SOURCE: Slights, Camille Wells. “Pastoral and Parody in The Merry Wives of Windsor.” English Studies in Canada 11, no. 1 (March 1985): 12-25.

In the following essay, Slights maintains that in The Merry Wives of Windsor “the pastoral values of simplicity, humility, and fidelity are elusive and transitory but always accessible.” The critic also points out that Windsor is not like Sidney's Arcadia—a golden or green world—but is instead a retreat that combines two traditions: pastoral as a place of innocence and pastoral as a celebration of “sensual gratification.”

Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh parson in The Merry Wives of Windsor, tries to arrange Master Slender's marriage to Anne Page and in the process offends another of Anne's suitors, Doctor Caius, who challenges him to a duel. Act three finds Parson Evans waiting, with considerable trepidation, to answer the challenge:

Pless my soul, how full of chollors I am...