Page:Merry Wives of Windsor (1922) Yale.djvu/133



The Merry Wives of Windsor ranks next after Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Tempest among Shakespeare's plays, as owing least to any definite sources for its plot. It is a comedy of contemporary manners, and most of its details seem to be original with Shakespeare.

There are two elements in the plot for which parallels can be found in contemporary English and Italian literature. The first of these is the incident of the women who discover that one gallant is courting them simultaneously, and their luring him on successively, only to make a laughingstock of him in the end. A story of this sort which Shakespeare may have seen is found in William Painter's Palace of Pleasure, published at London in 1566. The 49th tale in Painter's first volume is a free adaptation of an Italian story told by Straparola and by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, whose novels were printed in Italy about 1550. In Painter's story, Philenio Sisterno, a scholar of Bologna, meets three ladies at a ball, and professes his devotion to each in turn. The ladies' discovery of his deceit and their determination to make a mockery of him have some slight resemblance to the story of Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page and their revenge on Falstaff.

'Esmerentiana, the wife of Seignior Lamberto, not for any euill, but in sporting wise said vnto her companions: "Gentlewomen, I have gotten this night in dauncing, a curteous louer, a very faire Gentleman, and of so good behauiour as any one in the world": and from point to point, (she) rehearsed vnto them all that he had said. Which Panthemia and