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Summary
Mistress Page, Mistress Quickly, and William Page are sitting together. The two women wonder if Falstaff has arrived at Mistress Ford’s yet, and Mistress Page says she must just take her son to school. Evans enters and says that Slender has cancelled school for the day. Mistress Page says her husband complains that their son hasn’t been learning much at school, so Evans asks him a few questions. As Evans quizzes William about Latin conjugations and declensions, the uneducated Mistress Quickly interprets the words she can’t understand as sexually provocative slang. Meanwhile, Evans mangles the words with his Welsh pronunciation.
Falstaff arrives at Mistress Ford’s house. He speaks gladly of his second chance, but then Mistress Page arrives, and Falstaff hides. Mistress Page asks if Mistress Ford is alone, and she says she is. Mistress Page says that it’s good that Falstaff isn’t there, since the jealous Ford is on his way to the house in a rage again. Mistress Ford then admits that Falstaff is there and wonders what to do with him. Falstaff emerges and says he won’t hide in the laundry basket again. They try to imagine how they could disguise him. Mistress Ford suggests he that he wear some clothes of her maid’s aunt; the woman is very large, so her gown should fit him, and he can slip out the door in disguise.
While Falstaff puts on the dress, Mistress Ford reveals that she hopes Ford meets Falstaff in disguise, because he hates the maid’s aunt and had threatened to beat her if she came to his house again. Mistress Page reveals that Ford really is coming, that she’s not just saying it to trick Falstaff. They decide to make a fool of Ford by parading the laundry basket past him, tempting him to look through it. As Mistress Ford prepares, Mistress Page comments that their actions will prove that wives can be merry and honest at the same time.
Mistress Ford’s servants enter with the laundry basket, and they make to leave. Just then, Ford, Page, Caius, Evans, and Shallow enter. Ford demands that the servants put down the laundry basket, and he searches through it. Ford’s companions urge him not to act so rashly, since his wife is clearly honest. Finding nothing in the laundry, Page and Shallow tell Ford that he is unjustly jealous.
Mistress Page and the disguised Falstaff enter. Ford flies into a rage, saying that he had forbidden the old lady from coming to his house. He beats Falstaff and chases him out, calling him a witch. Evans affirms that she must be a witch, since she has a rather thick beard. Ford begs his companions to keep up the search for the intruder, and the men exit in reluctant agreement.
The two women discuss their successful campaign. They are sure they’ve scared the lustful behavior out of Falstaff. They discuss telling their husbands about their schemes, which would prove they have been honorable. They agree that it’s a good idea, but they also want to ensure that Falstaff is publicly shamed. That, they affirm, would be the best way to bring their jest to end.
Analysis
Act 4 opens with a scene that seems designed solely to give Shakespeare’s contemporary audiences a good laugh. The action here adds nothing to any of the plots already unfolding. That said, the scene does contribute to the play’s thematic concerns language, translation, and the differences between social classes. The comedy here derives in large part from differences in education. As Evans quizzes young William on his Latin grammar, the uneducated Mistress Quickly responds to the unfamiliar words as though the two were chatting about violence and sex: “You do ill to teach the child such words.—He teaches him to hick and to hack, which they’ll do fast enough of themselves, and to call ‘whorum.’—Fie upon you!” (4.1.64–67). In Shakespeare’s time, Latin was a regular subject in grammar school, and anyone with a primary education would have been very familiar with the Latin declensions used here. But though many in the audience would have been well-enough educated to get the jokes, the scene itself stages an amusing series of ridiculous misunderstandings by a lowborn woman who elsewhere in the play constantly misuses and mispronounces words.
The second scene of act 4 returns us to the plot involving the humiliation of Falstaff, which Shakespeare nicely set up in the closing scenes of act 3. The scene follows a very similar pattern to the first scene where Falstaff was ushered out of the Ford house. As before, it begins with an interruption from Mistress Page, which forces Falstaff into hiding and alerts everyone to the fact that Ford is on his way home. Once again, the urgency of the situation forces Mistress Ford to admit that Falstaff is there, and the two women must think of a way for Falstaff to escape undetected. And yet again, the two women demonstrate a remarkable ability to improvise, not only disguising Falstaff as a much-despised woman from town but also preparing the laundry basket as a secondary ruse. Now that they know they have an opportunity to trick both Falstaff and Ford, they come up with ideas that will agitate both. Yet Mistresses Ford and Page aren’t acting just to be cruel. They retain a sense of self-righteousness in the face of these ridiculous men, and they are committed to the idea that their jests deliver meaningful justice.
