Windsor’s World of Words: Multilingualism in The Merry Wives of Windsor

Abstract

On account of its setting and its emphasis on domesticity, critics traditionally recognize The Merry Wives of Windsor as Shakespeare’s “English comedy.” Building on the work of scholars interested in the play’s non-English elements, however, this essay argues that the cacophonous mixture of foreign words and phrases represents precisely the comedy’s objective. Merry Wives looks different when read in relation to the multiplicity of polyglot dictionaries and phrasebooks circulating in the playwright’s moment, some of which—such as Noël de Berlaimont’s ultra-popular Colloquia et Dictionariolum—drew a link between translation and seduction. Against this book-historical background, the essay examines how Merry Wives’ accented immigrants and crafty women join forces against the lascivious monoglot (and colonizer) Falstaff, whose plans to “translate” Mistress Ford and Mistress Page “out of honesty into English” end up reversing upon him. At the center of these dealings is Mistress Quickly, an immigrant-employed “go-between” whose language can be understood not as “malapropism,” but rather as playful mixings of foreign wines and words. Seen freshly in these terms, this play stands as Shakespeare’s “cosmopolitan comedy.” [A.K.]