Character guide

Anne Page

major

Also known as Mistress Anne Page, fair Mistress Anne, Nan Page, pretty Mistress Anne, Nan

Anne Page is the marriageable center of Windsor's comic economy: her grandfather's seven hundred pounds and her father's estate make her desirable, while her own preference remains the one thing suitors and parents keep overlooking. She is pulled between her mother's choice, her father's choice, and her own, and her masked role among the fairies at Herne's Oak lets her move through the play's nocturnal mischief without being anyone's fool. Her decision quietly determines which plotline actually ends in a wedding.

Mistress Ford

major

Also known as Mistress Ford, Ford, O Mistress Ford

Mistress Ford is married to a man whose jealousy is a standing joke in Windsor, which makes her both vulnerable to scandal and expert at managing it. When Falstaff's identical letters reach her and Mistress Page, she doesn't swoon or scold; she calculates, proposing to entertain him with hope until the fire of lust melts him in his own grease. Her cool head and appetite for theatrical payback drive the play's central engine of humiliation.

Mistress Page

major

Also known as Mistress Page, Page, Mistress Page Heaven

Mistress Page is the wife whose husband trusts her completely, a contrast that sharpens every scene she shares with the jealous Ford household. She treats Falstaff's advances less as a threat than as an entertainment, coolly noting she'd rather find twenty lascivious turtles than one chaste man. Her steadiness and strategic mind make her the anchor of the wives' conspiracy and a quiet counterweight to the play's anxious husbands.

Sir John Falstaff

major

Also known as Falstaff, Sir John, John Falstaff, fat Falstaff

Falstaff arrives in Windsor short on money and long on self-regard, convinced that Mistress Ford and Mistress Page's households are ripe for plunder through seduction. His courtship is a masterpiece of oily improvisation, praising brows, gait, and farthingales while dodging the accusation that he loves them both. His vanity and appetite make him the perfect target for the wives' escalating humiliations, and his willingness to keep returning for more is the play's funniest and most damning engine.

Master Ford

major

Also known as Ford, Master Ford, Brook

Ford is the play's study in suspicious love: he cannot believe his wife faithful, and Pistol's insinuations about Falstaff land on ground already prepared. Rather than confront her, he invents the alias Brook and pays Falstaff for access to his own household, a scheme that turns his jealousy into farce. His frantic searches and public humiliations make him both a cautionary figure and a comic foil to the calmer Master Page.

Master Page

supporting

Also known as Page, honest Master Page, Master George Page, George

Master Page is the placid counterweight to Ford's jealousy, a Windsor gentleman whose household runs on good humor rather than suspicion. He has his own plans for Anne's marriage, favoring Slender's suit, and his disagreement with his wife over the match sets up a quiet domestic contest beneath the Falstaff farce. His confidence in his wife and his relaxed authority make him the play's measure of what a sane marriage looks like.

Master Slender

supporting

Also known as Slender, young Master Slender, gentle Master Slender

Slender arrives in Windsor trailing his cousin Justice Shallow and parson Evans, a gentleman by pedigree and inheritance if not by wit or nerve. He wants Anne Page mostly because the adults around him have decided her seven hundred pounds make her worth wanting, and his courtship consists of stammered nothings and borrowed opinions. His ineptitude matters because it exposes how the marriage market treats a daughter as a transaction, and because his blundering pursuit helps clear the field for a suitor who actually loves her.

Sir Hugh Evans

supporting

Also known as Sir Hugh, Hugh Evans, Hugh

Evans moves between the pulpit, the schoolroom, and the drawing rooms of Windsor, forever trying to convert quarrels into compromises and suitors into husbands. He is earnest to a fault: he despises a liar as he despises one that is false, and he honestly believes seven hundred pounds and possibilities are good gifts worth a sermon. His mediation sets the marriage plot in motion, and his willingness to don horns as a fake satyr shows a clergyman game for mischief when the cause is right.

Doctor Caius

supporting

Also known as Master Doctor Caius, Master Caius, Caius

Caius is the household master of Mistress Quickly and a suitor backed by Mistress Page, who prefers his prospects to the foolish Slender. He is brisk, imperious, and quick to take offense, treating courtship as a matter of knowing vat he has to do and dispatching it without ceremony. His foreignness and fury fuel the play's running jokes about duels and cuckoldry, and his willingness to steal a fairy in green at the midnight oak shows how many hands are pulling at Anne's future.

Master Fenton

supporting

Also known as Fenton, young Master Fenton

Fenton haunts the Page household against the father's explicit displeasure, insisting his love is righteous and refusing to retire. He has no fortune to recommend him and no ally except Anne's own heart and the meddling goodwill of Mistress Quickly, who carries his ring and his cause. His persistence turns the marriage plot from a contest of fathers into a contest of lovers, and his willingness to act at the fairy masque makes him the quiet hinge on which the comedy's ending swings.

Justice Shallow

supporting

Also known as Shallow, Robert Shallow

Shallow opens the play in high dudgeon over Falstaff's abuse, threatening the Council and invoking three hundred years of armigero ancestors. His vanity is bottomless and his grievance mostly performative, but his determination to marry his cousin Slender to Anne Page gives the subplot its engine. He represents the county's self-important gentry, and his bluster sets the comic tone for a Windsor where status is loudly claimed and quietly undermined.

Mistress Quickly

supporting

Also known as Mistress Quickly Calling

Quickly serves Caius, answers to the merry wives, and carries messages for Fenton, Slender, and Falstaff, promising each of them her best efforts and meaning it every time. She is the play's connective tissue, the servant whose access to every household makes her indispensable and whose divided loyalties make her unreliable. Her willingness to run through fire and water for a kind heart, and her habit of forgetting her next errand, keep the plot's many threads tangling and untangling toward the midnight oak.

Bardolph

supporting

Also known as Bardolph Sir John

Bardolph belongs to the ragged retinue Falstaff drags into Windsor, a follower whose face glows like a warning sign and whose loyalty runs only as far as the next scheme. When the wives stage their fairy masque at Herne's oak, he is there among the tapers and the pinching, a petty thief dressed up as an elf. His presence keeps Falstaff's crew visible as a shabby, comic menace, the kind of company that makes the knight's pretensions to romance look ridiculous before the plot even starts.

Pistol

supporting

Also known as Pistol Hope, Pistol The horn

Pistol struts through Windsor in a cloud of blank verse and bluster, one of the discarded men whose accusations set the town's husbands and wives buzzing. He carries a grudge against Falstaff for being turned away, and his taste for dramatic betrayal makes him dangerous in a petty, theatrical way. His ranting turns the play's gossip into action, feeding Ford's jealousy and helping to launch the very schemes the merry wives will turn back on the knight.

Nym

supporting

Also known as Corporal Nym, Sir Corporal Nym

Nym is one of Falstaff's cast-off followers, a man who claims to dislike lying even as he exposes his old master's designs on the wives of Windsor. His flat, repetitive manner of speech — all 'humour' and 'the short and the long' — makes him both absurd and oddly credible, and the husbands cannot quite dismiss what he says. By carrying word of Falstaff's letters to Page and Ford, he sets the play's central engine running, turning private folly into public comedy.

Robin

minor

Also known as Robin Ay, little Robin

Falstaff's young page boy.

John Rugby

minor

Also known as Rugby, Jack Rugby, John ape

Doctor Caius's servant.

Simple

minor

Also known as Enter Simple, Simple Ay

Slender's servant.

William Page

minor

Also known as William, William Forsooth

Young son of Master and Mistress Page, schooled by Sir Hugh Evans.

Host of the Garter

supporting

Also known as Host, Host Mockwater

The Host presides over the Garter Inn, where Falstaff lodges and where much of Windsor's gossip and scheming passes through his taproom. He loves a fray — arranging the absurd duel between the Welsh parson and the French doctor, and cheerfully stirring the town's rivalries for the sport of it. His meddling keeps the subplots spinning and gives the play its tavern heartbeat, a reminder that in Windsor even the mischief has a host.

Mistress Bridget

minor

A minor character mentioned as a friend of Anne Page.

Herne the Hunter

minor

Also known as Herne

A legendary ghost of Windsor Forest, impersonated by Falstaff.