FALSTAFF AND TIME TRAVEL

FALSTAFF AND TIME TRAVEL. One way in which THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR is remarkable is that it is one of the first (perhaps the first, I just don’t know enough to say) examples of the time travel genre. (DON QUIXOTE, which shows how a contemporary Don cannot go back to the age of chivalry, comes slightly later). Falstaff is a figure from the early 1300’s, showing up in a play almost 300 years later. Falstaff is a medieval knight. The world he enters is that of the Elizabethan gentry.