SOURCE: "Play and Comic Creation in The Merry Wives of Windsor," in Michigan Academy of Science, Arts & Letters, Vol. 22, No. 2, Spring, 1990, pp. 143-51.

In the following essay, Osborne assesses Jean Piaget's theories of play—as it relates to the association between drama and play in the wives' attitudes—to show how Shakespeare uses them "as a way to test the conventions, genres, and narrative paradigms which form the comic world of Windsor. "

The Merry Wives of Windsor is one of several comedies in which Shakespeare deliberately focuses on figures who attempt to control their worlds through play. Mistress Ford and Mistress Page retaliate against Falstaff s unsuitable view of them by playing with him. Moreover, their playing takes a noticeably dramatic form, both in the language the wives use to describe their actions and in the elaborate staging they devise. Given these aspects of the comedy, it is...