Late Falstaff, the Merry World, and The Merry Wives of Windsor

Abstract

This essay addresses longstanding critical disappointment surrounding Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, which it argues reflects the play's own concerns with the seductions of memory and the claims of the new. It explores contemporary understandings of mirth, suggesting that Merry Wives juxtaposes the carnivalesque Sir John with Windsor's confident citizenry to work through nostalgia for “Merry England” in the Elizabethan present. At the same time, as an early citizen play The Merry Wives of Windsor explores the aesthetic as well as the political implications of old mirth. Falstaff focuses these concerns, embodying not only past carnival but also theatrical history: in particular, he himself is a survivor of an earlier comic present and is usually seen in the light of this remembered glory. Critical discontent has often focused on the apparent inconsistency between early and late Falstaff, but the article argues against this tradition. Drawing on Theodor Adorno's work on late style, it suggests that not only is Falstaff consistent with his earlier incarnations, but his appearance in Merry Wives consciously meditates on the aesthetics of lateness and theatrical disappointment.