SOURCE: "Ritual and Folk Custom in The Merry Wives of Windsor," in Cahiers Elisabethains, Vol. 27, April, 1985, pp. 27-41.
Below, Gallenca details the role of folklore and ritual in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and asserts that the play "is based on those rituals which . . . celebrate the passage from Winter to Spring, from death to life. "
Ambiguity seems essential to The Merry Wives of Windsor [MW]1; it is an extension of the ambiguity of the previous play, Henry IV. Traditionally viewed as a comedy rapidly composed in response to Queen Elizabeth's desire to see Falstaff in love (the legend d ies hard), MW has been considered as a series of scenes with no real plot, or alternatively as the juxtaposition of three separate plots.2 The most indulgent critics have stressed the dominant position of the farcical elements3and the discomfiture of Falstaff, a figure of fun4 in which scarcely any trace remains of the truculent knight who played such an important part in Henry IV.
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