d by stupidity (as in the
persons of Fluellen, etc.) is what he loves in a man. He, himself, has
plenty of his favourite quality. His love of plainness and bluntness
makes him condemn sentiment in his one profound speech--

"All other devils that suggest by treasons
Do botch and bungle up damnation
With patches, colours, and with forms being fetch'd
From glistering semblances of piety."

The scenes between Nym and Pistol, and the account of Falstaff's death,
are the last of the great English scenes. This (or the next) was
Shakespeare's last English play, for Lear and Cymbeline are British, not
English. When he laid down his pen after writing the epilogue to this
play he had done more than any English writer to make England sacred in
the imaginations of her sons.

_The Merry Wives of Windsor._

_Written._ 1599 (?)

_Published_, in a mutilated form, 1602; in a complete form, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ A tale in Straparola's _Notti_ (iv. 4).
Tarleton's _News out of Purgatorie_. Giovanni Florentino's _Il
Pecorone_. Kinde Kit of Kingston's _Westward for Smelts_.

_The Fable._ Falstaff makes love to Mistress Ford, the wife of a
Windsor man. Mistress Ford, despising Falstaff, plots with her
friend, Mrs. Page, to make him a mock. News of Falstaff's passion
is brought to Ford, who, needlessly jealous, resolves to search the
house for him.

Falstaff woos Mrs. Ford. She holds him in play till she hears that
her husband is coming. Falstaff, alarmed at his approach, bundles
into a clothes basket, is carried past the unsuspecting husband,
and soused in the river.

He is gulled into the belief that Mrs. Ford expects him again. He
goes, is nearly caught by Ford, but escapes, disguised as an old
woman, at the cost of a cudgelling.

Still believing in Mrs. Ford's love for him, he keeps a third
assignation, this time in Windsor Forest, in the disguise of Herne
the hunter. On this occasion he is pinched and scorched by little
children disguised as fairies. He learns that Mrs. Ford has tricked
him, is mocked by all, and then forgiven.

The play is eked out by other actions. Chief of these is the wooing
of Anne Page, Mrs. Page's daughter, by three men--a foreigner, Dr.
Caius; an idiot, Master Slender; and the man of her heart, Fenton.
There are also scenes between Falstaff, Nym