SOURCE: "Ritual and Folk Custom in The Merry Wives of Windsor," in Cahiers Elisabethains, Vol. 27, April, 1985, pp. 27-41.

Below, Gallenca details the role of folklore and ritual in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and asserts that the play "is based on those rituals which . . . celebrate the passage from Winter to Spring, from death to life. "

Ambiguity seems essential to The Merry Wives of Windsor [MW]¹; it is an extension of the ambiguity of the previous play, Henry IV. Traditionally viewed as a comedy rapidly composed in response to Queen Elizabeth's desire to see Falstaff in love (the legend d ies hard), MW has been considered as a series of scenes with no real plot, or alternatively as the juxtaposition of three separate plots.² The most indulgent critics have stressed the dominant position of the farcical elements³and the discomfiture of Falstaff, a figure of fun⁴ in which scarcely...