Shakespeare’s Politic Comedy

By Will Morrisey

Will Morrisey again considers the political dimensions of literary classics, as previously seen in Melville’s Ship of State (2019). His attention to Shakespeare’s comedies is a reader’s and playgoer’s delight. 

INTRODUCTORY NOTE: The Politic Character of Shakespeare’s Comedy
PART ONE: THREE REGIMES: OLIGARCHY, ARISTOCRACY, MONARCHY
Chapter One: Shakespearean Comedy: Two Points on the Compass
Chapter Two: Gentlemen and Gentlemanliness
Chapter Three: Royal Dreaming

PART TWO: THE RULE OF LAW
Chapter Four: Comic Errors, Legal Slapstick
Chapter Five: What Will You?

PART THREE: THE COMEDY OF MORALS
Chapter Six: Taming Our Shrewishness
Chapter Seven: What Does Shakespeare Mean When He Says, “As You Like It”?

PART FOUR: THE COMEDY OF POLITICS
Chapter Eight: Is All Well That Ends Well?
Chapter Nine: The Geopolitics of Love
Chapter Ten: The Wisest Beholder

SHAKESPEARE’S POLITIC MERRIMENT

• Language: English
• Publisher: St. Augustines Press
• Release date: Jan 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9781587318481

Book preview

PART ONE

THREE REGIMES: OLIGARCHY, ARISTOCRACY, MONARCHY

Aristotle classifies political communities into six principal ‘species,’ or regimes. The underlying feature of each regime is quantitative, as all such communities are ruled by one, a few, or many. The overarching feature of each regime is ‘qualitative’: the good monarchy is kingship, the bad tyranny; the good rule of the few is aristocracy, the bad oligarchy; the good rule of the many is the politeia or republic, the bad democracy. The Merry Wives of Windsor portrays the regime of an English town—a small commercial republic within the larger monarchy. Much Ado About Nothing portrays Messina, a monarchy within the larger Kingdom of Sicily. Two Gentlemen of Verona is a play about aristocracy in commercial-republican Venice, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream contrasts the human monarchy of Athens with the natural, fairy-ruled monarchy of the woods outside the city.

CHAPTER ONE

SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY: TWO POINTS ON THE COMPASS

Shakespeare’s only English comedy, The Merry Wives of Windsor, is also the purest of his comedies—the merriest, the most thoroughly funny, a bedroom farce in which almost no one gets into a bedroom. Set in continental Europe, Much Ado About Nothing threatens to veer into tragedy at any moment. The difference between the island nation of England and the nations of Europe inheres in the character of ‘the few’ who rule English civil society and ‘the few’ who rule Continental civil society.

At Windsor, the English knight, scion of warrior-aristocrats, has turned not merely to commerce but to the lowest commerce, swindling, the kind that has no respect for the property rights upon which commerce depends. Extended too far, the acquisitive spirit of commerce ruins the conditions of commerce, unwittingly contradicting itself. Trafficking in swindles more generally, Sir John Falstaff speculates on what is not legitimately his own, conniving schemes of adultery. The only other ‘sir’ in the play is another figure of fun, a Welsh parson living in a regime where foreigners are funny. In commercial England, the most serious characters are gentlemen and gentlewomen—the former a bit too serious, the latter witty and benevolent avengers.

Not so on the continent. There, peaceful commerce has yet to replace war. There, the aristocrats are lords and ladies, rulers of states. They make war as well as love, alliances as well as money. Foreigners could be marriageable friends or deadly enemies. Much Ado About Nothing ultimately isn’t a tragedy. It’s a comedy because it ends happily, but nearly does not.

Likely performed first at the Garter Feast on St. George’s Day, in Greenwich, following the election of the new knights, preceding their installation at Windsor, The Merry Wives of Windsor has gentlewomen out-smarting one knight while teaching their husbands a lesson. As in so many Shakespearean comedies, the women are wittier than the men and act as the real rulers of society, but here their wit instructs the knights-elect in the audience, who are brought to witness the hazards of being laughable. The story goes that Queen Elizabeth, who had delighted in Sir John Falstaff as the most memorable comic figure in Shakespeare’s English History Plays, wanted to see him in love. Since Falstaff is by nature incapable of being ‘in love,’ loving only food and drink, sex and money, Shakespeare entangles him in not one but two love triangles, which are really sex triangles as far as the rotund and covetous knight is concerned.

An English comedy might well turn on comic twists of the English language. This one does, throughout, with word-benders foreign and domestic hacking their way into the weeds of self-deception. At the outset, Justice of the Peace Robert Shallow complains of abuses of English law he’s suffered at the hands of Sir John. His cousin, Slender, reverses the meanings of successors and ancestors—deranging time, that course upon which legitimacy in both law courts (with their respect for precedent), families and aristocracies (with their need for heirs) both run. Meanwhile, the Welsh parson, Hugh Evans, mixes up luces, a species of fish (and symbol of the Christianity he professes) with louses, a species of insect; the parson verbally deranges not time but nature, and perhaps spirituality along with it. As a churchman he stands ready to reconcile legalist Justice Shallow and lawless Sir John, but the judge would rather keep things out of the divine realm and take the case to the Star Chamber. Parson Evans then falls back on the attempt to deflect the men’s attention toward a plot to marry Slender to Anne Page, a young lady of substantial dowry. If the churchman can’t overcome Shallow’s natural anger with divinely blessed peacemaking, he might do it with love, whether of woman or of money—the latter love held up as the root of all evil among the more pious men of the parson’s calling.

They knock on the door of the father of Miss Page, but Falstaff is there, reviving Justice Shallow’s animosity. He hath wrong’d me, Master Page (I.i.91). He has beaten my men, killed my deer, and broken into my lodge. Indeed I have, Falstaff replies in his own defense, but the Council will laugh at your charges. In the mind of Sir John, property claims in men, beasts, and buildings made by commoners will amount to very little in the judgment of his fellow aristocrats. Slender has his own charges against Falstaff’s companion, Pistol, whom he alleges to have picked his pocket. Judging from his name, Sir John’s confederate equally operates below the law, although it isn’t certain that, like the knight, he supposes himself above the law while doing so. Slender draws a sober lesson from the experience: I’ll ne’er be drunk whilst I live again, but in honest, civil, godly company, for this trick. If I be drunk, I’ll be drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with drunken knaves (I.i.162-66). In Slender, Pastor Evans has found a pious soul indeed, one hoping for companions who are Spirit-filled when next spirits-filled.

The question is concerning your marriage, Pastor Evans declares (I.i.197-98), getting things back on (his) track. Imitating the court-language he would have picked up from his cousin on the legal concept of ‘the reasonable man,’ Slender allows that, I will marry her upon any reasonable demands (I.i.102-03)—specifically, the command of the justice of the peace, whom Slender purposes to obey as if he were his father. But the pastor wants dimwitted Slender to love, not to reason: Let us command to know that of your mouth or of your lips; for divers philosophers hold that the lips is parcel of the mouth (I.i204-07). For the first mouth he means mind; for the second mouth, he is right literally—the lips can be considered part of the mouth—while contradicting his first assertion, which distinguishes merely verbal assurances from the true intent of the mind. In the Welshman’s mangling of English, he continues to garble nature. He defines love agapically—can you carry your goot will to the maid? (I.i.207-08)—while Justice Shallow defines it more naturally, more mundanely—can you love her? (I.i.209). Slender remains the man of reason who cannot think for himself: I hope, sir, I will do as it shall become one that would reason, a human being, a rational animal (I.i.210-11). At further prompting, Slender avers to his cousin with malaproprian determination, I will marry her, sir, at your request; but if there be no great love at the beginning, yet may increase it upon better acquaintance (I.i.220-22); of that I am freely dissolved, and dissolutely (I.i.225-26). I think my cousin meant well, Justice Shallow construes (I.i.229).

The audience first sees Falstaff at The Garter Inn, his natural habitat, where he drinks in the presence of the inn’s Host, along with Sir John’s four sometime partners in crime. He plots the seduction of Mrs. Ford, the wife of a substantial Windsor citizen; she gives the leer of invitation to me (I.iii.41)—a supposition his confederate Pistol takes to be wishful. He hath studied her well, and translated her will out of honesty into English (I.iii.45-46). In his own way truly English, Sir John’s motive isn’t so much erotic as economic; the lady has all the rule of her husband’s purse (I.iii.49-50). As if to illustrate how dishonest English can be, Falstaff reads a love letter he will send both to Mrs. Ford and (spreading out his investments) to the equally rich Mrs. Page, its language a parody of the English one reads in a medieval romance or a poem by Dante. In Falstaff, chivalry is dead, money’s what counts and what one counts; aristocracy has reached its comic nadir.

Unfortunately for Sir John, there really is no honor among thieves. Pistol will tattle on him, doubtless angling for a material reward for himself.

The audience next meets the other rival suitors for the hand of Miss Page. They are Dr. Caius, a French physician, and Fenton, a young gentleman. Dr. Caius mistakes Pastor Evans as a rival; the pastor has sent a message to the doctor’s acquaintance, Mistress Quickly, asking her to intervene with Miss Page on behalf of Slender’s suit, and the doctor assumes he must be angling for himself. For her part, mischievous Mistress Quickly separately assures both Caius and Fenton that Miss Page loves him and him alone, although she dismisses Fenton’s chances: I know Anne’s mind as well as another does (I.iv.147-48).

Falstaff’s identical letters meet with the indignation of both respectable married ladies. They plot revenge upon him. But in one respect their circumstances differ. Mrs. Page’s husband is not a jealous man; Mrs. Ford’s husband is, and his disposition is not improved when Falstaff’s false pals inform him of Sir John’s intentions toward his wife and her alleged attraction to him. Therefore, the wives’ counterplot against Falstaff’s scheming must not only punish Falstaff but correct Ford. Eventually, they will need to run three counterplots, one after the other, as Sir John persists in his lechery and avarice, and Ford remains adamant in his jealousy. Putting the situation in Aristotelian terms, Falstaff the adulterer and Ford the jealous husband are the extremes, Page the virtuous ‘mean’ between them.

Letters being composed of words, which are composed of letters, all are capable of being rearranged for comic effect, usually by provoking anger, whether the indignation is righteous, foolish, or both at the same time. When Falstaff describes Mr. Ford as a peasant, cuckold, and knave to Ford disguised as another man, Ford sputters with fury at the imagined infidelity of his wife and the verbal affronts to his honor. [1] When the French doctor challenges the Welsh parson to a duel over Anne Page, Justice Shallow asks, mockingly, What the sword and the word! Do you study them both, Master Parson? (III.i.40-41). The Host arrives at the dueling site and (in the tradition of the English pub-keeper) plays the real peacemaker: Disarm them, and let them question; let them keep their limbs whole and hack our English (III.70-71). Let there be peace between soul-curer and body-curer (III.i.89). Am I politic? Am I subtle? Am I a Machiavel? Shall I lose my doctor? No; he gives me the potions and the motions. Shall I lose my parson, my priest, my Sir Hugh? No; he gives me the pro-verbs and the no-verbs, the ‘dos’ and the ‘don’ts’ (III.i.91-95). Since verbs are words of action and actions speak louder than words, Gentlemen, do nothing injurious to one another. The Host gets at the essence of comedy, if not the Word of God—the human comedy, not the divine one. In merry England, the Host is a more effective peacemaker than the keeper of the Heavenly Host.

In the first of the ladies’ counterplots against Falstaff, they lure him to Ford’s house. He woos Mrs. Ford but she proves the more adroit manipulator of words: Well, heaven knows how I love you, she accurately replies to his suit; and you shall one day find it, she rightly predicts (III.iii.69-70). Keep in that mind; I’ll deserve it, Falstaff returns, condemning himself unknowingly in the act of avowing his prowess (III.iii.71). When on cue Mrs. Page approaches, announcing the imminent arrival of Mr. Ford, they hide Falstaff in a laundry basket and have him carted away, instructing the servants to dump him in the Thames. This recalls the scene in Aristophanes’ The Clouds in which Socrates is hoisted up toward the heavens in a basket; Falstaff at the mercy of the merry wives is Socrates as Aristophanes portrays him, a ridiculously false claimant to wisdom. His baptism in good English waters won’t cleanse his soul, any more than Socrates’ elevation heavenward turns him into a god.

For his second go at Mrs. Ford (urged upon him by the duplicitous Mistress Quickly), Falstaff again shows up at the Ford house. He falls for the same routine, as Mrs. Page arrives to warn of Mr. Ford’s approach. This time they disguise Sir John as a woman, for, as Mrs. Page tells her friend, We cannot misuse him enough. / We’ll leave a proof, by that which we do, / Wives may be merry and yet honest too (IV.ii.88-91). That is, the proof of wit and honor, the argument of their action, won’t be in ever-elusive, ever-manipulable words, the things to which Mr. Ford gives too much credence, but in irrefutable deeds. When the self-beleaguered Ford does arrive, he’s told that the disguised Falstaff is his wife’s maid’s aunt, a witch, a fortune-teller, a spell-caster—that is, an abuser of words who exploits the witless. Outwitted and gulled once again by words (words that nonetheless truthfully point to Sir John’s inner nature), Ford beats ‘her’ out of his house, thus expediting the escape of the man he expected to capture in flagrante.

Finally told of his own folly, Ford reforms, acknowledging his wife’s honor and chastising himself with such vigor that Mr. Page intervenes to tell him to be not as extreme in submission as in offense (IV.iv.11). But bruised, humiliated Falstaff still won’t give up. As water and blows haven’t dissuaded him, the ladies turn to spiritual terror and a suggestion of hellfire. Mrs. Page recounts a legend of Windsor Forest, an old wives’ tale about Herne the Hunter, the late gamekeeper, whose spirit returns every winter, decked with great ragg’d horns, changing the cows’ milk to blood and frightening all those who see him (IV.iv.30). She proposes that they tell Falstaff to rendezvous with them in the forest, disguised as Herne. They will arrange for local children disguised as urchins, elves, and fairies to encircle him, dance, pinch him and burn him with candles. After the unclean knight has been so tormented, we’ll all present ourselves; dis-horn the spirit, / And mock him home to Windsor (IV.iv.54-56). Pastor Evans pronounces this a set of fery honest knaveries (IV.iv.79-80)—a noble lie in action, worded as a Welsh-accented pun on fairy.

Meanwhile, Sir John conceals his most recent humiliation, defending his remaining illusions of aristocratic honor with an ignoble lie. The Host of the Garter Inn hears that a fat old woman has gone up to Falstaff’s room. Falstaff claims that yes, there was a woman, but she is gone now, after having taught me more wit than ever I learned before in my life, and I paid nothing for it neither, but was paid for my learning (IV.v.54-56). In defending himself against the suspicion that he has employed a prostitute, Falstaff offers another parody of an incident in the life of Socrates, who tells the tale of Diotima, his teacher in the philosophy of love. Socratic eros begins with the love of beautiful bodies, ascends to love of beautiful souls, and culminates in the love of beauty as a whole, of philo-sophia, the love of wisdom. Falstaff indeed would do do well to begin his ascent on this ladder of love, but he will need a hard-earned lesson in modest practical wisdom before he can aspire to the heights.

He isn’t the only erotic schemer in Windsor. All of Anne Page’s suitors know she will participate in the Falstaff-tormenting fairy dance. Each plans to spirit her away. Mr. Page tells Slender that his daughter will appear in white; Mrs. Page tells Dr. Caius that she’ll be dressed in green. Anne has feigned to consent to both parents, but she’s written to her favorite, Fenton, saying that others will be dressed in those costumes and that she will elope with him.

All goes according to the lovers’ plan, as inscribed within Anne’s parents’ plan. Slender makes off with the figure in white, Caius with the figure in green, Anne and Fenton with one another to a waiting vicar. Falstaff receives his just reward, after Anne, as the Fairy Queen, intones, Evil be to him that evil thinks (V.v.67). Parson Evans earlier had distinguished what is said from what is thought, condemning hypocrisy; it is Anne Page, in the guise of a native English spirit-ruler, who enforces the Christian command to put thought before action, true conviction before law. At last the right words fit the right deeds, as the children, singing Lust is but a bloody fire, singe the old bounder with candles. Duly mocked, Falstaff admits to having been an ass, while Ford vows never to distrust his wife again. When Pastor Evans mocks Falstaff in his heavy Welsh accent, Falstaff exclaims, Have I liv’d to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of English? (V.v.136-37). He has, indeed, and as Anne Page as the Fairy Queen has suggested, it’s the thought that makes language and action good or bad. Mr. Page promises him forgiveness at the price of further ridicule at dinner.

But what of the deceived suitors? Slender reports first, complaining that the fairy he ran off with was a great lubberly boy and, compounding the indignity, the son of a postmaster (V.v.176). Slender resolutely attempts to grasp a shred of dignity by averring, If I had been married to him, for all he was in woman’s apparel, I would not have had him (V.v.182-83). Deceived by words and apparel, he can at least uphold the natural standard. Dr. Caius wasn’t so lucky. The French physician didn’t identify the nature of his ‘bride’ until the ceremony was finished. I’ll raise all Windsor, he declaims, a move that may not improve his professional reputation in the town