The Merry Wives of Windsor (Wordsworth Classics)

by WilliamShakespeare (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1995

  $3.62

  This new edition of Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor focuses at every point on a theatrical understanding of the play. While emphasising the liveliness of the play in stage terms, David Crane also claims that this citizen comedy needs to be taken much more seriously than in the past, as an expression of Shakespeare's fundamental understanding of human life, conveyed centrally in the character of Falstaff. In the process he also examines Shakespeare' free and vigorous use of different linguistic worlds within the play.

• Used

  Paperback
  1990

  $3.25

  The Merry Wives of Windsor was almost certainly required at short notice for a court occasion in 1597. Shakespeare put into it the same creative energy that went into his Henry IV plays. Falstaff is here, with Pistol, Mistress Quickly, and Justice Shallow, in a spirited citizen comedy . Boisterous action is combined with situational irony and rich characterization. In his introduction, T.W.Craik discusses the play's probable occasion (the Garter Feast of 1597 at court), its relationship to Shakespeare's English history plays and to other sources, its textual history (with particular reference to the widely diverging 1623 Folio and 1602 Quarto), and its original quality as drama. He assesses various interpretations of the play: topical, critical, and theatrical. In the commentary he pays particular attention to expounding the literal sense (he proposes some new readings) and evoking the stage business.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1995

  $3.25