Summary
Mistress Page and Mistress Quickly discuss whether Falstaff has arrived at Mistress Ford's. Evans – William's teacher – enters to announce that school is cancelled, but quizzes William at Mistress Page's request. His Welsh accent makes his questions difficult to understand, and Mistress Quickly interprets them as sexual innuendo.
Meanwhile, Falstaff arrives at Mistress Ford's house. He hides when Mistress Page appears once more, informing Mistress Ford that her husband is on his way, once again, to the house. Falstaff refuses to be smuggled in a laundry basket again, so the two women suggest he dress up in the clothes of the maid's aunt. Falstaff agrees, but does not know that Ford detests the maid's aunt and has banned her from his house. Mistress Ford expresses her hope to Mistress Page that Ford sees Falstaff in disguise.
Ford arrives with his posse, and immediately searches through the laundry basket, only to find nothing. Then Falstaff appears in disguise and Ford flies into a rage, thinking him to be the maid's aunt. He beats Falstaff and chases him out of the house. Soon, however, the other men note that the aunt had a rather thick beard, and Ford runs after Falstaff, realizing his mistake.
The two wives congratulate themselves on another success, but decide that they must now publicly shame Falstaff to truly effect a change in him. They finally share their plan with their husbands, who apologize to their wives and gleefully join the scheme. Together, they plan to humiliate Falstaff by having him dress as a ghost named Herne and go to a haunted oak tree in the woods, where goblins (their children) will taunt him. Their goal is to get Falstaff to admit his dishonorable behavior. Mistress Page and Page both think they can use the chaos of the event as a way to marry Anne to their preferred suitors (Caius and Slender, respectively) in secret.
Meanwhile, at the Garter Inn, the Host is humiliated when he realizes he has lost three of his horses and the guest he was anticipating – the Duke of Germany – does not exist. Falstaff receives note from Mistress Ford that she would like to see him again. Fenton asks the Host for help deceiving Anne's parents so that he and Anne can elope while both parents think she is marrying someone else.
Analysis
This act of the play (especially the first half) seems markedly similar to the previous act, in which the wives joyously deceive Falstaff and their husbands once more, mostly at Falstaff's expense. Once again, physical comedy abounds as Falstaff's humiliation features him cross-dressing as an old, fat woman. Those familiar with early modern English theater, however, might recall that on the Renaissance stage, female roles were always played by boys or young men in drag. This was the case for all genres of performance, including comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances. As such, early modern English audiences would have been used to seeing men in women's clothes and would have, in the case of tragedies and other serious performances, willingly suspended their disbelief in order to enjoy the play. This does not mean that Falstaff's cross-dressing as the maid's aunt would not have been funny or entertaining. On the contrary, the play indulges this moment as much as it does the laundry basket conflict, suggesting that this particular cross-dressing can and should be laughed at because of its sheer absurdity: Falstaff is not a boy or an adolescent but a large, deep-voiced man with a thick beard and a very noticeable physical presence. That Falstaff's "disguise" as the aunt is so successful in deceiving Ford only serves to highlight Ford's obliviousness and self-interest, as it is clear to everyone on stage (including Mistresses Ford and Page, who themselves would have been played by young men) that this is no woman at all. This moment also highlights an important point about the significance of genre: in comedies, cross-dressing can easily be interpreted as a source of humor and absurdism, whereas in tragedies, it was accepted simply as conventional theatrical practice.
Act Four also serves as both a further complication of the play's intersecting plots, as well as the beginning of the play's denouement. The wives finally reveal the truth to their husbands, who have had no idea until this point that Mistress Page and Mistress Ford were simply tricking Falstaff and stoking Ford's jealousy. This moment helps introduce the play's resolution of Act Five, as the relationships between the husbands and wives of Windsor are mended and then deployed to irreparably humiliate their common enemy – Falstaff. However, at the same time, the plot involving Anne and Fenton thickens and their own deception arises as they plan to elope during the chaos of the Herne haunt while Mistress Page thinks Anne is marrying Caius and Page thinks Anne is marrying Slender. Thus, just as one deception wanes, another begins to take shape. This development contributes to the ever-complicated plot of the play, and it is especially significant that these plots will all intersect at what can be considered a type of performance or play-within-a-play. The humiliation of Falstaff – complete with costumes, sound effects, and assigned roles – will also reveal the truth about Anne and Fenton and similarly embarrass Page and Mistress Page. Thus, The Merry Wives of Windsor joins a long tradition of Shakespeare's plays in which all is revealed through performance itself.
