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Chapter 12 - Memory, Affect, and the Multiverse

From the History Plays to The Merry Wives of Windsor

from Part IV - Memory, Affect, and Stagecraft

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2023

By
Evelyn Tribble
Edited by
Jonathan Baldo  and
Isabel Karremann
Jonathan Baldo
Affiliation:
University of Rochester, New York
Isabel Karremann
Affiliation:
University of Zurich
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Summary

Editors and critics have struggled to place The Merry Wives of Windsor within the framework of Shakespeare’s chronicle history plays, and it is often said that the Falstaff of Merry Wives is a different character from that of the histories. Merry Wives can be seen as part of a multiverse, of incompatible timelines in which characters are both entirely familiar and somehow altered. In the multiverse of Merry Wives, both public and private histories are apparently erased. While the history plays are burdened by almost pathological remembrance and rumination, the world of Merry Wives shows the advantages of amnesia.

Keywords

Merry Wives of WindsorFalstaffforgettingruminationmultiverse
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Chapter
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Memory and Affect in Shakespeare's England , pp. 238 - 250
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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