Upstairs, Downstairs in Merry Wives (49.4, Winter 1999/2000, pp 87, 90)

A few months ago, I was assigned the task of “directing” Merry Wives for a playreading group, the playing area for our staged reading to be in the residence of one of the members. The place kindly made available for our performance was, at first sight, a disaster area. Entrances in curious places and in the middle of the playing area a staircase. Not wishing to give offence, I decided that we would not complain and that we would carry on as best we could.

In Act 4, scene 2, Mrs. Ford directs Mrs. Page to go upstairs (line 87; Pelican text). Our Mrs. Page made her exit, up the inconveniently placed
staircase in a manner that was easy, effortless, and appropriate. Furthermore, delivering her exit lines in soliloquy, halfway up the stairs she spoke the only verse passage in the play from either of the merry wives in the context of duping Falstaff, in the center of which occurs the title of the play — a singularly important moment. The inconvenient staircase was suddenly very convenient, a perfect position, elevated and  commanding, from which to deliver this crucial speech.

Inspired by the actress’s reading of the line, I took more seriously the situations in the play that specify upstairs or downstairs. More than any
other play in the canon, I observed, this one offers references to a chamber above ~ the upstairs at Ford’s house, Falstaff’s rooms at the Inn. Though no action is apparently to be played above, there are in the dialogue more references to the location of a chamber on an upper storey than in Two Gentleman, Shrew, or Merchant and, in the tragedies, more also than in Romeo and Juliet, all of which clearly require action to be played above and movement up and down to or from a visible or an imagined upper level. Furthermore, there are many more instances of above, ascend, up, descend, down in Merry Wives than in the dialogue of any of the other comedies. It may therefore be suggested that this unusual emphasis on location above and on movement up and down in this play — which is not to be matched in the other comedies — may reflect a particular situation of the staging. (There is roughly equivalent vertical movement stipulated in the history plays having scenes “before the walls” [e.g., 1 Henry VI, 2.28; 3 Henry VI, 5.1] and in some of the tragedies [e.g., Timon, 5.4.55], but the frequency and the emphases are very different from those in The Merry Wives.)

Professor T. W. Craik, editor of the Oxford edition (1990), has kindly and judiciously observed in correspondence that these references may be explained by the “bourgeois nature of the play”; that argument is certainly valid, for domestic architecture is a unique characteristic of this comedy. But though no action in this play is deliberately to be played visibly on the upper level in conjunction with action on the main stage, it is perhaps significant that the text requires no final exits from the upper level nor any initial entrances to the upper level; the actors go up from the stage and come back down again to the stage.

So, in 3.3, after Falstaff’s escape in the buckbasket, Ford urges his friends to “Ascend my chambers; … Up, gentlemen; … Follow me, gentlemen” (141-48), and they all exit (148, 153); they reenter (174.1) and the scene continues.

In 4.2, Mrs. Ford tells us that the fat woman has a gown “above” (64), Falstaff is urged to “Run up,” and he exits (67, 71), followed by Mrs. Page who is told to “Go up” (87). She exits (93), after giving her verse speech with the title of the play. (Between 71 and 158 Falstaff dresses in woman’s clothing.) Then Mrs. Ford calls for Mrs. Page and the “old woman” to “come…down” (146, 147), seconded by Ford’s demands, “Come
down,…come down” (154-55). Mrs. Page and Falstaff (dressed as the old woman) enter (157.1), and Falstaff is beaten out (161.1). After Falstaff’s escape in his disguise, Ford again invites his friends to “follow,… follow” (169) and they exit (173.1). They are not invited to “come up,” and they do not reenter, though the scene continues.

Finally, in 4.5, Simple tells the Host that “a fat woman [has] gone up into [Falstaff’s] chamber,” and he will “stay…till she come down” (10-12). The Host then calls to Falstaff, telling him that Simple awaits the “coming down of thy fat woman. Let her descend,…let her descend” (16-18). Falstaff replies “within” (according to most editors) or, in Q2, “he speaks above,” and then enters (18.1, having had some 150 lines to remove his disguise). At the end of the scene, Falstaff invites Mrs. Quickly to “Come up into my chamber” (112), and they exit, returning to the stage (55 lines later) after the intervening scene (4.6) at the beginning of Act 5, scene 1.

The system as here described requires exits from the Stage and entrances to the stage and an off-stage area concealed from audience view. It lacks only one entrance direction to be a perfect system: at the beginning of 4.5, there should be added: “Falstaff in woman’s clothing passes over the stage and exits to his chamber” — a direction making visible Simple’s report that he has seen the woman ‘go up. And it is surely significant that when the four men leave the stage in 4.2 to search Ford’s house a second time, they are invited only to “follow” — not to “ascend” — and they do not reenter. (They have simply used the exit at stage level.)

The references are so detailed that one is tempted to believe that Shakespeare wrote the lines with a specific stage in mind, one having a
stairs conveniently (or inconveniently) located within sight of the audience. In his edition of the play (Arden 2000), Professor Giorgio Melchiori admits the possibility of just such a setting. Describing Mrs. Page’s entrance with Falstaff in 4.2, he writes: her speech “suggests that she is helping Falstaff to descend from above, implying the presence on the stage of stairs visible to the audience” (252); and of the situation in 4.5 before Falstaff enters, he writes: “Falstaff’s reply from above confirms the impression that the play was conceived for a playing space on two levels, possibly joined by a staircase in view” (262). . .

I think such a setting is not available at the Globe or at Whitehall, where we are to suppose (again Professor Craik) the performance by royal
command to have taken place; but might there not have been a performance at Windsor in some hall with such a staircase?

There is a tradition in Windsor of long standing and much credit, maintained by local historians, that there was a performance of this play at
Windsor and that it took place in the Hall of the Petty Canons of the Chapel of St. George, built in 1415, and until recently the Chapter Library (now termed the Vicar’s Hall). There is no staircase in this handsome hall. The sometime Librarian of the Chapter, Priscilla Manley, recently retired, reports, however, that her predecessor, the late Maurice Bond told her in 1968 that in the time of the first Elizabeth the Hall, single-storeyed with a lofty ceiling (as at present), had been divided both vertically and horizontally and that there was “a staircase in the wall (behind bookcase XID on the west of the library” leading upstairs to apartments and living quarters.

Critics have labored over the years with the textual problems of this play, supposing that the text as we have it shows signs of alteration. It is
not impossible that at the Queen’s command, Shakespeare wrote or rewrote the play for performance at Windsor — the Queen “was very fond of Windsor” (Mrs. Manley) — in the Vicar’s Hall. The many localisms in the text almost necessitate a Windsor performance; the Garter references, on the other hand, may well be material provided fora performance at Whitehall on the occasion of the Great Feast of the Garter ceremonies in London.