Did Queen Elizabeth demand that Shakespeare write a play just so she could see Falstaff again?
Very shortly after the completion of Henry IV, Part II, Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor (1599), featuring the errant knight in the starring role. What prompted Shakespeare to resurrect Falstaff so soon? Two independent sources confirm that Shakespeare revived Falstaff at the insistence of Queen Elizabeth I, who had been delighted by Falstaff’s presence in the Henry IV plays. John Dennis, a literary critic who adapted The Merry Wives of Windsor in 1702, asserted, I know very well that it hath pleased one of the greatest queens that ever was in the world … This comedy was written at her command, and by her direction, and she was so eager to see it acted that she commanded it to be finished in fourteen days; and was afterwards, as tradition tells us, very well pleased at the representation.” Moreover, Nicholas Rowe, in his Life of Shakespeare (1709), reports that the Queen “was so well pleased with that admirable character of Falstaff in the two parts of Henry IV that she c
