Windsor Humours

Abstract

The most teasing unconformity of The Merry Wives of Windsor is not an internal one but one that concerns the relation of this comedy to the other plays featuring Falstaff dead or alive, the histories of Henry IV and Henry V. The fat knight and his two hangers-on Bardolph and Pistol are outwardly in most respects the same as in the Henry IV plays. Falstaff is recognisable by his girth, his age, his addiction to sack and canary, and his empty purse — he now has to dismiss his followers to cut down his expenses, though he intends to keep his page and horses. His idiom is at times as cynically witty as in Henry IV, though just as often in The Merry Wives it tends to become literary and stilted. Pistol is the thrasonical declaimer of thumping verse, and Bardolph sports a fiery nose. But there is little direct information to connect these characters on a Windsor sojourn with Eastcheap or Prince Hal, or indeed with anything that happens in the two parts of Henry IV. They practically have no past. The nearest we come to it is their acquaintance with Justice Shallow of Gloucestershire, who pursues them for damages and restitution of stolen property. If we remember, there may be an adumbration of a quarrel between Shallow and Falstaff in 2 Henry IV, in the latter’s scornful remarks as he leaves the Justice’s house and plans to fleece him on his return.¹