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The Many Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in an unreliable Quartoin 1602 and later in the First Folio of 1623. John Dennis claimed, in 1702, that the play was written at the Queen’s command, and Nicholas Rowe embellished - the claim in his 1709 edition: ‘She was so well pleased with that admirable Character of Falstaff, in the two Parts of Henry the Fourth, that she commanded him to continue it for one Play more, and to shrew him in Love.’ However attractive the story, it is no more certain than the more recent proposal that it was first performed at the Garter feast of 1597. An equally likely date for the first performance is 1600. The source of the play is unknown, and it may be one of the few examples of a story invented by Shakespeare.
The impoverished Falstaff is lodging at the Garter Inn in Windsor. He decides to woo Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, for money not for love, because he. knows that they have control of their husband's purses. But his scheming is revealed to Ford and Page by Falstaff's disgruntled followers, and the exaggeratedly jealous Ford takes revenge by.