The Merry Wives of Windsor - Date and Text

Date and Text

The play's date of composition is unknown; it was registered for publication in 1602, but was probably several years old by that date. Textual allusions to the Order of the Garter at Windsor Castle (5.5. 69–72) suggest that the play may have been intended for performance in April 1597, prior to the installation at Windsor in May of the Knights-Elect of that order; if so, it was probably performed when Elizabeth I attended Garter Feast on 23 April. Katherine Duncan-Jones points out that this was the year Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, was admitted to the Order and that, as a patron of Shakespeare's playing company The Lord Chamberlain's Men he could have commissioned the play for performance that evening. This is not incompatible with the popular notion that Elizabeth herself had wished to see "Falstaff in love"; Hunsdon was well placed to pass on the queen's wishes to his players. A more direct explanation comes from the epilogue to Henry IV, Part 2, which promises to "continue the story, with Sir John in it". Sir John does not appear in Henry V, so Merry Wives was written to make good on the pledge.

The Garter theory is only speculation, but it is corroborated by a story first recorded by John Dennis in 1702 and Nicholas Rowe in 1709: that Shakespeare was commanded to write the play by Queen Elizabeth, who wanted to see "Falstaff in love". However, that such a story was first recorded one hundred years later – in the same year in which Dennis had made an adaptation of Merry Wives – makes it unreliable.

Support for the Garter theory is divided. If it is correct, it would mean that Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor between Henry IV part 1 and part 2. Critics have trouble believing this because of all the inconsistencies that appear between the Henry plays and Merry Wives. For example, there are no references to any of the major events from Falstaff's fifteenth-century exploits from the history plays, such as the rebellion (Henry IV part 1 & 2), in Merry Wives.

18 January 1602 was the date the play was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company. The first quarto was published later that year, in an inferior text, by bookseller Arthur Johnson. It was published in a second quarto in 1619, as part of William Jaggard's False Folio; the superior First Folio text followed in 1623.

The title page of Q1 states that the play was acted by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, "Both before Her Majesty, and elsewhere." The earliest known performance occurred on 4 November 1604, at Whitehall Palace. The play is also known to have been performed on 15 November 1638, at the Cockpit in Court.

The play alludes to a German duke, who is generally thought to be Frederick I, Duke of Württemberg, who had visited England in 1592 and was elected to the Order of the Garter in 1597 (and who was eventually only installed in Stuttgart on 6 November 1603).

There is an indication that Falstaff in Merry Wives was originally called Sir John Oldcastle, as was true of Falstaff in the Henry IV plays. See: Sir John Oldcastle and Sir John Fastolf.