he could quote in support Mercutio's “old hare hoar' jingle. …”

21. Helge Kökeritz, Shakespeare's Pronunciation (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1953), p. 119.

22. Colman, p. 83.

23. Since Colman is interested in tracing Shakespeare's development in his use of bawdy, he sees the play as a whole in the following terms (p. 84):

    In broad outline, then, the use of bawdy in The Merry Wives of Windsor comes to look like this: Falstaff speaks commercially at the start, erotically near the end, thus providing some immediate pretext for his ill-treatment, but also, paradoxically, increasing the kind of authority with which the play endows him; the Host speaks with corpological mockery of the French physician, who in turn helps Sir Hugh Evans and Mistress Quickly to mangle and confuse the language of everyday middle-class life. Ford, lonely in his supposed cuckoldom, mutters and shouts jealously, obsessed by the thing he fears. The bourgeois wives, although ‘merry’ enough for an occasional vulgar quip, are essentially too prim to be outspoken on sexual matters. Slender, for all his awkwardness, only once blunders into impropriety—‘three veneys for a dish of stewed prunes’; whereas his contrasting rival, the courtly young Fenton, never sullies his elegant verse with anything indecent.

    In 1602 the First Quarto promised on its title-page “A Most pleasaunt and excellent conceited Comedie”. If some loose ends in the plot and an air of hurry in the writing somewhat limit the excellence of its ‘conceit’, this is still a viable farce that has stood the searching test of the stage. Where the study of Shakespeare's developing use of bawdy is concerned, we should note that the indecencies here are more varied in tone and effect than in any other play so far. The Merry Wives can be regarded as a signpost to the increasingly specialised types of bawdy that are to operate in the plays Shakespeare writes after the turn of the century.