Word: shakepearian
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...Merry Wives of Windsor is a play which, though it presents a flat and calcified Falstaff, and though on the page it may drag, nevertheless can, and did when I saw it, overflow with life. It is a farce with typically Shakepearian comic elements. For the most part everyone stays the same, there is no real hero, and the humor consists of the devices which were old hat to Aristophanes. But the pasteboard hero (Fenton) does get his girl (Anne Page), and Ford learns that he has been unreasonably, unnaturally jealous, and calms down...
...take this production on its own terms, you've first of all got to disabuse yourself of the notion that you're watching a film. You may be looking at a screen, but what you're seeing is the stage production done by the Shakepearian Festival Players in Stratford, Ontario, under the direction of Tyrone Guthrie. Otherwise, the narrow confines of the stage, the incessant shouting of the actors, and the occasionally excessive posturing needed to impress the last rows of the balcony, will prove annoying. If you want to, it's also easy to laugh at the formal gestures...
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