The Merry Wives of Windsor

Besides the copies of the Merry Wives of Windsor appearing in the folios and modern editions, a quarto, Q3, has been collated in these Notes, of which the following is the title:

The | Merry Wives | of Windsor. | with the humours of Sir John Falstaffe, | as also, The swaggering Vaine of Ancient | Pistoll, and Corporall Nym. |written by William Shake-speare. | Newly corrected. | | printed by T. H. for R. Meighen and are to be sold | at his Shop, next to the Middle-Temple Gate, and in | S. Dunstan’s Church-yard in Fleet Street. | 1630.

Q1 and Q2 are editions of an early sketch of the same play. The variations between the text of these quartos and the received text are so great that collation cannot be attempted. The text printed at the end of the play is taken literatim from Q1, the edition of 1602, of which a copy is preserved among Capell’s Shakespeariana, and this text is collated verbatim with Q2, the second quarto printed in 1619. Q1 was reprinted in 1842 for the Shakespeare Society by Mr J. O. Halliwell. This text, which differs in one or two places from Capell’s Q1, has also been collated. Q2 is given among Twenty of the Plays of Shakespeare, edited by Steevens. Their titles are as follows: