Shakespeare-Oxford Society  Dedicated to Researching and
Honoring the True Bard SOS Library article  Unpacking The Merry
Wives  Robert Brazil  This article appeared in a slightly
different form in the 1999 issue of The Oxfordian  Shakespeare’s
play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, is filled with fascinating
enigmas. Because Merry Wives was first printed in 1602, most
standard commentators on Shakespeare consider it to be a mid-
career play, written while the author was at the height of his
powers, roughly simultaneous with Hamlet. Yet everything about
the play, including the sensibility, the crude style, and the
too-old contemporary allusions, suggests that it was an earlier
work, its topical references and concerns those of the 1580s,
with some 1590s references added to a later revival, to become
an interesting anachronistic revival by 1602. The central ideas
and plot elements in Merry Wives involve the high stakes wooing
of young Anne Page by three suitors, the farcical wooing of Mrs.
Ford by three other suitors