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of Windsor lowses rampant for his Arms.' Rowe, in 1709, adds to this: 'Amongst other extravagancies, in The Merry Wives of Windsor he has made him a deer-stealer, that he might at the same time remember his Warwickshire prosecutor under the name of Justice Shallow; he has given him very near the same coat of arms which Dugdale, in his Antiquities of that county, describes for a family there, and makes the Welsh parson descant very pleasantly upon them.'

Of the earliest performances of the play we know from the title-page of the 1602 Quarto that it was 'divers times acted, both before her Majesty and elsewhere.' Shakespeare's company presented it at Whitehall before King James during the winter of 1604–1605; and another court performance occurred in 1612–1613. The play was presented before Charles I also; for in the records of Sir Henry Herbert is the entry: 'before the king and queene this yeare of our Lord 1638. At the Cocpit the 15th of November. The merry wifes of winser.'

Of the actors in these productions we know nothing definite. John Heminge, a member of Shakespeare's company and one of editors of the 1623 Folio, is said to have been the original Falstaff; and after the Restoration John Lowen (1576–1659) was remembered as having excelled in the part 'before the wars.'

The Merry Wives was one of the first plays revived after the Commonwealth. On December 5, 1660, Pepys records seeing it with 'the humours of the country gentlemen and the French doctor very well done, but the rest but very poorly, and Sir J. Falstaffe as bad as any.' In 1661 he went again to the theatre 'such is the power of the Devil over me and saw the Merry Wives ill done.' And in 1667 yet another production of the play 'did not please me at all in no part.'

When the Drury Lane Theatre opened in 1668