SOURCE: "Falstaff and Ford: Forming and Reforming," in The Metamorphoses of Shakespearean Comedy, Princeton University Press, 1985, pp. 183-201.

In the excerpt that follows, Carroll examines Falstaff's alteration in The Merry Wives of Windsor from what he was in the history plays. Carroll also emphasizes the role of deception in the play as the wives deceive the aging Falstaff and as both Falstaff and the jealous Ford deceive themselves.

We should count ourselves fortunate that Shakespeare places the same character [Falstaff] in two quite different genres, in history play and comedy, instead of bemoaning the fact that Falstaff does not forever remain what he was in the great tavern scene in [Henry IV] Part One. Say a day without the ever. The comedies remake time by embracing metamorphosis, and, given that, Falstaff must eventually find himself in another land; in The Merry Wives of Windsor, in a relentlessly middle-class...