Mistress Quickly: Difference between revisions

Quickly's role in ''The Merry Wives'' is sufficiently different from her role in the other plays that some critics have suggested that she cannot be the same character.<ref name = "mad"/> Nothing suggests that she already knows Falstaff (or Bardolph and Pistol), and there is no explanation of how she comes to working for Dr. Caius. However, there are also many other continuity problems with other characters in the play. For example the play is set at an unspecified period in the reign of Henry IV, but Shallow is feuding with Falstaff from the beginning, even though in the Henriad plays he only realises his mistake in trusting him after Henry V is crowned. These oddities may have arisen because the play was written rapidly for a specific occasion.<ref>T.W. Craik (ed.), The Merry Wives of Windsor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 1–13. See also H.J. Oliver (ed.). The Merry Wives of Windsor (London: Arden, 1972), lv and Leslie Hotson Shakespeare versus Shallow (London: Kessinger, 2003), 111–122.</ref> There are some signs of attempts to make the events fit the action of the [[Henriad]] plays, for example the brief scene in which Pistol expresses his attraction to her and says he will pursue her like a privateer, saying "she is my prize". This fits with his marriage to her in ''Henry V''. There is no further reference to his pursuit of her in the play, but he plays the part of her consort in the fairy masque at the end.