"Would I had been set in the ground, all but the head, and had my brains bowled at." Sir Thomas Roe, in his 'Voyage to the East Indies,' relates a story of a woman being put to death by the Mogul by being buried in this manner. VIZAMENTS. Act I., Sc. 1.

Advisements.

"Take your vizaments in that."

WHITSTERS. Act III., Sc. 3.

Carry it among the whitsters in Datchet Mead." Whitsters are launders; the term is still in use in the woollen manufactory; but the whitsters of the play were most likely washers of clothes in the Thames, like the blanchisseuses of the Seine at present.

WISE-WOMAN. Act IV., Se. 5.

"Was 't not the wise-woman of Brentford ?" Fortune-teller, or witch; as we yet use cunning-man or cunning-woman in a similar sense.

WORTS. Act I., Sc. 1.

"Good worts, good cabbage."

The generic name for cabbages. We have cole-wort in use at the present time.

PLOT AND CHARACTERS.

"WHEN that I was a little tiny boy," I was taken to a great fête, (as such holiday-making was called,) in the gardens of Queen Charlotte's house at Frogmore. Amongst other delights of that time, there was a play, or rather scenes of a play, acted before the portico, or colonnade, of the mansion. The royal audience sat on the temporary stage, and the miscellaneous company stood on the sunny lawn. The scenes were from the 'Merry Wives of Windsor.' I believe that was the first time I ever saw a theatrical representation; and how intense was my enjoyment! What glorious fun it was, to behold the fat man crammed into the dirty linen basket, and afterwards beaten as the Witch of Brentford! Did years of critical experience ever bring such dramatic pleasure as that hour of childhood at Frogmore? What mattered it to me who played Falstaff, or who Mrs. Ford? I believe they were great actors from London. To my mind they were real people, and at any rate they became to me realities. Falstaff, and Quickly, and mine Host of the Garter, and Slender, and Anne Page, certainly dwelt once at Windsor. I used to fancy where they lived in the dingy old town. I could tell the precise spot where he of the buck-basket went hissing hot into the Thames. I believed in Herne's Oak. I knew the pit where the fairies danced. Might I not, then, cordially agree with Dr. Warton, that "The Merry Wives of Windsor is the most complete specimen of Shakspere's comic powers," when I look back upon half a century of the delight which it has afforded me? "Comparisons are odorous," says honest Dogberry; and therefore I will not controvert Dr. Warton's opinion.

This play has the remarkable distinction of being the only one of Shakspere's Comedies, of which the Locality and the Characters are English. It is thus more essentially a Comedy of Manners than any other of the Poet's works. And they

are the manners of Shakspere's own time. If the characters of Falstaff, and Bardolph, and Nym had not existed in the two Historical Plays of Henry IV., we might have said, without any impropriety, that this was as much a play of Elizabethan manners and characters, as Ben Jonson's 'Every Man in his Humour.' Many curious questions arise out of this identity of persons with the great comic scenes of Henry IV. Was 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' produced before or after 'Henry IV.?' Was it meant as a continuation of the comic scenes of that drama? Is the tradition a true one that Queen Elizabeth desired to see Falstaff in love? There is an earlier text of this comedy than the folio of 1623, and the differences are very great; but that was not published till 1602, several years after the Henry IV. had been published. The real date of the play is not in the least settled by that earlier publication. Rightly to appreciate this comedy, it is, we conceive, absolutely necessary to dissociate it from the historical plays of 'Henry IV.' and 'Henry V.' Whether Shakspere produced the original sketch of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' before those plays, and remodelled it after their appearance, or whether he produced both the original sketch and the finished performance when his audiences were perfectly familiar with the Falstaff, Shallow, Pistol, Nym, Bardolph, and Mistress Quickly of 'Henry IV.' and 'Henry V.' -it is perfectly certain that he did not intend 'The Merry Wives' as a continuation. It is impossible, however, not to associate the period of the Comedy with the period of the Histories. For although the characters which are common to all the dramas act in the comedy under very different circumstances, and are, to our minds, not only different in their moods, but in some of their distinctive features, they must each be received as identical-alter et idem. Still the connection must be as far as possible removed from our view, that we may avoid comparisons which the author certainly was desirous to avoid, when in remodelling the comedy he introduced no circumstances which could connect it with the histories; and when he not only did not reject what would be called the anachronisms of the first sketch, but in the perfect play heaped on such anachronisms with a profuseness that is not exhibited in any other of his dramas. We must, therefore, not only dissociate the characters of 'The Merry Wives' from the similar characters of the histories,

but suffer our minds to slide into the belief that the manners of the times of Henry IV. had sufficient points in common with those of the times of Elizabeth, to justify the poet in taking no great pains to distinguish between them. We must suffer ourselves to be carried away with the nature and fun of this comedy, without encumbering our minds with any precise idea of the social circumstances under which the characters lived.

The tradition, first published by Rowe, that Queen Elizabeth was so well pleased by the character of Falstaff in 'Henry IV.,' that she commanded its author "to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love,” is based upon an earlier tradition, related by Dennis in 1702, that "this comedy was written at her command, and by her direction, and she was so eager to see it acted, that she commanded it to be finished in fourteen days." There is nothing in the construction of the comedy inconsistent with this latter tradition. Elizabeth was living at Windsor some six or seven years before the end of the sixteenth century. She was building her new Gallery, and constructing her North Terrace. Her Majesty's Players would be there to entertain her. Shakspere would wander about the Castle and the Park, and by the banks of the gentle river. He would gossip with the people of the town, and partake of the hospitality of some Mr. Page, who had " a hot venison pasty to dinner." His "Host of the Garter" would tell him, over a glass of sack, of some of the facts and jests of his own experience: how a Duke of Wurtemberg had really come to Windsor in 1592, and how mine Host had "made grand preparation," and had been "cozened" of his horses. The poet might have picked up some merry story of an antiquated and fat courtier, who had been led into all sorts of ridiculous scrapes by two Windsor wives, who plotted to mortify their battered admirer; and how the husband of one was of a jealous nature and fell into the plot, much perplexed himself, but unconsciously punishing his tormentor. The French Doctor and the Welsh parson, no doubt, dwelt in some one of the little gabled houses of the old town; but Bardolph, Pistol, and Nym, came, with Falstaff, from the Capital. Sweet Anne Page was the beauty of Windsor, with her crowds of adnirers, her own true Fenton, and her absurd Doctor Caius, and the silly young stranger, who came to stay a little while,

with his cousin the justice, from the county of Gloster. This is a very pleasant company; and such as one whose "mind and hand went together, and what he thought he uttered with easiness," might easily work up into a pretty comedy, for a queen's solace, in fourteen days.

And a very spirited comedy it is;-perhaps not so full of the surpassing beauties of Shakspere as his comic masterpieces, such as 'Twelfth Night,' or 'As You like It,' or 'Much Ado about Nothing,'—but full of bustle and fun-broad portraits of individuals in their peculiarities, and profound touches of what is universal in character. The sensual and rapacious Falstaff is so steeped in overweening vanity and loose principle, that we rejoice in every new turn of his misadventures; but we never hate him. We laugh at his degradations, and feel that shame is the severest infliction that is necessary for the correction of such follies; and that the unclean knight is fully punished when he says, "I begin to perceive that I am made an ass." In the same way the jealousy of Ford is more ludicrous than pitiable; he never carries our sympathies with him, because we see that he, also, is an enormous self-deceiver. For the same reason, we have no blame for the devices of the two Merry Wives, who carry on their plots against the old debauchee and the unreasoning husband in a triumphant spirit of good humour, from the first scene to the last. Even the under-plot, which ends in the marriage of Anne Page with Fenton, goes forward in the same spirit of merriment and mistake; and the quarrels of the French doctor and the Welsh parson are as sure to end in the same unextinguishable frolic and humour. The whole play is a remarkable example of Shakspere's power of throwing the sunshine of good temper over the embroilments that arise out of his situations and characters. The mad Host reconciles Caius and Sir Hugh; Mistress Ford knows how to shut up the jealousy of her husband; Master Fenton and Mistress Anne disarm the opposition of father and mother ; and even poor Sir John,-ducked, cudgelled, pinched, burned, crowned with a buck's head, and flouted on every side,— when fairly subdued, has the prospect of a good supper at Page's house, to

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Laugh this sport o'er by a country fire."