Awww...Billiam Shakespeare. I do love thee.
It was really hard to choose one specific event or group of lines from Acts II and III of The Merry Wives of Windsor. I thought about blogging all the funny sexual innuendos (II.i.45-46) or (II.i.86-87). There were several other things I thought about but none of them seemed as appealing to write about as this comment from Falstaff:
"Mistress Ford? I have had ford enough; I was thrown into the ford; I have my belly full of ford" (III.v.34-35).
I thought that this was very clever. Falstaff is portrayed as an idiot who does not cover his tracks (sending the same letter to two women who were close friends) but this line does show that he does have some intellect. Possibly he is one of those smart, dumb people. We all know them. This is the boy or girl who can do a difficult calculus problem in a matter of moments when it takes the majority several minutes, but yet he dresses in sweatpants and a hoodie when it is 90 degrees outside. Anyways, for those of you who were wondering why this is clever it because Falstaff makes the connection between Mistress Ford's name and the definition for a ford which according to my Oxford dictionary is a shallow water crossing, as in a river. He is saying here that he realizes she made a fool out of him (she drown him) "I was thrown into the ford" and now he is drinking because he realizes this "I have my belly full of ford." Good old Billiam Shakespeare is a sly fox.
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Angelica Guzzo on Awww...Billiam Shakespeare. I do love thee.: haha This cracked me up. I was
haha This cracked me up. I was thinking about this, but was to shy to blog about it. Shakespeare is sly with the innuendos.
Angela, it is funny and clever on Shakespeare’s part to reuse Ford like that. He probably gave Mrs. Ford that name just so he could include that little joke. But you make another good point, Falstaff may seem like an idiot, and like a bad person in some ways, but more than anything else I think he is just a blow-hard. Nor is he as stupid as he lets himself be. I view him almost as the fallen knight, who is living in a changing world, where the idea of chivalry is not as predominate as it had been in the past. I don’t really look at him as a bad person, I see him more as misguided.