Reviews for The Merry Wives of Windsor

The average rating for The Merry Wives of Windsor based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-09-07 00:00:00 Jeron German Okay, I finished it. After all these years, the only Shakespeare play I could never get interested in is finally completed. I read every word of it, and I am sure I'll never read it again. It's not that bad, really--if you like bedroom farces punched up with dialect humor, second-rate puns and third-rate malapropisms. I found it pretty dreary, and the humor of Falstaff--which I looked forward to as a small refreshing pool in the middle of all this sand--is a pale shadow of his wit in Henry IV.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-06-02 00:00:00 Andrew Lindsten This is Sir John Falstaff's play; it was a chance for Shakespeare to pad out one of his most popular characters and give him another comic moment. And he failed completely. So when Shakespeare wrote this he focused on this one character, and as a result the rest of the play suffered. The cast were all mere plot devices, a means for Falstaff to arrive at his destination (the dénouement) in the woods wearing his antlers. They don't seem to have the same level of personality or depth that is often attributed to Shakespeare's characters. The wives of Windsor are rather absent for most of the play, surprisingly. Falstaff's wooing of them had very little stage time. We see the letter he sent to them both, but little else. As you can probably tell, I didn't really this. I have very few good things to say about it if any. Scholars argue that there is much of Shakespeare in this play. Indeed, things such as his application for a coat of arms in his personal life, his desire to move up the social ladder and his love of Ovid's works. But this is also true for many of Shakespeare's plays. For example, the rape scene in Titus Andronicus is lifted form Ovid. Not a bad thing of course, but I don't think it's enough to make this play worthy of note. Shakespeare was an entertainer, and this is one of his least entertaining plays. The fact that he adapted parts of Ovid doesn't change this. It's also one of his least popular plays, and I really can see why. The plot was rather dull and most of it was in prose rather than verse, so it wasn't overly pleasant to read either. This isn't a play I will read again in the future. Next on my Shakespeare list is A Midsummer's Night Dream. I'm looking forward to reading it, hopefully it will make me forget about this one!