Page:Merry Wives of Windsor (1922) Yale.djvu/138

124 The Merry Wives was one of the productions which 'being well performed were very satisfactory to the town'; and forty years later John Dennis still remembered Wintersel's success as Falstaff 'in King Charles the Second's reign.'

In 1702 Dennis produced an adaptation of The Merry Wives under the title of The Comical Gallant, or the Amours of Sir John Falstaff. Falstaff's beating at the end of the play is shifted to Ford, to punish him for his jealousy, and Sir John is spared the humiliation of appearing in women's clothes, but he has a far more degrading part to play when he is bullied by Mrs. Page, disguised as a roistering captain. Dennis' piece 'was received but coldly,' and the original play was soon afterward successfully revived by Betterton, with Mrs. Bracegirdle, and later Peg Woffington, in the rôle of Mrs. Ford.

During the eighteenth century the part of Falstaff was ably interpreted by Quin, Henderson, and Cooke. Horace Walpole wrote on hearing of Quin's death, 'Pray, who is to give an idea of Falstaff, now Quin is dead?' John Henderson (1747–1785) won great applause in the part. Rogers in his table-talk says 'his Hamlet and his Falstaff were equally good.' Kemble revised the play in 1797, and successfully produced his version a few years later, playing Ford to the Falstaff of George Frederick Cooke. Cooke later visited the United States, where he died in 1811. The Merry Wives had already been produced in this country in 1770, at the Southwark Theatre in Philadelphia.

During the nineteenth century the play has been a favorite source for librettos for operas. In 1824 Frederick Reynolds was 'censured as an interpolator, for converting Shakespeare's plays into operas'; but his production of the Merry Wives ran for thirty-two performances at Drury Lane, and was a great success.