The Merry Wives of Windsor

by William Shakespeare

Overview

It is said that Queen Elizabeth I was so eager to see The Merry Wives of Windsor acted that she gave Shakespeare 14 days to finish it. Here the greatly popular, lovable rogue Sir John Falstaff is brought back from his death in Henry V.

A Shakespeare Recording Society Production.

The complete play in five acts.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940000752449
Publisher:	B&R Samizdat Express
Publication date:	02/29/2000
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	286 KB

About the Author

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.

Barbara A. Mowat is Director of Research emerita at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Consulting Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, and author of The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s Romances and of essays on Shakespeare’s plays and their editing.

Paul Werstine is Professor of English at the Graduate School and at King’s University College at Western University. He is a general editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare and author of Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare and of many papers and articles on the printing and editing of Shakespeare’s plays.

Date of Death:

2018

Place of Birth:

Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom

Place of Death:

Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom

Read an Excerpt

Act 1 Scene 1 running scene 1
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Merry Wives of Windsor"
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Copyright © 2006 William Shakespeare.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
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Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: the date and first occasion of the play; The world of the play; Some moments in the play; The play on the stage; Recent critical and stage interpretations; Note on the text; List of characters; THE PLAY; Textual analysis; Reading list.

Editorial Reviews

Wells does truly admirable work in her edition of The Merry Wives of Windsor . . . [her edition] will be wonderfully informative and illuminating for undergraduates, graduate students, and educated readers alike. . . . Wells provides wonderful discussions of the play's performance history and its film history . . . [as well as] a masterful discussion of how to read the play as performance.”
—W. Reginald Rampone Jr., South Carolina State University, in Sixteenth Century Journal
 

From the Publisher