The Merry Wives of Windsor (Arkangel Complete Shakespeare) [UNABRIDGED]

Rating:
Summary: Shakespeare's FUNNIEST play!!!!
Review: This is definitely Shakespeare's funniest play. This play doesn't have the great quotes or great drama or great romance or any great meaning, but it is just simply hilarious. Sir John Falstaff is one of the greatest comedic characters in all of literature and does not disappoint in this play.

'The Merchant of Venice' is great if you are looking for a 'Comedy' with meaning and social significance, but if you simply want to laugh your butt off you have to read 'The Merry Wives of Windsor'.

Rating:
Summary: They're certainly merry
Review: This is the funniest play/book I have EVER read.
Enough said.
I am not a poet, and you'll certainly know it,
By the time you have read this little bit.
The Merry Wives is a wonderful play,
Great to read on any day.
Sunny, or rainy or a bit in between,
You'll laugh so hard that day,you'll have to visit the latrine.
A couple of wives, mad at their men
Would certainly rate this play a ten!
My opinion, too is of the good kind,
Reading this poem, though, must have put you in a bind

Rating:
Summary: Merry Wives of Windsor:
Review: When rating Shakespeare, I am rating it against other Shakespeare; otherwise, the consistent 4-5 stars wouldn't tell you much. So if you want to know how this book rates against the general selection of books in the world, I suppose it might rate four stars; it certainly rates three. The language, as usual in Shakespeare, is beautiful. Still, it's far from Shakespeare's best.

For one thing, this is one of those cases, not uncommon in Shakespeare's comedies, in which the play has suffered a great deal by the changes in the language since Shakespeare's time; it loses a great deal of the humor inherent in a play when the reader needs to keep checking the footnotes to see what's happening, and this play, particularly the first half of it, virtually can't be read without constant reference to the notes; even with them, there's frequently a question as to what's being said. At least in the edition that I read (the Dover Thrift edition) the notes frequently admit that there's some question as to the meaning of the lines, and there is mention of different changes in them in different folios.

But beyond this, as an overweight, balding, middle-aged libertine, I object to the concept that Falstaff is ridiculous just because he is in fact unwilling to concede that it is impossible that a woman could want him. Granted, he's NOT particularly attractive, but that has more to do with his greed, his callousness, and his perfect willingness to use people for his own ends, to say nothing of his utter lack of subtlety.

Is it truly so funny that an older, overweight man might attempt to find a dalliance? So funny that the very fact that he does so leaves him open to being played for the fool? Remember, it isn't as though he refused to take "no" for an answer; he never GOT a "no". He was consistently led on, only to be tormented for his audacity. Nor is he making passes at a nubile young girl; the target of his amorous approaches is clearly herself middle-aged; after all, she is the MOTHER of a nubile young marriageable girl. And given the fact that she is married to an obnoxious, possessive, bullying and suspicious husband, it is not at all unreasonable for Falstaff to think that she might be unhappy enough in her marriage to accept a dalliance with someone else.

If laughing at fat old men who have the audacity not to spend the last twenty years of their lives with sufficient dignity to make it seem as if they were dead already is your idea of a good time, you should love this play. I'll pass.