“Here’s a Fellow Frights / English out of His Wits” – The Merry Wives of Windsor におけるEnglishness

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  • “Here’s Fellow Frights / English out of His Wits” : Fashioning Englishness in The Merry Wives of Windsor
  • Here s a Fellow Frights English out of His Wits The Merry Wives of Windsor ニ オケル Englishness

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The purpose of this study is to explore the complex ways in which the Englishness is fashioned in The Merry Wives of Windsor by attending to the relationship between women, practices of festive humiliation, and marginalizing process represented in this play. In 1599, a Swiss doctor Thomas Platter saw in London a festive procession – skimmington or charivari – which punished the neighbour who failed to come to a hempecked husband’s assistance. Platter regarded this shaming ritual as a symbolic representation of the liberty enjoyed by early modern English women. Wiv. also highlights the liberty or merriness of wives in Windsor in terms of depicting Falstaff as the victim of three versions of skimmington : (4.5.25), and the humiliation by “fairies” (5.5.47). Falstaff, in these festive abuses, is punished by reason of this lewdness as well as his (mis)construction of English texts, that is, merry wives of Windsor. It is not only Falstaff but also Sir Hugh Evans, a Welsh parson, who misapplys the correct use of English. The Englishness in Wiv. can be formed by the marginalization of these characters who misuse English texts or words. It must be noted, however, that the marginalizing process itself is incomplete in that the humiliated persons who have been expelled from the community of Windsor are recalled and incorporated into it at the shaming rituals of “fairies” of 5.5 : Evans as a Satyr who supervises the ritual, on the other hand, Falstaff, who Impersonated the “wise woman” of Brentford, as “the Fairy Queen” (4.6.20)

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