SOURCE: "Elizabethan Merry Tales and The Merry Wives of Windsor: Shakespeare and 'Popular' Literature," in Chaucer to Shakespeare: Essays in Honour of Shinsuke Ando, edited by Toshiyuki Takamiya and Richard Beadle, D. S. Brewer, 1992, pp. 145-59.

In the essay below, Brewer discusses the connections between Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor and the popular Elizabethan genre known as "jest books " or "merry tales. "

The Merry Wives of Windsor deserves more attention than it usually receives. The play may not lend itself to obvious profound philosophising about the nature of life but enjoyment of its subject-matter and ambience is valuable in itself and prompts worthwhile if more mundane reflections on Shakespeare's mind and art.

The hitherto unrecognised seedbed of the play is that rather overlooked area of Elizabethan popular literature known generally as 'jest books', but more usually to the Elizabethans as 'merry tales'. They deserve more study not...