SOURCE: "Women," in Twayne's New Critical Introductions to Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twayne Publishers, 1991, pp. 17-34.

In the following essay, White examines the males ' attitudes toward women in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and contends that Shakespeare gives his female characters more autonomy than other dramatists of his time.

Just as there is a confrontation between insiders and outsiders in Windsor, so there is a more underground battle waged between women and men. As the men try to organise even affairs of the heart in a commerciallyminded way, so the women work hard to subvert such practices. Various revenges are carried out in the play, as the critic Linda Anderson has stressed, and at the most general level these may be interpreted as revenges of women against men. Just as disruptive outsiders must first be punished and then accommodated, so must men be punished by...