The Merry Wives of Windsor (Oxford World's Classics)

Rating:
Summary: Good Cast Make Bad Play Bearable
Review: "The Merry Wives of Windsor" is one of Shakespeare's worst plays. It lacks the sharp wit of many of his other comedies, tending for low puns all the way through. The situations are ridiculous. Is Falstaff in a laundry hamper, or sitting in the woods and being prodded by children, funny? Of course, the Elizabethans liked bear-baiting (mentioned in the play). And Shakespeare seemed to want this play to be particularly funny for making fun of Welsh and French accents.

What raises this recording is the cast, particularly Michael Hordern's Ford. Ford is a bitter, jealous character, who actually believes his wife might have a dalliance with the physically repulsive Falstaff. But Hordern's befuddled jealousy actually make thankless lines funny. Anthony Quayle, a very good actor, blusters too much as Falstaff, but it must be difficult to represent Falstaff in sound alone and so that's excusable.

The problems with the play are Shakespeare's. He starts a lot of things he doesn't explore (such as the bizarre horse-stealing episode) and there are too many characters to keep up with comfortably unless one follows along with the text the first time through. But if you need to get through and understand "The Merry Wives" for whatever reason, listening to this fine cast and skimming along with the text is the most enjoyable way to do it.

Rating:
Summary: Not hilarious, but very funny!
Review: Allright. Maybe as far as the comedies go, I was spoiled by the exquisite comical masterpiece "The Comedy of Errors." But this is without a doubt my 2nd favorite comedy. I can not help but simultaneously laugh and feel sorry for poor Ford when he suspects his wife is interested in Falstaff and goes into his jealous rages. One scene I could not forget if I tried is when Ford feels bad for suspecting his wife, is humiliated in front of everyone, and apologizes.Only a bit later he finds his wife was with Falstaff and she has another arranged meeting with him! But this is only a small part of the many laughs that await. Shakespeare only had a few days to write this play, but this shows that even under pressure he wrote great!

Rating:
Summary: One of my favourites with Falstaff
Review: I certainly don't agree with many of the reviews of this play. To me it is one of Shakespeare's funniest. I truly enjoyed it. One of my favourite Shakespearean characters is Falstaff, and he appears in a number of Shakespeare's comedies. He makes an appearance in this one, and he is wonderful. The scene of this play is in Windsor, England. The play follows the merry wives in their interactions with their husbands and with their families and servants. This play is unique too, because we see Falstaff in love in this one. This may be one of Shakespeare's lesser known comedies, but it should be read and enjoyed. Don't let some of these reviews stop you from the sheer enjoyment of this play.

Rating:
Summary: a comedy that is actually funny
Review: i've just finished reading/watching all of shakespeare's comedies and mww is one of the funnier ones. it is a lighthearted look at marital jealousy and features one of shakespeare's great fools, falstaff (of henry iv fame). the out-and-out funniest shakepearean play is still "taming of the shrew", imho, but mwv runs well ahead of the laggards, and certainly well ahead of such better known plays as "twelfth night" and "as you like it".

Rating:
Summary: Falstaff fallshard
Review: Legend has it that the Queen herself commissioned the writing of this play, saying she wished to see a comedy in which Falstaff, her favorite character from the histories, falls in love. Shakespeare, naturally, did a masterful job, crafting not only a comedy with plenty of belly laughs in it (literally), but also a play about women in power for the ultimate woman in power.

I saw this play performed recently and it brought home to me how much it really is about the character of Mrs. Hood. She is written to be a sexually powerful, or powerfully sexual, character. Powerful enough to justify her husband's jealousy despite her trustworthiness -- for if we are to receive him as one of the "good guys", we must be able to sympathize with him. Powerful enough to justify Falstaff's return again and again. He is a fool, but a lovable fool, so again we need to be able to sympathize.
This is not Britney Spears sexuality. This is Mae West/Marilyn Monroe sexuality. The kind where she could be doing the most vulgar thing -- eating a cheeseburger, for instance -- and the men around her are still aroused. And she is in full control of it, even as it causes chaos in the men around her. If an actress can bring this to the role, this play sings, it swings, it sparkles and flies. If this is missing, if she is simply a normal woman, the counterpart of Mrs. Whatever, the jokes are strained, the pacing slow and the whole thing feels a bit washed up.

Rating:
Summary: Witty & Fun
Review: Shakespeare, considering he wrote this little gem of a comedy in a mere 14 days for the Virgin Queen, pulls off a play that proves both witty and fun. Unequivocally, The Merry Wives of Windsor makes for a more enjoyable play if seen live. Nonetheless, reading it is the 2nd best thing.

Sir John Falstaff is once again such a fool - but a lovable and hilarious one at that. Having read Henry V - where Falstaff ostensibly had met his end - I was pleased to see him so alive(pardon the pun) in this short, albeit clever play. It is no surprise that The Merry Wives of Windsor enjoyed such a long and successful stage run during Shakespeare's day and continues to be one of his most popularly staged plays. Recommended as a fun break from the more serious and murderous Shakespearean tragedies.

"Why, then the world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open." - Pistol

Rating:
Summary: Shakespeare's FUNNIEST play!!!!
Review: This is definitely Shakespeare's funniest play. This play doesn't have the great quotes or great drama or great romance or any great meaning, but it is just simply hilarious. Sir John Falstaff is one of the greatest comedic characters in all of literature and does not disappoint in this play.

'The Merchant of Venice' is great if you are looking for a 'Comedy' with meaning and social significance, but if you simply want to laugh your butt off you have to read 'The Merry Wives of Windsor'.

Rating:
Summary: Merry Wives of Windsor:
Review: When rating Shakespeare, I am rating it against other Shakespeare; otherwise, the consistent 4-5 stars wouldn't tell you much. So if you want to know how this book rates against the general selection of books in the world, I suppose it might rate four stars; it certainly rates three. The language, as usual in Shakespeare, is beautiful. Still, it's far from Shakespeare's best.

For one thing, this is one of those cases, not uncommon in Shakespeare's comedies, in which the play has suffered a great deal by the changes in the language since Shakespeare's time; it loses a great deal of the humor inherent in a play when the reader needs to keep checking the footnotes to see what's happening, and this play, particularly the first half of it, virtually can't be read without constant reference to the notes; even with them, there's frequently a question as to what's being said. At least in the edition that I read (the Dover Thrift edition) the notes frequently admit that there's some question as to the meaning of the lines, and there is mention of different changes in them in different folios.

But beyond this, as an overweight, balding, middle-aged libertine, I object to the concept that Falstaff is ridiculous just because he is in fact unwilling to concede that it is impossible that a woman could want him. Granted, he's NOT particularly attractive, but that has more to do with his greed, his callousness, and his perfect willingness to use people for his own ends, to say nothing of his utter lack of subtlety.

Is it truly so funny that an older, overweight man might attempt to find a dalliance? So funny that the very fact that he does so leaves him open to being played for the fool? Remember, it isn't as though he refused to take "no" for an answer; he never GOT a "no". He was consistently led on, only to be tormented for his audacity. Nor is he making passes at a nubile young girl; the target of his amorous approaches is clearly herself middle-aged; after all, she is the MOTHER of a nubile young marriageable girl. And given the fact that she is married to an obnoxious, possessive, bullying and suspicious husband, it is not at all unreasonable for Falstaff to think that she might be unhappy enough in her marriage to accept a dalliance with someone else.

If laughing at fat old men who have the audacity not to spend the last twenty years of their lives with sufficient dignity to make it seem as if they were dead already is your idea of a good time, you should love this play. I'll pass.