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- 1 8 Merry Wives of Windsor
bellied impostor, assuming his name and style, or,
at best, it is Falstaff in dotage. The Mrs. Quickly
of Windsor is not mine hostess of the Boar's Head ;
but she is a very pleasant, busy, good-natured, un-
principled old woman, whom it is impossible to be
angry with. Shallow should not have left his seat
in Gloucestershire and his magisterial duties. Ford's
jealousy is of too serious a complexion for the rest
of the play. The merry wives are a delightful pair.
Methinks I see them, with their comely, middle-aged
visages, their dainty white ruffs and toys, their half-
witch-like conic hats, their full farthingales, their
neat though not over-slim waists, their housewifely
keys, their girdles, their sly laughing looks, their apple-
red cheeks, their brows the lines whereon look more
like the work of mirth than years. And sweet Anne
Page — she is a pretty little creature whom one would
like to take on one's knee." It is noteworthy that
Maurice Morgann, in his essay on Falstaff, avoids the
Merry Wives.
Whether Shakespeare found his plot in Italian or
other literature, the play is thoroughly English. " It
* smells April and May,' like Fenton. It has the
bright healthy country air all through it: Windsor
Park with its elms, the glad light-green of its beeches,
its ferns, and deer. There is coursing and hawking,
Datchet Mead, and the silver Thames, and though not
• The white feet of laughing gids
Whose sires have marched to Rome,'
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