The Merry Wives of Windsor

Condition: BRAND NEW ISBN: 9780192873576 Author(s): William Shakespeare Format: Paperback Language: English Year: 2024 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pages: 176 Series: Oxford World's Classics

Description: 'Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the King's English.'The Merry Wives of Windsor is the only Shakespeare play named entirely after female characters and his only comedy set in England. These features underscore some of its most immediately appealing qualities -- its contemporary realism; its depiction of everyday life; its interest in status and gender; and the language and physicality of its comedy.This edition's introduction focuses on these elements of Merry Wives, setting out their historical contexts but also thinking about what they offer audiences and readers today. It addresses the place of the play withinShakespeare's career and canon and the enduringly popular figure of Falstaff, before thinking about its generic peculiarities as a mixture of 'city comedy' and domestic comedy. The edition gives readers a rich breadth of historical context and real-life examples through which to understand and appreciate the text. It also addresses Merry Wives's popular and scholarly reception, to give students, performers, and readers an array of topics, angles, and approaches with which to engagewith one of the canon's most lively and life-like plays. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encouragenew interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enj