The “rule of three” and the “callback”: How Comic Form in The Merry Wives of Windsor 4.1 May Help To Date Its Folio Text

Abstract

An analysis is undertaken of the comic techniques employed in Shakespeare's humorous portrayal of a private language lesson in The Merry Wives of Windsor. This reveals that this Folio-only Scene (4.1) teases and amuses by means of subtly and rhythmically combining several differing comedic modes and tactics. This combination makes its comic construction exceedingly complex. A private language lesson is also portrayed in Scene 3.4 of Shakespeare's King Henry V. There, just as in The Merry Wives 4.1, audiences meet incongruous misidentifications of only-apparently ribald bi-lingual cognates. The Henry V tutorial scene is however much less complex in its dramatic and comedic construction than the Merry Wives scene. It is next proposed that when he later revisited similar themes Shakespeare typically improved on his former handling of those materials. Combining that with the contrasting complexity of treatment in two similar tutorial scenes suggests that at least Scene 4.1 in The Merry Wives was composed later than Henry V, which would be in 1600 or later. This “corroborates” the proposals in other independent arguments to the same effect. There is finally a brief discussion of applications of the principle whereby probabilistic inductive arguments are bolstered when there is a “consilience” between independent lines of enquiry.