Oxford Theatre Guild's "Merry Wives of Windsor"

Colin Burnie was hilarious as Dr. Caius and Barbara Denton was a bawdy, magnetic Mistress Quickly

I found a good little discussion of the play here. The writer attributes Dr. Caius' perpetual refrain of "by gar!" as an example of Tourette's syndrome! A sample:

The play's sources are racy fabliaux, of both the Italian and Chaucerian type. It's exceptional in that the setting is England -- this is a small-town comedy rather than a romantic one, focusing on the middle class. One should think, if one were a Stratfordian, that most of Shakespeare's plays, at least the comedies, would resemble this one. But Shakespeare depicts the English middle class as he does the Italian merchant class: as prosperous but basely materialistic, morally complacent morons.

If there's any truth behind the early dubious legend that The Merry Wives of Windsor was written in fourteen days at the prompting of Queen Elizabeth who wanted to see Falstaff in love, then it may be that a very early play was revised as a vehicle for the popular Falstaff character.
The relationship of this with the Henry plays is baffling. Shallow, Pistol, and Nim appear here. The play contains a reference to Fenton having kept company with Prince Hal and Poins, as Falstaff did. But Mistress Quickly and Falstaff are not previously acquainted here, and she's a servant to a French doctor. So, setting aside the anachronism of early 15th-century characters in this context, which of the Falstaff plays is supposed to have come first? One popular but strained theory is that Shakespeare interrupted progress on Henry IV, Part 2 for this change of pace. But I suspect this one comes later than the others, after the characters become beloved of audiences. Shakespeare killed off Falstaff as Conan Doyle did Holmes, only to revive him later because of popular demand. Some critics suspect that given the crudity of the comedy, this is a very early play of Shakespeare's, revised to accommodate the familiar characters. This would account for the rumor that it was finished so quickly.

The more disturbing problem is that we have what Harold Bloom calls a "pseudo-Falstaff," operating out of necessity and survival instead of being the force of anarchy and fun. There's no cheeky rebellion, but instead an attempt to win a place within this bourgeois society, which, because it's all about property (possession of women, fear of theft), makes the play somewhat unpopular. It's a sadomasochistic carnival with bear-baiting and Falstaff's three humiliations: being dumped in the Thames with linen, beaten in drag, and tormented into confession. Wit and eloquence have left Falstaff, and he is treated like dirty linen; according to A.C. Bradley, "worst of all" he is "repentent and didactic."

The play appeared in print first as a "bad quarto" in 1602, and one theory suggests that this emerged from the revision for the public stage of an earlier version for a court performance -- the one we have in the First Folio. But the play seems quite early; "its topical references and concerns [are] those of the 1580s, with some 1590s references added to a later revival" (Brazil 117). Ogburn Jr. says it's early 1570s, I think convincingly. For a detailed Oxfordian reading of the play, see Robert Brazil, "Unpacking The Merry Wives. The Oxfordian 2 (1999): 117-137.