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Smells
Smells come up frequently in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Perhaps as a reflection of the play’s focus on the lives of citizens of a middle-class market town, many of the smells referenced in the play are foul. For instance, in a comically awkward attempt to make conversation with Anne Page, Slender complains that he “cannot abide the smell of hot meat” (1.1.280–81). Later, when Falstaff first attempts to seduce Mistress Ford, he says he loves her—but not because she smells good: “I cannot cog and say thou art this and that like many of these lisping hawthorn buds that come like women in men’s apparel and smell like Bucklersbury in simple time” (3.3.70–73). Shortly thereafter, the Mistresses coerce Falstaff into a “buck-basket,” the knight gets tossed in “with foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stocking, greasy napkins” where “there was the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril” (3.5.92–95). At the play’s end, the fairy host detects Falstaff’s presence through his presumably offensive odor: “I smell a man of Middle-Earth” (5.5.85). The only nice smell in the entire play is given off by the noble Fenton, whom the Host of the Garter Inn says “smells April and May” (3.2.66–67).
Disguises and Cross-Dressing
As is typical of many Shakespearean comedies, this one features its fair share of disguises. Most of the disguises deployed are comically bad. For example, when Ford goes to Falstaff in disguise, he chooses a name—“Brook”—so similar to his own in meaning that we are meant to see the ineptness of his dissimulation. In the play’s final scene, Falstaff enters crowned with a buck’s head, dressed to look like “Herne the Hunter” (5.5.30). Amusingly, this is a costume that doesn’t disguise him so much as reveal his lascivious intentions. Most of the other instances of disguise in the play are also instances of cross-dressing. Perhaps the most notable is the scene where Falstaff is made to dress in the gown of a much-detested local lady, “the fat woman of Brentwood” (4.2.75–76). Despite the thick beard that peaks out from under the head covering, this disguise is sufficiently deceptive, leading Master Ford to beat the hated “old lady” with a cudgel. Finally, during the fairy masque in the final act, many characters dress up as fairies and goblins. Most significantly, Anne dresses two boys up in the gowns meant to identify her to Slender and Caius, which allows her to escape and marry Fenton.
Mangled Language
A recurring joke in the play relates to the thick accents of two secondary characters. The first of these is Sir Hugh Evans, a parson whose Welsh accent Shakespeare parodies by confusing p for b (e.g., “petter”), d for t (e.g., “Got”), and f for v (“focative”). Then there is Doctor Caius, who speaks with a heavy accent and frequently includes words from his native French: “Pray you, go and vetch me in my closet un boîtier vert, a box, a green-a box. Do intend vat I speak?” (1.4.45–46). Each of these characters becomes a subject of mockery, with the play’s middle-class character frequently drawing attention to their foreignness. For instance, Mistress Quickly makes fun of Caius, her employer, whose irritable nature and bad pronunciation will bring “an old abusing of God’s patience and the King English” (1.4.5–6). But Evans and Caius aren’t the only ones to mangle the English language. Mistress Quickly’s speech is full of sexually suggestive malapropisms, such as “erection” instead of “direction” (3.5.41). Then there is the comically pretentious Pistol, whose speech is a bizarre collage of incorrect Latin and misquoted poetry. Diverse languages, dialects, and registers of speech highlight the challenges of communication across various lines of difference.
