Understanding Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor by Robert A. Albano - HTML preview

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Act I, Scene 4: Talk of the Wart

 

Besides Slender and Caius, Anne Page has a third suitor, a gentleman named Fenton. Fenton also applies to Mistress Quickly to seek her help in winning the hand of Anne Page. Mistress Quickly agrees to assist him, and comments that Anne spoke for a full hour about a wart over Fenton’s eye (at line 132). The housekeeper tells him this to indicate that Anne is madly in love with him. Fenton gives Mistress Quickly some money for her assistance, which she gladly accepts. However, after he exits, Mistress Quickly says in a short soliloquy that she knows Anne very well and that Anne does not love Fenton at all (line 144). Mistress Quickly, though, agrees to help Slender and Fenton because she can profit from doing so. But, ironically, Mistress Quickly really does not know what Anne Page is thinking. She does not know Anne Page as well as she claims.