What happens in The Merry Wives of Windsor

Sir John Falstaff, fat and broke, has set up at the Garter Inn in the small town of Windsor and hatched a plan to fix his finances. He will seduce two married women, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, both of whom control their husbands’ money. To save effort, he sends them identical love letters. His servants Pistol and Nym, cut off and resentful, promptly go and warn the two husbands that Falstaff is after their wives.

The two women compare letters, see at once that they have been wooed word for word the same way, and decide to make Falstaff pay for the insult. They will pretend to welcome him and lead him into one humiliation after another. The husbands react differently. Page shrugs the warning off and trusts his wife. Ford, eaten by jealousy, disguises himself as a stranger named Master Brook and pays Falstaff to seduce Mistress Ford, so he can catch his own wife in the act. Falstaff, delighted, boasts to “Brook” of the very tryst he has arranged.

Running alongside this is the courtship of Anne Page, the daughter with a fat inheritance. Three suitors want her: the foolish Slender, backed by her father; the hot-tempered French doctor Caius, backed by her mother; and young Fenton, whom Anne actually loves. Caius and the Welsh parson Evans nearly fight a duel over a tangled message, until the mischievous Host of the Garter sends them to different meeting spots and spoils the fight. The two cheated men make peace and quietly plot to get back at the Host.

The wives’ revenge plays out in stages. When Falstaff comes to call on Mistress Ford, Mistress Page rushes in with word that the jealous husband is coming home. They stuff Falstaff into a dirty laundry basket and have him dumped into the Thames. He survives, soaked and furious, and still believes Mistress Ford regrets the accident. So he tries again. This time the women disguise him as the fat woman of Brentford, a supposed witch Ford despises, and Ford beats him soundly out the door. Twice fooled, Falstaff finally admits he has been made a fool.

The wives now let their husbands in on the joke, and the whole town agrees on one last trick. Falstaff will be told to come to Herne’s oak in Windsor Park at midnight, disguised as a horned hunter. There the children of the town, dressed as fairies, will surround him, pinch him, and burn him with candles until he confesses his folly. The Host, meanwhile, is robbed of his horses by some German con men passing through, a small chaos of its own.

The midnight scene ties up every thread. Falstaff arrives wearing buck’s horns, the fairies swarm him, and then they pull off their masks to reveal the neighbors who have shamed him. He takes the lesson and the laughter. In the confusion, the rival matches for Anne collapse. Page had arranged for Slender to steal away the girl in white; Mistress Page had arranged for Caius to take the girl in green. Both men slip off with the wrong partner and discover, to their disgust, that they have eloped with boys in disguise. Anne, dressed to fool them both, has slipped away with Fenton and married him for love. Her parents are startled but forgive the match. Everyone, even the much-abused Falstaff, is invited home to laugh the night out by a country fire.