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The Merry Wives of Windsor is not one of Shakespeare's most critically analyzed plays. Although audiences in Shakespeare's times have been described as enjoying this comedy, critics over the years have tended to ignore it for the most part, calling it inferior to Shakespeare's other comedies. However, this comedy is unique in that it is the only one of Shakespeare's comedies set in England from the first scene to the last.

Andrew Dickson, writing in his book The Rough Guide to Shakespeare calls The Merry Wives of Windsor a ''subtly crafted and often genuinely funny play.'' He goes on to describe the play as one that ''portrays a bustling, vivid tapestry of small-town life'' in Shakespeare's time. Dickson states that Shakespeare avoided the ''hard-bitten, satirical genre'' of comedy that focused on a more cynical slice of life in the bigger city, such as London, and instead exposed a softer tone in this play, one that Dickson refers to ''as suburban in tone.''

Of the wives in this play, Dickson describes them in this way: ''They are as well equipped to deal with Ford's jealousy as they are to neutralize Sir John.'' Dickson continues: ''While allowing Ford's ludicrous suspicions to build, they [the wives] engineer a scene in which both men are shown up to be the fools they really are.'' In conclusion, Dickson analyzes the plot by stating that ''if the comic community of The Merry Wives is to heal its wounds, Shakespeare suggests, Falstaff needs not just to be thrown out but to be utterly humiliated.'' In other words, ''if the wives are to prove themselves'' as true merry wives, then ''the duper needs to be duped.''

Maurice Charney, writing in his All of Shakespeare states that this play is ''more convincingly redolent of town life in Elizabethan England than anything else that Shakespeare wrote.'' As evidence of this, Charney points out how Page invites everyone in for a meal at the beginning of the play, and Mistress Page invites everyone in to a feast at the end of the play, demonstrating the genuine sense of community at the time this play was written, especially in small town locations such as Windsor was then. However, Charney chides the wives in this play, stating that they ''are not so merry as we expect them to be, in fact, they are distinctly smug, moralistic, and self-satisfied. Their animus against Falstaff is excessive and they are constantly asserting their virtue in a priggish fashion.''

Norrie Epstein, writing in her book, The Friendly Shakespeare, likens The Merry Wives of Windsor to an episode of I Love Lucy for its comedic routine. Then Epstein writes: ''There's nothing heavy-handed about this play; it celebrates the solid domestic virtues of thrift, marital fidelity, and good humor. It's one of those plays that work better in performance than on the page, since it's filled with sight gags and spoken humor, including outrageous accents and bawdy malapropisms, that are hilarious on stage.'' In an attempt to demonstrate how comical this play is, as Epstein writes, Terry Hands, a director of the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, in a 1985 production of the play, decided to set the play in more modern circumstances, bringing it up to a 1950s suburban location. ''Hands wasn't simply trying to jazz up an old play. His interpretation, as critics pointed out, is closer to Shakespeare's intention.'' In doing this, Hands gave his audience a chance to ''immediately comprehend Shakespeare's jibes at middle-class snobbery and the characters' provincialism, and experience what an Elizabethan viewer might have felt when he saw the play. In this case Hands didn't modernize the play in order to shock, humor, or patronize the audience, but to make it comprehensible--and funny.''

Bibliography:

1) Charney,Maurice, All of Shakespeare,Columbia University Press, 1993.

2) Dickson, Andrew, The Rough Guide to Shakespeare, Rough Guides, 2005.

3) Epstein, Norrie, The Friendly Shakespeare, PenguinBooks, 1993.

4) Shakespeare, William, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Gramercy Books, 1995.

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