Published in Windlesora 22 (2006)
© WLHG
This edition of Windlesora focuses on entertainment, and our cover illustration is appropriately a stained glass image of Sir John Falstaff from Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. He wrote it in 1597 reputedly at the command of Queen Elizabeth I who wanted to see more of the antics of the comic knight from the two history plays of King Henry IV. It is said that she was ‘very well pleas’d at the Representation’, and it is something to be proud of that our greatest playwright set one of his funniest plays in Windsor. It has been amusing audiences ever since, and the character of the fat, hard-drinking, witty and anarchic figure, never put down for long, has also inspired several operas and other musical works. The mixture of slyness and joviality which make Falstaff an archetypal comic character is well caught in this portrait, which comes from a nineteenth-century commemorative window in Ye Harte & Garter Hotel. Shakespeare had Falstaff lodge at the Garter Inn (which can be seen in Norden’s 1607 map), and though it and its neighbour The White Hart burned down in 1681, Ye Harte & Garter stands on the same site.
Our thanks to Ye Harte and Garter Hotel for allowing us to photograph the window which also includes this portrait of Anne Page and some other characters from the play.
Windsor Local History Group 