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- Introduction
delusions. Yet, as the vanity of being thought accept-
able to the other sex is one of the last that men get rid
of, the author would naturally be led to paint Falstaff ,
in the perilous adventures to which he had destined
him, as being still of an age (however ridiculous his
courtship would seem to Mrs. Page and Mrs. Ford) to
be yet liable to the delusions of personal vanity, and
exposed to its attendant mortifications. He is of
course made to take his last lesson of experience in
that matter, before settling down into the lazy luxury
of the Boar's Head. He is accordingly, though sub-(
stantially the same character, made more of a viva-
cious, dissolute old boy, and less of the sagacious;
Epicurean wit, than he appears in Henry IV. We{
have, then, only to imagine an indefinite interval of
two or three years, during which Pistol and Bardolph
return to their old service, and Mrs. Quickly removes
from the quiet shades of Windsor to the more con-
genial atmosphere of a London tavern, and nothing is
wanted to make the whole consistent and probable."
Hartley Coleridge, in his Essays and Marginalia,
remarks : " That Queen Bess should have desired to
see Falstaff making love proves her to have been, as
she was, a gross-minded old baggage. Shakespeare
has evaded the difficulty with great skill. He knew
that Falstaff could not be in love, and has mixed
but a little, a very little, pruritus with his fortune-
hunting courtship. But the Falstaff of the Merry
Wives is not the Falstaff of Hefiry IV. It is a big-
MERRY WIVES — 2
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