Behind The Curtain: The Merry Wives of Windsor, Part Four
Dude Looks Like a Lady
By Liz Larson
Greetings all and welcome back! I hope that those of you in the Houston area are excited to explore Windsor with the cast of Points North’s production, and those of you beyond have found a production online or nearby. For our last post together (for now), I thought we would dive into the original production of this play. An awareness of how these characters and plots were originally staged by the company or received by the audience can illuminate something new in the play. Plus, while it might be frowned upon in academic circles, it can be fun to try and peer into the mind of the Bard.
Specifically, I thought we’d talk about Shakespeare’s women. Partly because the play is titled The Merry Wives of Windsor, and partly because that is what I wrote my dissertation on so the information is still swirling about my brain. Shakespeare’s women are interesting because they were not written for women. Most people know that Shakespeare’s acting company was all male, but what people think about less is that the female characters were played by boy apprentice actors.
The apprenticeship structure was integral to the economy of the period. Without going too far into the weeds, an apprentice would be ‘bound’ to a ‘master’ for a period of time (typically seven years). Once their apprenticeship was done, they would learn a trade or craft and become free citizens with significant rights. The apprentice would not receive a salary, but would be fed and housed by the person they were bound to. So, by writing female characters, Shakespeare was utilizing the company’s free labor. Exactly the type of decision one would expect from a playwright who turned his childhood home into a tavern.
However, this free labor was less experienced. These boy actors were learning the craft of acting from members of the company. They were typically between the ages of 14 and 21, and because puberty came later in that time, they were physically smaller than the adult men of the company. They were also legally bound to a man in the company in a way that some scholars have suggested mirrors the legal status of women in marriages at the time. They were dependent on these men for food and housing, forbidden from marrying until their apprenticeship was over, and in many instances, obligated to ‘keep their master’s secrets’. This inherent power and status imbalance necessarily impacted the performance of these boy actors.
The way Shakespeare constructed female roles for these apprentice actors impacted the behavior and look of the characters he could write. For instance, Shakespeare’s women necessarily have limits on their agency because the apprentice actor needs mentorship to perform his part. In many instances, a female character will explicitly be told when to speak or when to exit, because that also reminds the apprentice of their cues. Anne Page, the smallest of the female roles, is often told when to enter and exit by other characters in the play. However, a more experienced apprentice is given more responsibility in his script.
The largest female role in Merry Wives is that of Mistress Margaret Page (who for brevity and clarity I will now call ‘Peggy’). This might be surprising since Mistress Ford is who Falstaff woos, but Peggy has the second largest role in the entire play after Falstaff with 12% of the lines over 101 speeches. Mistress Ford is actually the third largest female role after Mistress Quickly with 6% of the lines over 85 speeches*. I apologize for mixing math with your literature, but my point here is that Peggy has the largest female role and is also given the most agency over the action on stage.
*These numbers come from the RSC edition.
Peggy gets to stand on stage solo for the first 25 lines of Act II, Scene 1 and showcase her acting prowess. She then controls the action on stage during the first two pranks against Falstaff. She rushes on stage while Falstaff is wooing Mistress Ford and announces that Master Ford is returning, which sets up the first two pranks. Her lines instruct the characters of Mistress Ford and Falstaff’s page, Robin, which also allows that apprentice to instruct his fellow apprentices on stage.
But Shakespeare hasn’t left this apprentice to fend for himself. Peggy and Mistress Ford cue one another for 50% of their speeches, so they could coach one another. If you add Falstaff, those three cue each other for 72% of those female roles**. This opportunity for actor training adds a layer of cheekiness to the characterization of Peggy and Mistress Ford. The apprentice actors are learning from the Falstaff actor even as their characters trick and bully the character of Falstaff. This sort of audacity was praised in boy actors at the time and bleeds into the audacity of the female characters they play.
**These figures come from Scott McMillin’s work analyzing female parts and their cuers to distill a potential pattern for apprentice instruction.
To perform femininity, these boy actors likely wore dresses that were out-of-vogue cast-offs from the courtly ladies, and changed their appearance with cosmetics. People debate how effectively they performed femininity, but Shakespeare often highlights the fiction by having his women disguise themselves as men, which added a layer of humor as a boy played a woman playing a boy. In Merry Wives, this Shakespearean trope happens in reverse. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find the scene from Merry Wives, so here’s a scene from an all-male production of Twelfth Night done by the Globe that gives you an idea of how the boy actors would be made to look like women (although Mark Rylance is significantly older than 21…):
In Merry Wives, the apprentice actors who have been dressed as women dress the character of Falstaff as a woman. Shakespeare loves some metatheatre. In Act IV, Scene 2, Mistress Ford once again lures Falstaff to her home by pretending she will sleep with him. Once again, Falstaff falls for it. Once again Peggy Page comes rushing in to say Master Ford is returning. This time instead of hiding him in a basket of dirty laundry, they dress him as Mistress Ford’s Maid’s Aunt who is described as ‘old’, ‘fat’, and a ‘witch.’ As we’ve discussed before, Falstaff’s ‘fatness’ is his defining feature and thematically characterizes him as a lover of worldly delights. Calling him ‘old’ is metatextually humorous because not only is Falstaff older than the women, but the actor Falstaff is an older actor being taunted about his age by his younger apprentices. Finally, branding her a witch aligns with the theme of male paranoia of cuckoldry typical of a city comedy as we discussed last week.
The wives dressing of Falstaff as a woman is both textually and metatextually a commentary on subversion of status that typifies a city comedy. The genre of city comedy is about status. Normally, a higher status character like a lord woos away a lower status character’s wife. Shakespeare puts a twist on the genre by giving the wives revenge on their wooers. The wives dress Falstaff in an oversized dress, a hat, a muffler, and a kerchief (the linen headcovering like pilgrim women wore). By dressing Falstaff as a woman, the wives are lowering his status from a knight to be equivalent to their own as a woman. Well, arguably lower given the ‘witch’ accusation. Metatextually, the boy apprentices are dressing their instructor in the type of feminine clothing that designates them as apprentice actors, and lowering him to be their equal. This again calls to mind that ‘audacity’ as the apprentices subvert the status of the male actor, equating his status with their own.
There are many other fascinating chutes and ladders in this play, and I encourage you to grab a copy from a library or second-hand shop and peruse the introduction. The words of Shakespeare provide infinite rabbit holes into meter, verse, metaphor, and etymology. The characters and themes provide a glimpse into English beliefs and values at a time of cultural upheaval that still affects society today, including colonization and Protestant reform. Staging Shakespeare today allows us to use those words and ideas to debate and consider modern values and ideas. Follow your curiosity and see what you find.
As always, you can find me on Substack at Shakespeare Said it Better that you can find at https://lizlarson.substack.com/. Feel free to drop me a message if you have a question or want some help starting your own Shakespearean deepdive. Also, if you happen to be in the area, please check out Points North’s production of The Merry Wives of Windsor at Rob Fleming Park on September 26th and the Kevin Brady Community Center on October 3rd.
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