SOURCE: Roberts, Jeanne Addison. “The Play: Suitably Shallow but Neither Simple nor Slender.” In Shakespeare's English Comedy: The Merry Wives of Windsor in Context, pp. 61-83. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979.

In the essay below, Roberts reviews the plot, themes, and characters of The Merry Wives of Windsor, challenging the fact that the play is often classified, and subsequently dismissed, as farce.

Most modern critics who discuss Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor at all, sooner or later describe it as farcical, or a farce.¹ At best the terms are used with a note of condescension or apology, and at worst they are scathing. The farcical label seems to date back to Hartley Coleridge, who sets the tone for the more favorable category of comments by saying in 1851 that though the “plot is rather farcical … it is exceedingly diverting.”² The negative attitude is best represented by A. C...