Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: When did Shakespeare write The Merry Wives of Windsor?
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare first published in 1602, though believed to have been written in or before 1597. The Windsor of the play's title is a reference to the town of Windsor, also the location of Windsor Castle, in Berkshire, England. Though nominally set in the reign of Henry IV, the play makes no pretense to exist outside contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life. It features the character Sir John Falstaff, the fat knight who had previously been featured in Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2. It has been adapted for the opera on several occasions. The play is one of Shakespeare's lesser-regarded works among literary critics.
His was an illustrator for publishers, including one for an edition of William Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor".
The play was revised and adapted by John Dennis in 1702 as The Comical Gallant. The composer Antonio Salieri wrote the opera buffa Falstaff (1799), with a libretto by Carlo Prospero Defranceschi, which also adapts the main story line of The Merry Wives of Windsor for the operatic stage. Michael William Balfe's opera, Falstaff (1838), to a libretto in Italian by Manfredo Maggioni, is based on the play. The German composer Carl Otto Nicolai wrote a "singspiel" based on the comedy in 1849, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor. The opera contains much German spoken dialogue, and many of the characters' names have been changed (the names of the Mistresses Ford and Page are now Fluth and Reich) and there is more focus given between the romance of Fenton and Anne. It is the only adaptation to include the disguising of Falstaff as a woman. Giuseppe Verdi's last opera, Falstaff, with a libretto by Arrigo Boito, is based on the play. In this adaptation, the plot is kept largely as Shakespeare wrote it, but the story line is condensed and simplified, and there are several changes. For example, Anne (known as Nanetta) is now the daughter of Mistress Ford, not Mistress Page, and she is betrothed by her father to Dr. Caius alone, with Mistresses Ford and Page conspiring to aid in her elopement with Fenton. The roles of Master Page, Slender, Shallow, Sir Hugh Evans, and many others are eliminated. To flesh out Falstaff's character, librettist Arrigo Boito adds material from Shakespeare's Henry IV, Parts I and II, including the famous "honor" soliloquy found in act I scene II of Henry IV Part I. It is largely considered to be the best operatic adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor, as well as one of opera's greatest comic achievements. The English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote Sir John in Love, an opera based on this play in the years 1924–28. Much of the libretto is taken directly from Shakespeare's text, making it the most accurate of the operatic adaptations. The only version to retain all of the characters as well as the subplot of the duel between Dr. Caius and Sir Hugh Evans. The play was adapted to Kiswahili by Joshua Ogutu and performed at the Globe Theatre in London as part of the 2012 Globe to Globe festival. For the 2012 Oregon Shakespeare Festival season, Alison Carey adapted the play into a political satire called The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa. For the 2012 Bard on the Beach season in Vancouver, Director Johnna Wright set the play in 1968 Windsor, Ontario. An episode of American TV drama, Criminal Minds, uses a production of The Merry Wives of Windsor as a motif.
Unlike later such theorists, Hart did not suggest that there was a conspiracy to hide the identity of the true authors, merely that evidence of their identities had been lost by the time the plays were published. Hart asserts that Shakespeare had been "dead for one hundred years and utterly forgotten" when in 1709 old playscripts were discovered and published under his name by Nicholas Rowe and Thomas Betterton. The error occurred because Shakespeare, as a shareholder in The King's Men, owned the manuscripts used by the theater. He speculates that only "The Merry Wives of Windsor" was Shakespeare's own work and suggests that Ben Jonson wrote most of "Hamlet", Shakespeare himself contributing only the grave-digging scene.
Shakespeare uses the type most notably with the bombastic and self-glorifying ensign Ancient Pistol in "Henry IV, Part 2", "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and "Henry V". Other examples are "fashion's own knight", the Spaniard Armardo, in "Love's Labour's Lost", the worthless Captain Parolles in "All's Well That Ends Well", and Falstaff in "Henry IV, Part 1" and "Part 2", and "The Merry Wives of Windsor".
Predominantly a stage actor, he has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He appeared at Shakespeare's Globe from 17 June to 5 October 2008 as Falstaff in "The Merry Wives of Windsor".
Overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor (also known as The Merry Wives of Windsor Overture) is a 1953 American short musical film produced by Johnny Green. It won an Academy Award in 1954 for Best Short Subject (One-Reel).
At the same time scholars were increasingly becoming aware that many plays were collaborations, and that now-lost plays may have served as models for Shakespeare's published work, such as, for example, the "ur-Hamlet", an earlier version of Shakespeare's play of that name. In Benjamin Disraeli's novel "Venetia" (1837) the character Lord Cadurcis, modelled on Byron, questions whether Shakespeare wrote "half of the plays attributed to him", or even one "whole play" but rather that he was "an inspired adapter for the theatres". A similar view was expressed by an American lawyer and writer, Col. Joseph C. Hart, who in 1848 published "The Romance of Yachting", which for the first time asserted explicitly and unequivocally in print that Shakespeare did not write the works bearing his name. Hart claimed that Shakespeare was a "mere "factotum" of the theatre", a "vulgar and unlettered man" hired to add obscene jokes to the plays of other writers. Hart does not suggest that there was any conspiracy, merely that evidence of the real authors's identities had been lost when the plays were published. Hart asserts that Shakespeare had been "dead for one hundred years and utterly forgotten" when old playscripts formerly owned by him were discovered and published under his name by Nicholas Rowe and Thomas Betterton. He speculates that only "The Merry Wives of Windsor" was Shakespeare's own work and that Ben Jonson probably wrote "Hamlet". In 1852 an anonymous essay in "Chambers's Edinburgh Journal" also suggested that Shakespeare owned the playscripts, but had employed an unknown poor poet to write them.
An example is Mistress Quickly in Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor". The title did not necessarily distinguish between married and unmarried women.
Lone Star Love, or, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Texas is a musical based on Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor". The score is by Jack Herrick (of the Red Clay Ramblers), and the book is by John L. Haber and Robert Horn. The setting of the piece has been moved to the Wild West shortly after the American Civil War, and the musical features country and bluegrass music. 
In Elizabethan England, Sir John Falstaff is embroiled in attempting to have a love affair with several women, which soon turns into a humorous adventure.The film is an adaptation of the 1849 opera "The Merry Wives of Windsor" composed by Otto Nicolai with a libretto by Salomon Hermann Mosenthal which was based on William Shakespeare's play of the same title. It was made by the state-owned DEFA studio on a large budget.
Support for the Garter theory is divided. If it is correct, it would probably mean that Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor between Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2. Critics have trouble believing this for several reasons. One is that Pistol and Shallow are introduced as new characters in Henry IV, Part 2, but in The Merry Wives their connection to Falstaff is taken for granted. Also, there are no references to any of the major events from Falstaff's 15th-century exploits from the history plays, such as the rebellion (Henry IV, Part 1 & 2), in Merry Wives. T.W. Craik suggests that Shakespeare was forced to interrupt work on Henry IV, Part 2, having written most of it, because The Merry Wives had to be completed quickly.[7] Another possible explanation comes from the epilogue to Henry IV, Part 2, which promises to "continue the story, with Sir John in it". Sir John does not appear in Henry V, so Merry Wives could have been written to make good on the pledge.[8]
The Cobhams appear to have intervened while Shakespeare was in the process of writing either "The Merry Wives of Windsor" or the second part of "Henry IV". The first part of "Henry IV" was probably written and performed in 1596, and the name Oldcastle had almost certainly been allowed by Master of the Revels Edmund Tilney. William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham may have become aware of the offensive representation after a public performance; he may also have learned of it while it was being prepared for a court performance (Cobham was at that time Lord Chamberlain). As father-in-law to the newly widowed Robert Cecil, Cobham certainly possessed the influence at court to get his complaint heard quickly. Shakespeare may have included a sly retaliation against the complaint in his play "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (published after the Henry IV series). In the play, the paranoid, jealous Master Ford uses the alias "Brook" to fool Falstaff, perhaps in reference to William Brooke. At any rate, the name is Falstaff in the "Henry IV, Part 1" quarto, of 1598, and the epilogue to the second part, published in 1600, contains this clarification:
Shakespeare makes yet another reference to the cannibalist "anthropophagus" in the "Merry Wives of Windsor":
The Merry Wives of Windsor (in German: Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor) is an opera in three acts by Otto Nicolai to a German libretto by Salomon Hermann Mosenthal based on the play "The Merry Wives of Windsor" by William Shakespeare.
Several references are made to him in Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor", in which a series of anti-German jokes start with a horse theft, several references are made to German travellers in England and to a German duke who is "not" expected to come to Windsor.
Frederick of Mömpelgard was heir apparent to the dukedom of Württemberg when he visited Windsor and other English cities in 1592. He developed a desire to be made a Knight of the Garter and solicited Queen Elizabeth for the honor repeatedly. After he had inherited the dukedom and become more prominent in affairs, she admitted him to the order. In a calculated slight, he was not informed of his admission in time to attend the investiture in spring 1597, the ceremony for which "The Merry Wives of Windsor" was written. Thus references to Mömpelgard's earlier visit and his "not" being in Windsor were jokes intended for the play's first audience, and appear in the First Folio edition of the play, taken from the first private performance, but not in the 1602 Quarto derived from public theatrical production.
Most critics consider Merry Wives to be one of Shakespeare's weakest plays, and the Falstaff of Merry Wives to be much inferior to the Falstaff of the two Henry IV plays. That Shakespeare would so stumble with one of his greatest creations is puzzling and a satisfactory reason for this remains to be found. The most obvious explanation is that it was written very quickly. Leslie Hotson wrote that "it is certain that the play bears the earmarks of hasty writing."[10]
Key themes of Merry Wives include love and marriage, jealousy and revenge, social class and wealth. Explored with irony, sexual innuendo, sarcasm, and stereotypical views of classes and nationalities, these themes help to give the play something closer to a modern-day view than is often found in Shakespeare's plays.
Paget had her first professional job at age 8, and acquired some stage experience at 13 when she acted in a 1946 production of Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor".
The name had a long association with monarchy in Britain, through the town of Windsor, Berkshire, and Windsor Castle; the link is alluded to in the Round Tower of Windsor Castle being the basis of the badge of the House of Windsor. Upon hearing that his cousin had changed the name of the British royal house to Windsor and in reference to Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor", German Emperor Wilhelm II remarked jokingly that he planned to see "The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha".
The Merry Wives of Windsor () is a 1950 East German musical comedy film directed by Georg Wildhagen. It was based on William Shakespeare's play by the same name.
The Merry Wives of Windsor may also refer to:
An earlier use of the word "Henriad" to refer to a group of Shakespeare’s plays occurs in a book published in 1876 titled "Shakespeare’s Diversions; A Medley of Motley Wear". The author doesn’t define the word, but indicates that the plays in which the character, Mistress Quickly, hostess of the Boar’s Head Tavern, appears include "The English Henriad" as well as "The Merry Wives of Windsor"; and that the number of plays she appears in is four — "one more than is granted to Falstaff". Mistress Quickly appears in three plays other than "The Merry Wives of Windsor": the two parts of "Henry IV" and "Henry V".
Robert Shallow is a fictional character who appears in Shakespeare's plays "Henry IV, Part 2" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor". He is a wealthy landowner and Justice of the Peace in Gloucestershire, who at the time of "The Merry Wives of Windsor" is said to be over 80 ("four score years and upward").
School for Scandal and Merry Wives of Windsor - at Oregon Shakespeare Festival