Excerpt from Shakespeare's: Comedy of the Merry Wives of Windsor A second quarto was published in 1619. These edi tions appear to be a pirated version of the play as first written, probably in 1599. This early sketch was afterward revised and enlarged to about twice the original length and this is the form in which it appears in the folio of 1623. Internal evi dence Shows that this revision was made after James came to the throne, and probably about 1605. In i. 1. 110 king is substituted for the council of the quarto. These knights will hack, in ii. I. 50, is sup posed to allude to the 237 knights created by James in 1603. When the court lay at Windsor, in ii. 2. 62, may refer to July, 1603 the court was usually held at Greenwich in the winter. The mention of coach after coach, in ii. 2. 66, is not likely to have been made much before coaches came into general use, which, according to Howe's Continuation of St'owe's was in 1605. Outrun on Gotsall, i. I. 89, appears to allude to the reviving of the Cotswold games about 1603. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.