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Summary
Falstaff and Mistress Quickly talk at the Garter Inn. He says he’ll keep his third appointment with Mistress Ford, but he hopes things will work out this time. Quickly departs to prepare, and Ford, in disguise as Brook, enters. Falstaff tells Brook that things will be decided that evening in the park at midnight, near Herne’s oak. Brook asks Falstaff about the previous day’s adventure with Mistress Ford. Falstaff says that he had to be disguised as a woman, and Mistress Ford’s madman husband beat him. Now he wants revenge on Ford, he says.
Page, Shallow, and Slender prepare for the evening’s events. Page reminds Slender that his daughter will be wearing white. Mistress Ford, Mistress Page, and Caius prepare as well. Mistress Page tells Caius that her daughter is in green and sends him to look for her. Mistress Page says that her husband will be unhappy about the marriage between Anne Page and Caius, but that’s too bad. The women look forward to frightening and mocking Falstaff later that night. They head out to Herne’s oak. Meanwhile, Evans leads the children, all in disguise, to their hiding spot near the tree.
Falstaff arrives at Herne’s oak, dressed as Herne the hunter with large horns on his head. He ruminates about the Greek gods, who disguised themselves as animals to seduce women. Mistresses Ford and Page enter. Falstaff embraces Mistress Ford and is delighted that Mistress Page is there too. They hear a noise, and the ladies flee. Evans enters with many children in disguise, along with Mistress Quickly dressed as the fairy queen and Anne disguised as a fairy. Shouting to each other, they speak of matters related to fairy magic. Falstaff is terrified; he falls to the ground and hides his face.
Mistress Quickly enthusiastically takes on her role and speaks eloquently of potions, flowers, and gems. Evans says that he smells a human. Quickly says they’ll set him aflame, and if he burns, then it means he’s a wrongdoer. They burn Falstaff with candles, and Quickly declares him corrupt. The children chant as they encircle Falstaff and pinch him.
Meanwhile, Caius sneaks off with a figure wearing a white outfit, and Slender steals away with a figure in green. Fenton and Anne run off together. Finally, all the children in disguise run away. Falstaff gets up and tries to flee, but Ford, Page, and their wives appear. Page says they have caught him in the act of trying to seduce their wives. Ford reveals to Falstaff that he was Brook, and that he plans to take Falstaff’s horses in return for the money he lent him while playing the role. Falstaff acknowledges that they’ve made an ass of him.
Evans tells Falstaff that the fairies won’t bother him any further if he serves God instead of his desires. Mistress Page asks Falstaff if he really thought they would consent to lose their honor for him, such an unattractive drunken old man? Falstaff admits that he is defeated and that they can do what they want with him. Ford says they’ll take him to Windsor and make him pay his debts. Page then invites him that evening to the feast at his house in honor of his daughter’s wedding.
Just then, Slender enters. He’s upset to have arrived at his country church destination only to discover he had eloped with a boy. Page scolds him for failing to identify Anne in the way they agreed upon. Mistress Page says it’s her fault, as she made Anne wear green for Caius. At this point, Caius enters and announces that he, too, has been tricked into running away with a boy.
Finally, Fenton enters with Anne. Anne’s parents ask her why she disobeyed them, but Fenton explains that they should be ashamed for wanting her to marry men she didn’t love. He and Anne have long been in love, he explains, and now their bond is formalized. Ford tells Page and his wife that love has guided this turn of events, so they should be glad. Falstaff says he’s delighted he’s not the only one who has been humiliated. Page embraces Fenton, and Mistress Page welcomes him to the family. As they depart for a feast, Ford comments to Falstaff that his promise to Brook will come true, for Brook will lay with Mistress Ford that very night.
Analysis: Act 5, Scenes 1–5
The first four scenes of the act pass quickly, as each of the characters prepares for the events at Herne’s oak. In this way, Shakespeare ushers the action swiftly toward the play’s comic climax. As Falstaff arrives at Herne’s oak, his lasciviousness is on full display. He reflects on how the gods of classical antiquity frequently took on animal forms to pursue their mortal lovers, suggesting a kind of primal, even bestial, form of sexuality. This commentary clearly reflects his randy mood, as we see when he delights to find that both Mistress Ford and Mistress Page are at the tree. “Divide me like a bribed buck,” he tells them, “each a haunch” (5.5.26). Falstaff has donned a buck’s head to dress up as “Herne the Hunter” (5.5.30), and he jokes suggestively about Mistress Ford as his “doe with the black scut” (19)—where scut, meaning “tail,” also refers to her sexual organ. But though Falstaff has come to “hunt” for a mate, it turns out that he is the one who is being hunted. His prolonged humiliation is amusing to watch, not least for his exaggerated and comic response to his own shaming.
The scene with the fairies is notable for the way Shakespeare presents it as a meta-theatrical performance—which is to say, it’s something like a play within a play. The characters we have gotten to know throughout the previous acts all now don new costumes and pretend to be fairies and hobgoblins. The playwright takes advantage of this meta-theatrical performance as an opportunity to stage the comic mismatches of Slender and Caius. To make this scene even funnier, in Shakespeare’s time all the parts would have been played by men and boys. Therefore, the revelation that Slender and Caius mistakenly elope with two young boys is comically mirrored in the theatrical fact that the celebrated marriage between Fenton and Anne was also, essentially, between a man and a boy. In this way, Shakespeare gives a self-referential wink that both celebrates and teases the Elizabethan theatrical illusion.
But regardless of the gender illusion, the play ends with the successful resolution of its marriage plot. Fenton and Anne triumph by ensuring that true love wins out in the end. Just as we celebrate their happy wedding, we also get the satisfaction of Page and his wife coming to terms with their own shortsightedness. Page has been unfair toward Fenton, refusing to believe that his affection for Anne could be real even though he also needs money—both can be true. This has led him to neglect his daughter’s desires. Meanwhile, Mistress Page has not only ignored her daughter’s wishes, but she has also plotted actively against her husband. Though her honor was never in question as Mistress Ford’s was, she has acted in a way that makes her worthy of distrust. Anne’s triumph therefore prevents a potential wrong while also teaching her parents an important lesson. That they both immediately accept the situation demonstrates that, like Ford, they are ultimately reasonable people who are willing to own their mistakes and move on. With all the plots satisfactorily tied up, misdeeds punished, and true love victorious, The Merry Wives of Windsor concludes like a conventional comedy.
