The Merry Wives of Windsor

Sir John Falstaff is back in the sack (fortified wine) for this broad comedy. The debauched old knight decides he’ll write letters to two rich (married) women in the hopes of becoming a geriatric gigolo. After all, he has a shiftless lifestyle to support, one which involves a lot of drinking. I see Falstaff as an Elizabethan Charles Bukowski, but probably with better teeth. When the merry wives – Mistresses Ford and Page – compare their letters, they decide to have a bit of fun with Falstaff and so lead him on. Here, the play veers into Three’s Company territory with Mistresses Ford and Page trapping Falstaff in a hamper of dirty laundry, and convincing him to dress up as a maid’s aunt ‘the fat woman of Brentford.’ There is also a subplot involving boys dressing as girls to deceive horny suitors, one of whom actually marries his boy while still thinking he is a girl. Anyway, I wanted to go representational here, so on the obverse you see a small bust and cameo to represent Mistresses Ford and Page, with the decanter and overturned goblet suggesting the debauched presence of Falstaff bringing them together. It would have been nice to include the characters who dress up as fairies (did I not mention that?) but one only has so much real estate to play with.