The Merry Wives of Windsor

The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff. Though nominally set in reign of Henry IV, the play make no pretence to exist in outside contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life. It has been adapted for the opera on occasions.

Read more about The Merry Wives Of WindsorSources, Date and Text, Characters, Synopsis, Performance, Themes, Criticism, Adaptations and Cultural References

Famous quotes containing the words merry and/or wives:

    And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think. And so on for all the other things which made merry with my senses. Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named.
    Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)

    To impose celibacy on such a large body as the clergy of the Catholic Church is not to forbid it to have wives but to order it to be content with the wives of others.
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)