Page:Merry Wives of Windsor (1922) Yale.djvu/136

122 epilogue to the Second Part of Henry IV (produced about 1598), Shakespeare had written: 'If you be not too much cloy'd with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story with Sir John in it where for anything I know Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless a' be killed already with your hard opinions.' The Merry Wives seems to offer the promised continuation of Sir John's adventures.

Two interesting traditions have long been current about the play. The first of these is that it was written at the command of Queen Elizabeth, and in a period of fourteen days. John Dennis, writing in 1702, says of the play: 'I know very well that it hath pleased one of the greatest queens that ever was in the world. This comedy was written at her command, and by her direction, and she was so eager to see it acted that she commanded it to be finished in fourteen days; and was afterwards, as tradition tells us, very well pleased at the representation.' Howe repeated the story in his Life of Shakespeare, adding of Queen Elizabeth: 'She was so well pleased with that admirable character of Falstaff in the two parts of Henry the Fourth, that she commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love. This is said to be the occasion of his writing The Merry Wives of Windsor. How well she was obeyed, the play itself is an admirable proof.'

The other tradition is that in Justice Shallow, Shakespeare is satirizing Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Stratford, who had prosecuted him in his youth for poaching. According to a note by Archdeacon Davies, written probably between 1688 and 1707, Shakespeare was 'much given to all unluckinesse in stealing venison and Rabbits particularly from Sr. Lucy, but his reveng is so great that he is his Justice Clodpate, and calls him a great man and that in allusion to his name bore three