Chris Pickles - Director
Adrian Lillie - Designer
Georgina King - Assistant Designer
Paul Knight - Music

Jules Blundell - Evans
Dermot Canavan - Falstaff
David Chittenden - Dr Caius
Paul Dinnen - Mistress Ford
Henry Everett - Mr Ford
Simon Goodall - Mistress Quickly
Howard Gossington - Mistress Page
Nigel Lister - Mr Page
Ross Macdonald - Fenton/Pistol
Amy Standish - Anne Page

still under construction...

The First Folio edition of 1623 announces the play baldly as –

The Merry Wives of Windsor

But perhaps the title page of the 1602 Quarto edition is more accurate –

A Most pleasaunt and excellent conceited Comedie, of Syr John Falstaffe and the merrie Wives of Windsor.

Certainly this is Sir John’s play as much as the eponymous wives. Who knows if there is any truth in the famous story that Queen Elizabeth had been so taken with the character of Falstaff in Henry IV Part One that she demanded a further outing for the roguish knight, this time focussing on Sir John in love. If she did so then Shakespeare was risking her displeasure in writing the play he did, as he really does not quite fulfi l the royal brief. For Falstaff is not in love with Alice and Meg, far from it, his purpose is stated quite clearly very early in the play: -

“I do meane to make love to Fords wife…Now the report goes, she has all the rule of her husbands Purse…and Pages wife…She beares the Purse too…I will be cheaters to them both, and they shall be Exchequers to mee…”

In other words Falstaff is far more in love with their money than he is with Alice and Meg. Shakespeare however, gives this situation a typically joyous comedic twist in allowing Sir John to ludicrously believe that the wives are in love (or lust) with him.

“Mistris Ford gives me the leere of invitation…and Pages wife, who even now gave mee good eyes too; examined my parts with most judicious illiads: sometimes the beame of her view, guilded my foote: sometimes my portly belly… O she did so course o’re my exteriors with such greedy intention, that the appetite of her eye, did seem to scorch me up…”

Falstaff’s relish of language puts him also thematically at the heart of the play. For this is a play about the English language and its use and misuse. At one extreme we have the Welsh Parson and the French Doctor who “hack our English” and “make fritters of English”. And at the other extreme we have the extravagantly verbal Pistol with his “red-lattice phrases”. “Here’s a fellow”, says Mr Page, “frights English out of his wits”. And in the centre ground the wonderful Mistress Quickly who can fi nd the wrong word or phrase for any occasion. Even the gallant lover, Fenton, is capable of producing a stream of barely comprehensible drivel when contemplating his sorry state. Indeed, all the citizens of Windsor are wonderfully individually characterised in their use (or misuse) of language. The play also mines a rich vein of character and situation comedy material that is peculiarly British in sensibility. Merry Wives is part of a long tradition of British comedy that precedes Shakespeare by centuries and continues (via the British adaptation of Commedia dell’Arte, pantomime and music hall) to our present day world of Monty Python, Carry On Films, Benny Hill and Little Britain etc. A world, where for centuries husbands have been jealous, wives cold, foreigners funny, fat men hungry, mistresses saucy, soldiers cowards and clerics lewd.

Chris Pickles
Director