All the Bloody Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor

Not this clever!

I wouldn't be the first person to point out that this play has some things in common with Allo Allo. Outrageous foreign accents, a plump libidinous protagonist (Falstaff) embroiled in a farce of misunderstandings and unseen comeuppances.

Nor would I be the first person to notice that it's just God awful. There is a list of ardent bardophiles who have condemned the play. Being a natural contrarian I had been hoping to prove them wrong, but they're right on this one. It has all the hallmarks of bad Shakespeare comedy (animal jokes, xenophobia, flat characterisation and misogyny) without any of the clever prose. It's the worst.

Allo Allo is self-aware, the Brits get as much of a roasting as the Germans and French. That's not really the case in Merry Wives, which takes more of an It Ain't Half Hot Mum approach (though, it has to be said, nowhere near as offensive).

But, you say, Shakespeare was way ahead of his time doing funny accents. Unfortunately, Chaucer was doing phonetic idiomatic dialect centuries before, far better. Furthermore, Chaucer's bawdy comedy sequences are bawdier than you'd get on TV these days. Whereas Shakespeare has his sexual misadventures without any sexual content and with Falstaff getting duly punished.

There is at least an Umpa Lumpa style song at the end that explains the play's moral (sung by children dressed as fairies and pixies).

"Fie on sinful fantasy! Fie on lust and luxury! Lust is but a bloody fire, Kindled with unchaste desire, Fed in heart, whose flames aspire, As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher. Pinch him, fairies, mutually! Pinch him for his villainy! Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about, Till candles, and starlight, and moonshine be out."

That's the best bit.

1/5 It's too bland to stand.

Comments

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Thomas Ouphe

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