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- Introduction
yet those of stout, bare-legged, bare-armed English
wenches plying their washing-trade. There 's a healthy
moral as well : * Wives may be merry and yet honest
too.' The lewd court hanger-on, whose wit always
mastered men, is outwitted and routed by Windsor
wives " (Furnivall).
Charles Cowden-Clarke, in similar vein, remarks:
" The Merry Wives of Windsor is one of those delight-
fully happy plays of Shakespeare, beaming with sun-
shine and good-humour, that makes one feel the better,
the lighter, and the happier for having seen or read it.
It has a superadded charm, too, from the scene being
purely English; and we all know how rare and how
precious English sunshine is, both literally and meta-
phorically. The Merry Wives may be designated the
' sunshine ' of domestic life, as the As You Like It is
the ' sunshine ' of romantic life. The out-door character
that pervades both plays gives to them their tone of
buoyancy and enjoyment, and true holiday feeHng. We
have the meeting of Shallow and Slender and Page in
the streets of Windsor, who saunter on, chatting of the
' fallow greyhound,' and of his being * outrun on Cot-
sail ' ; and, still strolling on, they propose the match
between Slender and ' sweet Anne Page.' Then Anne
brings wine out of doors to them ; though her father,
with the genuine feeling of old English hospitality,
presses them to come into his house, and enjoy it with
a 'hot venison pasty to dinner.' And she afterwards
comes out into the garden to bid Master Slender to
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