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The Merry Wives of Windsor

3.54 of 5 stars 3.54 · rating details · 3,704 ratings · 150 reviews

Each edition includes:

 Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
 Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
 Scene-by-scene plot summaries
 A key to famous lines and phrases
 An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language
 An essay by an outstanding...more

Paperback, 320 pages

Published July 1st 2004 by Simon & Schuster (first published April 1597)

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Jan 11, 2013 Giulia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: teatro, regalo

Si dice che la regina gradì così tanto la figura di Falstaff in Henry IV, che le venne voglia di vederlo coinvolto in trame amorose e così chiese che venisse scritta una commedia in cui questo personaggio apparisse nelle vesti di innamorato o donnaiolo.

Shakespeare la accontentò scrivendo (la leggenda narra in soli 14 giorni) The merry wives of Windsor.

Una commedia divertente che inscena la classica situazione del donnaiolo che vuole imbrogliare e che viene a sua volta imbrogliato. Non so quanto...more

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Mar 17, 2010 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, gods-myths-heroes, in-by-of-england, in-theater, reviewed, fey

Turn the page of a Shakespeare theme and there it is again. One side a tragedy or history, the other side a comedy. The difference? Whether the characters call each other “Your Highness” and “Sir” and “Lady” or “Poltroon” and “Trollop.” It’s been a while since I read one of the comedies and I’d forgotten how very deep he goes into his themes. Look, he says, what are valid motives for revenge? Is it when your wife has betrayed you? Is it when your honor has been besmirched? If that’s true, are ou...more Turn the page of a Shakespeare theme and there it is again. One side a tragedy or history, the other side a comedy. The difference? Whether the characters call each other “Your Highness” and “Sir” and “Lady” or “Poltroon” and “Trollop.” It’s been a while since I read one of the comedies and I’d forgotten how very deep he goes into his themes. Look, he says, what are valid motives for revenge? Is it when your wife has betrayed you? Is it when your honor has been besmirched? If that’s true, are our silly housewives of Windsor as justified or as guilty as Iago? Henry IV? Is the difference between the feelings of the mighty and the lowly simply how many people must die for being in the way? When one of the characters among the silly Wives made a reference to Machiavelli I almost jumped up and down. There is nothing better than tackling a great theme in a form you wouldn't expect.

Seeing the play performed is a must, since it is about a fat man and jokes about finding places large enough to hide him are generally visual ones. I won't really get how funny it can be until I see it performed. Reading it gave me the opportunity to appreciate the parts that don’t usually show up in a romp. No stolen kisses between the separated lovers, and I would love to see Falstaff dumped in the river, but I’ll pass if it means the darker elements come out to play.

The most compelling part in the text is the discussion of language, and identity. I suppose I will have to read all the plays just for this topic at some point. I feel like people of Elizabethan England must have been going through a great, national identity crisis of massive proportions. Their language was changing. Their ports were opening. Trade was expanding. There were new worlds to explore. The quiet life of simply not dying from the plague and going to church a lot was over. First, they had to figure out which church to attend (an identity crisis in and of itself, with some pretty dire consequences if they made the "wrong" choice), and then they were confronted with foreigners, new wares, and new ideas about an ever enlarging the world. So it only makes sense that Shakespeare would give us a foreign doctor and an old wife and have them talk about language, and only Shakespeare would make it funny.

With all this going on to have them all run into the woods at the end of the play was perfect. (And at this point I do expect I can’t hold back the spoilers any longer, but I’ll try) I have always been fascinated by the difference between “civilization” in the city or specifically the Court and the freedom, nature, benign anarchy of the woods in Shakespeare’s plays. It wasn’t until I read Titus Andronicus earlier this year that it got a whole new dimension for me. It was no longer just a place where one was closer to a state of nature, in which freedom and chaos were both playing with the poor humans there, but it also became a place of danger, much closer to Thomas Hobbes’s conception than I had thought before. So there they all go, into the woods, with plans to dress up (chaos is much easier if everyone is masked) and to invoke the spirit of the wood.

I read Ulysses earlier this year as well, (if there is still anyone on this site who doesn’t remember me bitching about it) and there is a scene in there that I felt was drawing on this play. I wasn’t wrong, the whole thing about the cuckold, the cross dressing, the god with horns making way for the revelers in the night. It’s there. The play brings out something much more elemental than what the modernist decided to play with though. When the characters enter the woods and Falstaff, as Herne, the god or spirit of the wood, is attacked by the mock Queen of the Fairies, Shakespeare is no longer making clever jokes about how his countrymen are, or are not, picking out and trying on the new identity of a cosmopolitan nation, an Empire builder. He is reminding them of the roots of the nation, with the long history of what the old beliefs means to them (be it pagan or, possibly a closeted catholic? I haven’t thought all the way through that yet).

I don’t think you need to understand Elizabethan slang or check the footnotes every page to appreciate what Shakespeare does here. For me, it rooted several different ideas I’d seen in modern fairy tales into a tradition I hadn’t really noticed before now. There’s the comedy -- always that -- especially with Falstaff running amok, but there was so much more. I picked this one up as a chore to finish off an idea and instead I’ve got a whole new set to explore. I don’t know why I ever doubted him.
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Dec 09, 2010 Bill Kerwin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 16th-17th-c-brit, tudor-drama

Okay, I finished it. After all these years, the only Shakespeare play I could never get interested in is finally completed. I read every word of it, and I am sure I'll never read it again.

It's not that bad, really--if you like bedroom farces punched up with dialect humor, second-rate puns and third-rate malapropisms. I found it pretty dreary, and the humor of Falstaff--which I looked forward to as a small refreshing pool in the middle of all this sand--is a pale shadow of his wit in Henry IV.

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Aug 31, 2012 Russell rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shakespeare, at the request of the Queen, revisited his character Falstaff. The rogue is now older, fatter, low on cash, and concocts a plan to get access to the wealth of Ford and Page by seducing their wives. He doesn't lack self esteem, and he's convinced the wives will fall to his charms. The wives are offended, and plot a series of mishaps for Falstaff, while their husbands, appraised of the knight's schemes, also engage in their own actions. Page has complete trust of his wife, he watches...more

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Aug 08, 2012 Melissa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I adore Shakespeare. I’ve read at least half of his works. I’ve seen dozens of his plays performed. In college I took a class completely devoted to learning how to read and interpret his writing. I’ve visited the Globe in England and every time I read a new play of his I find a new reason to love his work.

His writing isn’t perfect. He ripped story lines from others and his plays can be repetitive. He can be long-winded when he wants to, but all-in-all, there’s more brilliance than hot air there....more I adore Shakespeare. I’ve read at least half of his works. I’ve seen dozens of his plays performed. In college I took a class completely devoted to learning how to read and interpret his writing. I’ve visited the Globe in England and every time I read a new play of his I find a new reason to love his work.

His writing isn’t perfect. He ripped story lines from others and his plays can be repetitive. He can be long-winded when he wants to, but all-in-all, there’s more brilliance than hot air there. When Shakespeare ran out of words to express what he was feeling, he invented them! That’s just amazing. Not only did he invent words, but they are ones that stuck and that we still use today.

I love his wit. He was incredibly funny. Many of his jokes were topical, so they aren’t nearly as amusing to us as they were to audiences that lived during his lifespan. It’s like someone watching an episode of Saturday Night Live from 30 years ago and expecting to catch every joke from the weekend update.

On to the The Merry Wives of Windsor. This isn’t my favorite play, it isn’t even my favorite comedy by the Bard, but it is entertaining. It’s well-known purely because it brought back a fan-favorite, Sir John Falstaff (from the Henry IV history plays).

The basic plot is as follows, that well-loved pompous old fool, Falstaff, decides to seduce two of the married ladies in the town of Windsor. The confusion that ensues is almost like a French farce. People run in, doors slam, identities are mistaken, etc. In other words, good times.

Always the idiot, Falstaff makes the mistake of wooing two women who happen to be best friends. Mistress Ford and Mistress Page both receive love letter from the fat knight and devise a plan to trap and mock him. Mistress Ford’s husband ends up as collateral damage when he’s led to believe his wife is actually cheating on him.

What sets this play apart from his many others is the fact that it’s the only one set in contemporary (for Shakespeare) England. Most of his other plays either took place in the past or in another country. The subplot involves a husband and wife (the Pages) who are trying to marry their daughter off to men she doesn't love. The clever daughter evades her parents' wishes by coming up with a tricky solution of her own to get the man she truly loves.

If you're new to Shakespeare, see it live first! It's a play, it was meant to be seen and not just read. Once you've done that, explore the beauty of his writing. Much Ado About Nothing is a great place to start in the comedies and Hamlet remains my favorite tragedy... so far.

---One side note, if you’re looking for a definitive edition of Shakespeare, I would highly recommend the The Riverside Shakespeare. It is massive (like five inches thick), but I love it.(less)

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Jun 03, 2012 Edward rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1-my-shelves, cultural-britain, cultural-canada, classics, fiction, film-radio-television, humour, shakespeare, play-script

Since 1953 the Stratford Festival has been presenting theatrical performances that are world renowned for their excellent artistic standards. More recently thousands of television viewers have also been able to experience the excitement of the theatre in their own homes as a result of the CBC television production of several of the Stratford plays. Now CBC Enterprises/Les Entreprises Radio-Canada, the entrepreneurial arm of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, makes these acclaimed theatrical...more

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Dec 27, 2010 Marija rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics, drama, medieval-renaissance

This play is pure slapstick comedy. It reminds me of those good British comedy series… a sprinkling of Blackadder’s caustic wit, mixed with a dash of Compo’s antics from Last of the Summer Wine. Even though the play lacks the sophistication of Shakespeare’s other plays, in terms of theme, it’s still a lot of fun.

Falstaff’s the kind of guy you want to hate, because he’s old, fat and lecherous, a real sleaze always looking for new ways to make an easy buck—especially if the money comes from rich m...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Bruce Snell rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I saw a stage performance of this play a few years ago in Utah at the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, and decided it would be among the first I read when I began reading Shakespeare's plays. This is a comedy, in fact, a farce, that left me laughing out loud in the theater, and was almost as funny in print. In this play we find John Falstaff (from Henry IV) attempting to seduce two married women, who just happen to be friends and turn the tables on him. There is also a subplot about Master an...more

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Jan 15, 2011 Kelsey rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own, shakespeare

As I was reading the play, I was sure that it was my least favorite Shakespeare play. However, a discussion in an English class (which including acting out a few scenes) helped me get a better grasp of it. I no longer think it's terrible. I still don't like it, though. These are the main things that I had a hard time with, in no particular order:

1. The two characters with accents (French and Welsh). I could read their dialogue, but it was hard.
2. The content matter. After our discussion in class...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: brit-lit, classics, elizabethan-lit, humor, plays, shakespeare

Following my complaints (“complaints” sounds like too harsh a word) with Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV, Part I, he finds his perfect environment in The Merry Wives of Windsor. A slapstick, comedic environment in which fools are put through their paces by their wittier counterparts and all comes out right in the end. Even better, this is really a pretty good comedy. There are scenes within it that are riotous. (The washing basket scene comes to mind first.)

A few thoughts:
This is Shakespeare’s fir...more Following my complaints (“complaints” sounds like too harsh a word) with Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV, Part I, he finds his perfect environment in The Merry Wives of Windsor. A slapstick, comedic environment in which fools are put through their paces by their wittier counterparts and all comes out right in the end. Even better, this is really a pretty good comedy. There are scenes within it that are riotous. (The washing basket scene comes to mind first.)

A few thoughts:
This is Shakespeare’s first attempt at writing dialect. One would assume that earlier inclusion of dialect and inflection were up to the whim of the actor or director, but with two characters, Dr. Caius and Sir Hugh Evans, the dialect is written into their speech. While this is interesting in itself, there is further interest in the pronunciation of the dialect. Dr. Caius, in particular presents some modern day issues. He’s a French physician, but if you were to read his lines aloud, modern audiences would likely hear a voice that sounded like a combination of German and Italian accents. One has to wonder if the imitated inflection of international accents has changed that much over the centuries or if Shakespeare wasn’t very good at writing things phonetically. Likewise, Sir Hugh’s dialect sounds more Scottish than Welsh based on the forced pronunciations that Shakespeare provides, but the difference with Sir Hugh’s dialect is much less obvious than that with Dr. Caius.

The other thing worth mentioning is that this play does a remarkable job of empowering women. The men in this play are either fools, subjects, or lacking in some other way. It is the women who are more aware and conniving. They have the wits to deal with these fools, and the confidence to carry it out. In fact, by the end of the play, even the husbands admit they would have been better served by standing back and letting the women handle the events that took place and that they should’ve trusted their wives more.

I don’t really know where to take this, but it’s worth pointing out. It’s a fun cap to a fun play. Worth the read, and makes me enjoy Falstaff as a character that much more.
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Jul 14, 2012 Megan Anderson rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Apr 29, 2012 Matt rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Falstaff, the famed scoundrel from Shakespeare‘s Henry IV, is reincarnated as a lecherous buffoon. His quest to bed two wives at once sets him up for shenanigans and humiliation. The merry wives repeatedly trick Falstaff to punish him for his mischievous ways and to eventually expose him to the townsfolk. Which, when done, doesn’t really seem to bother him. A legitimate side love-story between Anne Page and Fenton is thrown in to give it all happy ending.

I’m way too fond of the Falstaff in Henry...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Matthew Guerruckey rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Against such lewdsters and their lechery
Those that betray them do no treachery."

The Merry Wives of Windsor was, according to legend, written at the specific request of Queen Elizabeth I, who enjoyed the character Sir John Falstaff so much in Shakespeare's drama's that she wanted to see him let loose in a comedy. It's not hard to see why--Falstaff is a boisterous, engaging character, one of the most vibrant you'll find in Shakespeare's canon.

And the play built around his personality is just as...more

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Jun 25, 2012 Paul Frandano rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: the-bard, re-read, drama

Not top drawer Shakespeare, but an interesting curiosity nonetheless, albeit one that infuriates Falstaff cultists (read Harold Bloom and acolytes) wont to refer to the principal character as the "faux-Falstaff" and to snipe disparagingly at the fruit of Elizabeth's legendary commission of a play depicting "Falstaff in love." Merry Wives is more interesting as the Bard's lone contemporary English play, set in nearby Windsor among contemporary Englishmen (despite the plays references to Prince Ha...more

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Jun 22, 2011 Edward rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"I have heard the chimes at midnight" - I kept looking for that quotation from MERRY WIVES (Orson Welles used it as the title of one of his films), but it's not even in the play. What is in the play are three separate situation comedy jokes that make fun of the "fat man" (Falstaff) who thinks women are irresistibly attracted to him. The "merry wives" are two married women who find this notion ludicrous but decide to amuse themselves at the fat man's expense.
The first time, to avoid being disc...more

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Sep 17, 2011 Don rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Having only read the text, and never seen it performed, it strikes me as one of Shakespeare's weaker efforts - and may have been, by some evidence, a rush job. By comparison, A COMEDY OF ERRORS is both funnier AND more serious, while one gets the sense here that in the midst of all the shenanigans there's never anything *really* at stake. (Although this was far less puzzling once I discovered that MWW is essentially a comedic addendum to the two-part HENRY IV.)

As always, of course, the Arden edi...more

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May 24, 2011 Mark Schnell rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this, then watched the BBC production, to see what nuances I might have missed, even after perusing the copious footnotes that seem to take up half the page in any annotated play of Shakespeare.

I watched the BBC version, and the thing that struck me the most was that the comedic center of gravity of the play wasn't Falstaff at all, though the actor who played him was excellent. Rather, it was Mr. Ford, the obsessively jealous husband of WW I. (That's "Windsor Wife One", not World War I....more

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Apr 22, 2013 Don Incognito rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, owned

Before anything, one interested in reading The Merry Wives of Windsor for the first time might want to to note that Sir John Falstaff appears in multiple plays (none of which are related to The Merry Wives) and to note where this Falstaff play falls in their mini-chronology.
Falstaff appears in Merry Wives and Henry IV (parts I and II), and is mentioned in Henry V; and several characters associated with Falstaff appear in Henry V. In Henry V, Falstaff is said to have died; but in Merry Wives, Fal...more Before anything, one interested in reading The Merry Wives of Windsor for the first time might want to to note that Sir John Falstaff appears in multiple plays (none of which are related to The Merry Wives) and to note where this Falstaff play falls in their mini-chronology.
Falstaff appears in Merry Wives and Henry IV (parts I and II), and is mentioned in Henry V; and several characters associated with Falstaff appear in Henry V. In Henry V, Falstaff is said to have died; but in Merry Wives, Falstaff is the central character and is very much alive.

...

I notice that many call The Merry Wives of Windsor Shakespeare's most "bourgeois" play. That's probably true, because it's a play about middle-class life that is steeped in the values of Christendom; but it's also true that "bourgeois" is an insult that snotty critics use in scoffing at the play for not being avant-garde. So it's a play mostly about two married women wanting to punish a sleazy nobleman for making a pathetic attempt to seduce them, with a subplot about whether a young woman with multiple suitors should marry for money or for love. How "bourgeois"--right? If critics don't like the play mainly for that reason, I've no sympathy.
In reading this play, I felt definite similarities between and another (obviously superior) Shakespearean play--The Merchant of Venice. But I also notice how diverse Shakespeare's comedies are: the last Shakespearean comedy I read was Love's Labour's Lost, and Love's Labour's Lost is so completely different from Merry Wives in every way that it feels like different people wrote them.

I was amused by the last two acts, but I can see the weaknesses and limitations of this play as well as anyone:

-Many gratuitious--and, frankly, stupid--puns and malapropisms that accomplish nothing but to confuse the reader.

-Linguistic and possibly ethnic stereotypes. I'm not familiar with the Welsh accent, but Shakespeare continually stereotypes it (in Hugh Evans) for humor. It's not funny. Much more annoying is Caius, allegedly a French doctor. His accent, a combination of stereotypes of French, German and Italian accents, is so absurd that I wonder whether Shakespeare had ever met a Frenchman or knew much about their accents. I can only suppose Caius is meant to be a stereotype, generating humor from audiences' possible disdain for the French. He might have entertained them, but not me.

-Falstaff. I have not read Henry IV yet, but I understand that the John Falstaff there is a famously witty and much-loved Shakespearean character. In The Merry Wives...not. This Falstaff, much older, is a sleazy satyr with a tendency to casually observe how fat he is (which probably made sense then because people saw obesity as indicating prosperity). There's nothing entertaining about him, only in the repeated humiliating pranks the two married women visit on him to teach him a lesson. (There are three incidents. There really should have been more, not so much because I like to see Falstaff humiliated as that punishing Falstaff for his lust toward married women is supposed to be the play's main focus.) Falstaff is even less entertaining than Caius, whom the reader can laugh at for being absurd.

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Jan 14, 2013 Leslie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: plays, humor

While I enjoyed the overall plot, I found the language particularly difficult in this play especially the Welsh Sir Hugh and the French doctor Caius. I also had a few formatting issues with my copy, which is part of the Kindle version of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare from Project Gutenberg.

I think that this play would be a good candidate for modernization, as Shakespeare's eye for human nature is keen and the basic motivations in this play are still as valid today as when it was writ...more

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Sep 26, 2009 Brins added it · review of another edition

One man of high social standing.
Two women, both married, each to a different duke.
The man wants both of them, but they're wise to his double dealing and are game for a laugh. Will the man survive their practical jokes or will he end up being pinched by faeries?

While all this is happening, a French doctor challenges a Welsh priest to a sword duel... but both turn up to different places and miss each other!

And in the end, true love will shine through the madness... but not from any of the above ch...more

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May 09, 2012 Andrew Wright rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

This might be the worst Shakespeare play I've yet read. It was just a fairly typical Elizabethan comedy without all the typical flair and vitality that makes plays likes Twelfth Night, As You Like It and Much Ado About Nothing so amazing. The play focuses on Falstaff, and yet, it's nowhere near as funny as the much more serious Henry IV plays. I can completely believe the legend that this play was written specifically because Queen Elizabeth was so taken with the character of Falstaff that she w...more

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Jan 29, 2012 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: plays

By the time I was about halfway through The Merry Wives of Windsor, I was pretty sure that I was not going to come away from this play feeling too impressed. I'm glad I stuck with it, though, because everything came together in the end, and ultimately I'd give this play 3.5 stars.

Unlike some of Shakespeare's other comedies that I've read, this one did actually make me laugh in places. The characters all seemed perfectly believable and realistic to me, and, much to my surprise, the ending of the...more

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Nov 03, 2009 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I haven't read Shakespeare in a long time and it was nice to do so when I didn't have to for a class. I mostly enjoyed reading this book because I was able to draw comparisons between our sense of humor now and then. It seems some things are always funny - especially witty word plays and rhymes, when a bully gets his comeuppance, and of course the good old standbys like sex jokes, funny accents, and men dressed in drag. It was also nice to read Shakespeare and not have all the characters die tra...more

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Jun 06, 2013 Liza Palmer rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This play would probably be a lot of fun to see in the theater - I know that. I know that it's just a fun, bawdy romp and and and...

But, if you didn't like Falstaff the first time, Merry Wives is going to be a chore. And I didn't like Falstaff the first time.

Legend has it, that Queen Elizabeth loved the character and wanted him brought back - real legend has it that she said she wanted to see a play of "Falstaff in love." Urban legends all, but maybe?

So here we are in Pirates of the Caribbean...more

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Feb 16, 2012 Sadie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I always like reading a Shakespeare play. They are fairly short. They are entertaining. And they make me feel smart. Win-win-win. I especially like reading the comedies. Even more, I like reading ones I know little or nothing about, which is why I think I enjoyed the Merry Wives of Windsor so much. It was light-hearted, fairly predictable but still clever. I always love Shakespeare's ability to playfully deceive the "bad guys" in the comedies. This was no exception. And nice to be able to read a...more

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Dec 20, 2012 Anne Nikoline rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: fans of Shakespeare

Recommended to Anne Nikoline by: no one

Shelves: classics, read-in-2012, theatre-and-plays, love-or-romance, 16th-century

Despise the fact that The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare is not one of my favourite works of the author, the language, monologues and dialogues are still magnificent. That said I do not think any book, play or poem can manage on the writing style alone.

Instead of getting into details about what I disliked about this specific play, I would rather write about the things which I think worked. For example there are strong characters, especially the ones with French of Welsh accents....more

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Jul 23, 2011 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: shakespeare, plays

The version I read was plain text, not annotated. Lots of jokes over my head here.

Lots of others, however, did not; and it's a great play. While many think that this play is undeserving of Falstaff, I find that here he reaches a supreme level of comedy, the kind of cruel comedy that is both funny yet moves us to pity, such as Lazarillo de Tormes, Don Quixote, and Malvolio. These characters show us ourselves (striving, selfish, low, weak, decidedly unheroic), yet also repulse us. It's a great ach...more

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Apr 08, 2009 Nicholas Whyte added it · review of another edition

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1151487.html[return][return]I enjoyed this much more than I had expected to, and indeed I enjoyed the end more than the rather slow start. It must be the closest Shakespeare gets to slapstick humour, with Falstaff getting covered in dirty laundry, dumped in the Thames, forced to disguise himself as an old woman, beaten up by the husband of one of the women he is pursuing, and then humiliated by a flock of fake fairies. I would love to see it on stage: the audio can't r...more

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Sep 23, 2007 Núria rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2007, prestados, literatura-en-ingles, teatro, edad-moderna, 2-ni-fu-ni-fa

Como me pasa con la mayoría de las comedias de Shakespeare, ésta me dejó algo fría. Falstaff no está tan ingenioso y tan cachondo como era de esperar, y como no sale ningún noble/poderoso no se puede reír de ellos en sus narices, que en el fondo es lo que mola de Falstaff y lo hace grande. Los personajes de las dos mujeres casadas a las que Falstaff tira los tejos tienen su punto. Son inteligentes, todo lo independientes que podían ser las mujeres en aquella época, quieren a sus maridos y quiere...more

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Dec 13, 2011 Lauren rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have made it my mission to read one Shakespeare play (from my massve book of his collected works!!) between each book I read...and I'm enjoying it, so far. I've always liked Shakspeare, but now that I'm a bit older I have a newfound appreciation for him, and the fact that his work is still relevant today. However, of the ones I have read, this has been my least favourite. I enjoyed it a little more in the last couple of acts, but I actually found this one more of a difficulty to read than a pl...more

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William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been tr...more William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. Scholars believe that he died on his fifty-second birthday, coinciding with St George’s Day. It is an interesting idea that English writer is so closely identified with the Patron Saint of England!

At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.

Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

According to historians, Shakespeare write 37 plays and 154 sonnets throughout the span of his life. Shakespeare's writing average was 1.5 plays a year since he first started writing in 1589. There have been plays and sonnets attributed to Shakespeare that were not authentically written by the great master of language and literature.
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“Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues
Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.” — 8 people liked it

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