The merry wives of windsor - Stratford Festival

who rose to become a Stratford alderman and
bailiff. John Shakespeare eventually applied for a
coat of arms to advance his status and the status
of his descendants. In the opening of Merry Wives,
Shallow also highlights his status by describing his
coat of arms.
In his book Will in the World, Stephen Greenblatt
describes Elizabethan society as “intensely,
pervasively, visibly hierarchical. . . . Woe betide
anyone who violated the rules, forgetting to cede
place to someone above him or attempting to pass
through a door before his betters or thoughtlessly
sitting somewhere at church or at a dinner table
where he did not belong.” Greenblatt goes on to
describe a man who was sent to jail without bail by
a squire who felt he was not given due deference.
The hierarchy of Windsor society is carefully
observed by the characters in Shakespeare’s play.
Justice Shallow asserts himself as “Esquire,” putting
himself at the top of the food chain of the local
characters. His nephew Slender emphasizes that
status by pointing out that he is Chief Justice of the
Peace and “a gentleman born.” Page talks about
his wealth when he dismisses one of his daughter’s
suitors as too poor, and he and Shallow greet
each other with the elaborate deference due their
wealthy stations when they first meet. Ford is the
other wealthy burgher we meet in the play. Beneath
these four grandees are two members of the
emerging professional classes: the French doctor
Caius and the Welsh parson Evans, who teaches
their children. Learning Latin was a bragging point
for parents in an England that was becoming more
cosmopolitan, as shown by the presence of a
French doctor.
As members of the working class, the Host of the
Garter Inn and Mistress Quickly must flatter and
defer to all of these, but the Host is not beyond
playing a practical joke on the least powerful of
them, Caius and Evans, sending them to different
places for their duel, and Quickly is quick to mock
anyone as soon as they are out of earshot. She
may be the confidante of the wealthy Page’s
daughter, Anne, but she is willing to take money
from all three of Anne’s competing suitors, helping
each advance his case.
Into this society, Shakespeare brings two
outsiders to challenge the citizens of Windsor.
Shakespeare plucked Falstaff from his two-part
play Henry IV, one of the summits of his writing,
and tradition has it that Queen Elizabeth ordered
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