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- 14 Merry Wives of Windsor
Fiorentino ; and '' The Fishwife's Tale of Brainford "
from Westward for Smelts. This last, however, was
probably not published till 1620, though Malone refers
to an edition of 1603.
General Comments on the Play
The critics have wasted much ink and ingenuity in
trying to decide at what point in the career of Falstaff
these Windsor adventures belong ; but, as already sug-
gested, we may consider the comedy as having a certain
independence of the histories and not to be brought
into chronological relations to them. As White re-
marks, "Shakespeare was not writing biography, even
the biography of his own characters. He was a poet,
but he wrote as a playwright ; and the only consistency
to which he held himself, or can be held by others, is
the consistency of dramatic interest."
If we are to make a connected and consistent biog-
raphy of Sir John out of the four plays, there is no
alternative but to adopt the hypothesis of those critics
who put the Windsor exploits before all the other experi-
ences of the knight recorded by Shakespeare. Eliza-
beth may have induced the poet to write a play " with
Sir' John in it " in the role she proposed, but after com-
paring the new Sir John with the old we are constrained
to say " this is not the man." At some uncertain period
before we meet him in Eastcheap he may indeed have
been capable of such fatuity, but he was too old a bird
then to be caught with the chaff of the merry wives.
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