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The Merry Wives of Windsor:Herne the HunterFrom Insights, 1992As with many of William Shakespeare’s plays, The Merry Wives of Windsor is full of real places,real people, and real folklore. For example, Herne’s Oak, where the inept old con man, Falstaff, is luredfor his final humiliation, is a real place, located in the play with accuracy. The character and legend ofHerne the Hunter were definitely familiar to the Elizabethans, and antiquarian research has demonstratedthe exactness of Shakespeare’s knowledge of Old Windsor.It would seem that there existed in Shakespeare’s day a tradition at Windsor that Herne was one ofthe keepers of the park, who, having committed an offense for which he feared to be disgraced, hunghimself upon an oak, which was ever afterwards haunted by his ghost: thus Herne’s Oak.The Quarto and Folio editions of Shakespeare’s plays both refer to the legend. The Quarto reads,“Oft have you heard since Herne the hunter dyed.” However, the Folio makes the tale a much moreancient one.Another, somewhat later, notice of Herne’s Oak is in a “Plan of the town and Castle of Windsorand Little Park” (1742); in a map therein, a tree marked “Sir John Falstaff ’s oak” is represented asbeing on the edge of a pit just on the outside of an avenue which was formed in the seventeenth centuryand known as Queen Elizabeth’s Walk.Later still, but adding to the evidence that such a tree existed, is Halliwell’s edition of the Quarto,which includes a set of verses “Upon Herne’s Oak being cut down in the spring of 1796.”Thus, whether the legend being Herne the Hunter is true or not, really doesn’t matter. The legenddid exist, even to the extent that the tree and the park where he killed himself were known to thepeople of the day.Utah Shakespeare Festival351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-788025