SOURCE: “Shakespearean Chronology, Ideological Complicity, and Floating Texts: Something Is Rotten in Windsor,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 2, Summer, 1994, pp. 190-210.

In the following essay, Freedman suggests that The Merry Wives of Windsor's confusing mixture of dramatic genres, topical references, and historical allusions cast doubt on the argument that the play was written for a single occasion.

I warrant he hath a thousand of these letters, writ with blank space for different names (sure, more!); and these are of the second edition.

(The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2.1.74-77)

I

If at one time the literary scholar's double bind could be summed up by the conflicting imperatives “always deconstruct” and “always historicize,” at present a third command triangulates the critic's desire—always localize.¹ In the context of theory's latest turn of the screw to local history and thick description, a return to Shakespeare's last remaining so-called occasionalist play...