Ruth Leon recommends… The Merry Wives of Windsor – Stratford Shakespeare Festival

The Merry Wives of Windsor – Stratford Shakespeare Festival

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Alone among all his fantasies, histories, comedies, and tragedies, Shakespeare only wrote one play that was set in his own time, in a real place, peopled by those who were, or could have been, his neighbours and friends. It turned out to be his only true “modern-dress” play.

The Merry Wives of Windsor, an affectionate picture of contemporary Elizabethan English middle-class life, was written, it is said, at the request of Queen Elizabeth 1 who, having enjoyed Henry 1V, Part One, asked for another play featuring his larger-than-life character, Sir John Falstaff, preferably about Falstaff in love. Obviously, a request from the monarch has the force of a royal command and what Elizabeth wants, Elizabeth gets.

In Merry Wives, Falstaff is pursuing two respectably married women at the same time, failing to anticipate that the ladies will, quite literally, compare notes. Nor does he reckon on the mischievous spirit in which the wives will use their wits and wiles to teach him the error of his ways.

Set in the 1950s, in a town not unlike Stratford, Ontario, this 2019 Antoni Cimolino   production from Canada’s renowned Stratford Festival brings Shakespeare’s rollicking comedy close to home – and close to our hearts.

It stars Geraint Wyn Davies  as Falstaff with Sophia Walker and Brigit Wilson as Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, the targets of Falstaff’s seduction plans. 

Shakespeare critics have long been sniffy about the literary quality of Merry Wives but, played well, by good comic actors, it’s a riot and not to be dismissed as ‘minor’ Shakespeare.

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