The Merry Wives of Windsor (22 page)

Another strong ensemble elevated Michael Rudman’s 1990 Chichester production. Penelope Keith and Phyllida Law’s wives ran rings around Bill Maynard’s Falstaff: “one moment he is submitting to massage and pounding away on a sort of Elizabethan exercise bike, bare stomach bulging; the next, Keith’s love-tricks have reduced
him to arthritic exhaustion.”
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Northern Broadsides produced the play in 1993 and 2001, both times with Barrie Rutter directing and playing Falstaff. The conviviality and accessibility of Broadsides’ style worked in the play’s favor, whether in Conrad Nelson’s Host taking over the interval bar or through the songs that interspersed the evening. Rutter’s Falstaff was relatively unlikeable, “a beer-bellied bully sporting, at one point, an MCC tie,” while Mistress Page was “a vehement social climber, straight out of Alan Ayckbourn.”
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Comedy was generated through the recognizability of these English stereotypes.

Terry Hands’s 1995 National production was tinted by nostalgia. The set was a country haven evoking England’s rural past, which one critic commented “looked disconcertingly like a living museum, part of a Shakespeare theme-park.”
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Richard McCabe’s darkly comic Ford stood out:

Ford, in the hands of a strong actor, continued to reap rewards. At Regent’s Park in 1999, “Paul Raffield [was] a treat, eyes popping and face distorting with the effort of concealing his ludicrous jealousy.”
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In the twenty-first century, Falstaff’s prominence diminished in favor of a group dynamic. Both Michael Bodganov’s 2002 Ludlow Festival production and the celebrated 2008 version at Shakespeare’s Globe used their outdoor settings to create a participatory and convivial air, companies and audiences sharing a festival atmosphere. California Shakespeare Theater, meanwhile, opened its 2006 season with an imaginative puppet version.

Merry Wives
has enjoyed most international success in operatic adaptations, of which Verdi’s
Falstaff
(1893) is the most famous. Arrigo Boito’s plot omits several characters and makes Nanetta Ford (Anne Page) and Fenton more central. Doctor Cajus (the sole rival for
Nanetta’s love) is married to Bardolfo in the final scene’s comic climax, while Falstaff is bolstered by the insertion of material including the catechism of honor from
Henry IV Part I
. A favorite with audiences and musicians, the opera remains in the repertory of major companies worldwide.

While the opera has been filmed several times, Shakespeare’s play has received only one important screen adaptation, that for the BBC/Time Life series in 1982. Director David Jones saw the play as documentary as well as comedy, and the naturalistic set drew on Shakespeare’s Birthplace for architectural details. The all-star cast included Richard Griffiths as Falstaff, Prunella Scales and Judy Davis as a lively pair of wives, and Ben Kingsley’s Ford, whose “bustling brow-beating little man [gave] the theatrical voltage an increasing boost on every one of his increasingly welcome appearances.”
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The production intelligently realized that the closely observed class politics of small-town life was the stuff of modern British sitcoms, and was pitched accordingly.

The play’s transference to the non-English-speaking world has been relatively limited, although it premiered in Vienna as early as 1771. Hans Rothe burlesqued it as
Falstaff in Windsor
in the early 1930s, but the most interesting German production was that of Gustaf Gründgens in Berlin, 1941: “Anything crude was studiously avoided … Gründgens directed Will Dohm as Sir John to portray the memory and indication of a better self beneath that mountain of fat.”
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Overturning the received impression of the play as outright farce, the play succeeded as a comedy of character.

While its European fortunes have not been illustrious, in 1950s Japan the play was a core part of Koreya Senda’s early work for the Haiuyze (Actor’s Theatre). More recently, Yasunari Takahashi adapted the play as
The Braggart Samurai
in the Kyogen tradition, aiming “to transform the fertility of a Shakespearean forest into the simplicity of a Japanese garden.”
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Brought to London in 1991, this adaptation was praised for its intelligent reimagining within traditional Japanese class systems, demonstrating a broader cultural applicability than is often realized.

Merry Wives’
success may be qualified, but Falstaff himself remains an internationally recognizable icon, even outgrowing his
own play in translation and adaptation. The parting shots of Takahashi’s braggart samurai are perhaps the best testament to the durability of both character and play:

Underrated in the study as lowbrow entertainment because of its predominantly farcical elements,
The Merry Wives of Windsor
has nevertheless always been popular on the stage for exactly those reasons: the practical stagecraft of the comic set pieces is superb. During Shakespeare’s lifetime
Merry Wives
was performed repeatedly both at court and on the commercial stage; the play has remained in the theatrical repertoire ever since.

The RSC have staged
Merry Wives
about every five years, frequently scheduling it either as Christmas entertainment (1964, 1995, 1996, 2003, 2006) or to kick-start their summer season (1968, 1979, 1985); apart from the 2002 touring version, which opened in the Swan, the play’s size and energy have always secured it a mainstage home.

It has only once been staged alongside the
Henry IV
plays, in 1975. This might seem at first surprising, given the RSC’s penchant for themed seasons, but playing Falstaff in all three plays is a tremendous burden on any actor, and the juxtaposition of the plays perhaps underlines too much the discontinuities in characterization and backstory.

Among a director’s first decisions in staging
Merry Wives
are where on the comedic spectrum to pitch it and how realistic to make it. The farcical cartoon approach has proved tempting. However, it is significant
that, over this half century at least, those RSC productions that have chosen to ground the play very firmly in a detailed social context have been the most successful, both at the box office and with the critics; those that have emphasized the farcical clowning at the expense of this context have had a more mixed response.

Within this framework, the decision how far to make Ford’s jealousy real and painful to watch, how far enjoyably ludicrous, is often key. From 1985 onward, productions have tended to take Ford’s sufferings increasingly seriously, giving added depth to the marital relationships though at the expense of some comic momentum. The choice for the actor of Falstaff is whether to stress the character’s repeated failures or his irrepressibility in these defeats; the latter always seems to produce more rewarding results.

Although
Merry Wives
may seem to be a surefire winner, it is surprising how difficult it has proved to pull off totally successfully; reviewers are quick to grumble about a Falstaff or Ford that is insufficiently frenetic, while also demanding a convincingly realistic framework and a heartwarming ending.

Merry Wives
is Shakespeare’s only English comedy and although theoretically set in the fifteenth century, in the reign of Henry V, it clearly portrays the emerging small-town bourgeoisie of the Elizabethan world. As such, it has traditionally been played in an at least nominally Elizabethan setting, the main question being the degree of accuracy or realism to employ and how far any comic anachronisms or stylization could be pushed. Director Bill Alexander, actively seeking a contrast with previous productions, concluded the 1950s was the only other era that offered suitable social parallels; Rachel Kavanaugh came to a very similar conclusion for her late 1940s version. Otherwise RSC productions have remained resolutely Tudor.

They have also remained predominantly autumnal, in keeping with the “raw, rheumatic day” of the duel, the promised “posset” and “sea-coal fire” of the final reconciliation, and, perhaps most important, the age of the protagonists. Despite two influential wintry
productions in 1911 and 1955, a snowy setting seems to work against the warmth of the comedy and has not been an option seen at the RSC. In line with this favored autumnal setting, the masque at Herne’s oak has since 1979 frequently had a Halloween flavor.

There is much that these RSC productions have in common. From 1975 onward, all have opened with a pre-show sequence, showing the daily life of the town and establishing the characters and their relationships. Occasionally productions have underlined the irruption of outsiders into this, whether Shallow and Slender in their Morris (1985) or Falstaff and his lads by motorbike (2006). Repeatedly directors have capitalized on the children needed for the masque, using these in the opening and as a linking device between scenes, and also to pad out and lighten the Latin lesson.

Mistress Page, the organizer and family woman, and the more frivolous childless Mistress Ford are regularly distinguished as brunette and blonde respectively; dark green outfits for Mistress Page and a lighter, brighter color, often orange or red, for Mistress Ford consistently recur, with Mistress Ford also marked out by lower necklines or more extravagant trimmings.

The play’s performance template is exceptionally strong: business inherent but not specified in the text occurs repeatedly in very similar patterns. Every Ford seems to end up in the buck-basket; a false mustache for Broom is an obvious form of disguise, leading to the inevitable moment of delayed agony when it is ripped off; Simple regularly passes Quickly and Caius the articles from the closet, and Caius equally regularly delays the moment of realization in a double take. Dartboards identify both the modernized pubs, and decorative antlers are common at the Garter in any period. Dry ice sets the scene for the duel, and Dr. Caius frequently sports a full fencing outfit plus mask; his surgery is characterized by a skeleton or skull. Falstaff is discovered in a bath after his ducking, or changing behind a settle. The only black character is the outsider, Fenton. One fairy is comically late throughout Act 5, and/or unable to see through a mask. Shallow is included in the final revenge sequence, while Slender
brings on his “wife” still veiled, to allow a dramatic reveal. Most of the productions close with an interpolated song or dance number, though many undercut this afterward with an image of isolation. Even the blocking and the positioning of furniture and doorways are surprisingly consistent, and an upper-level walkway seems de rigueur.

Finally, it is noteworthy that, although it is the wives who have the upper hand both morally and intellectually and who drive the main plot, it is the men who have the majority of the comic business and who dominate the reviews. The critics are unfailingly surprised to discover the role of Dr. Caius a star turn.

The text of
Merry Wives
is notoriously unreliable, with the Folio version twice the length of the “bad” Quarto, and the Garter speech an only partially relevant insert. Terry Hands produced a successful composite script in 1968, much copied later.

The “Germans” subplot is usually either removed or rearranged wholly within Act 4 Scene 5. As a result, the third plotting scene (Act 4 Scene 4) follows immediately after the witch of Brentford scene (Act 4 Scene 2), necessitating some directorial sleight of hand to cover the time lapse. The Latin lesson has gradually shrunk and finally vanished; the Garter speech is frequently cut in whole or part; other speaking parts in the masque are regularly reallocated, often excluding Pistol and even, on occasion, Quickly. Ad-libs for Dr. Caius seem repeatedly condoned.

The culmination of this process is, obviously, Greg Doran’s adaptation of the play as
Merry Wives, The Musical
, of which more below …

The RSC’s first
Merry Wives
opened at the Aldwych in December 1964. Directed by John Blatchely, this was a “pantomime version,”
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“conceived as a farcical knockabout.”
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It garnered the mixed reviews common to such interpretations and did not transfer to Stratford.

André François’s design was highly stylized, the Tudor half-timbering
clearly two-dimensional; even the painted canvas buck-basket had a fake bottom, enabling Falstaff to “march away”
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in full view of the audience. The bright cartoon costumes in whites, yellows, “acid greens and pinks”
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were controversial: many found them charming and elegant, reminded pleasurably of Tenniel’s
Alice
drawings; to others, Falstaff’s “series of yellow rings, expanding from chin to stomach,”
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suggested a more contemporary image, “a parody of the Michelin tyre man.”
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Clive Swift as Falstaff “emphasise[d] his cold, cynical, mercenary egotism”;
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the
Times
reviewer saw him as “a worried, slow-speaking, and half-defeated character who provided his antagonists with little to deflate.” Brenda Bruce and Patsy Byrne as the wives struck “a credibly human compromise between intrigue and virtue”;
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Timothy West won repeated praise in the usually thankless part of Page, giving “a self-effacingly intelligent portrait of middle-class sobriety which [lent] conviction to every scene in which he appear[ed].”
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However, Ian Richardson’s “brilliant” Ford was an acknowledged triumph, to be reprised repeatedly for the next ten years: “consumed with greedy groundless jealousy … his fanatical grey face and precise jerky gait … spitting frenzy and baffled madness were unforgettable.”
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