SOURCE: “Pastoral and Parody in The Merry Wives of Windsor,” in English Studies in Canada, Vol. XI, No. 1, March, 1985, pp. 12-25.

In the following essay, Slights examines the community of The Merry Wives of Windsor and contends that the humiliation of Falstaff “forces him to bow to social pressures and prepares him to understand and accept his place within the society.”

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, and trempling of mind: I shall be glad if he have deceived me. How melancholies I am! I will knog his urinals about his knave's costard when...