# Nym — The Merry Wives of Windsor character guide

> Nym in The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Corporal Nym, Sir Corporal Nym

**First appearance:** 0004-act-i-scene-iii

## Snapshot

A drawling, cryptic corporal who speaks in clipped phrases about 'humours' and delivers Falstaff's secrets with a swordsman's deadpan menace.

## Who they are

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.

## In the story

### [Scene III](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_merry_wives_of_windsor_se/chapters/act-i-scene-iii)

Refuses to deliver Falstaff's letter to Mistress Ford and plots revenge by informing Master Page.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_merry_wives_of_windsor_se/characters/nym
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_merry_wives_of_windsor_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_merry_wives_of_windsor_se/characters