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The Merry Wives of Windsor: The Garter, the German Count and the Elizabethan Court

A German prince visits Windsor, foreign gentlemen disappear with an innkeeper’s horses, a knight hides in a laundry basket, and fairy revels honour the Order of the Garter. Lewkenor’s letter from nearby Egham, Samuel’s German travels and the family’s connections with Windsor give the comedy a particular geographical and historical setting.

Windsor: a royal town

The comedy takes place among prosperous householders, servants, visiting gentlemen, a French physician, a Welsh parson and Falstaff’s disreputable company. Its domestic intrigues inhabit a recognisable English town.

Windsor was also a royal residence and the ceremonial home of the Order of the Garter. Foreign visitors came to inspect the castle, encounter the court and experience the honours attached to royal hospitality.

The play combines these worlds. An innkeeper’s horses, household linen and a jealous husband’s searches stand beside references to a German duke and a final entertainment blessing the royal castle.

Lewes and Samuel at Egham

On 2 September 1594 Lewkenor wrote to Robert Cecil from Egham, close to Windsor. Samuel, recently returned from Bohemia, carried the letter:

This bearer, my brother, newly arrived in these parts from Bohemia, is one that ever desireth humbly to rest at your LL’s service and commandment, and the rather because it pleased your LL to deal so honestly with him in his absence by delivering a letter of his to me. I doubt not his behaviour there hath been such as becomes a good subject, but he will give a reckoning of himself.

By reason of some indisposition of body I cannot conveniently accompany him though very desirous to do so. I beseech you to deliver unto the bearer a poor treatise in written hand which I once delivered unto your Lordship at Hampton Court. An honorable personage hath desired to see it and there is no other copy.

Lewes Lewkenor to Robert Cecil, Egham, 2 September 1594.

The letter places both brothers within the Windsor district and connects them with Cecil and Hampton Court. It also records a manuscript circulating by personal request: the “poor treatise” had been delivered to Cecil, and someone else now wished to read it.

Egham brings the enquiry into the landscape surrounding the play’s Windsor: the Thames, Datchet, the royal park and the neighbouring roads.

George Carey and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men

George Carey inherited the Hunsdon title in 1596 and became Lord Chamberlain in 1597. Shakespeare’s company performed under his patronage as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.

Carey’s election to the Order of the Garter in 1597 has encouraged the proposal that the comedy’s Windsor entertainment was associated with that occasion.

His wife, Elizabeth Spenser, belonged to the literary and patronage environment associated with Edmund Spenser. Lewkenor’s publications likewise received Spenser’s printed commendation.

The proposed Garter occasion brings together a theatrical patron, a royal institution and the play’s ceremonial language. It remains a proposed early performance context.

The Garter entertainment

The final scene turns Falstaff’s punishment into a blessing of Windsor. Mistress Quickly, appearing as the Fairy Queen, commands:

Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out:
Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room.

The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act V, scene v.

The fairy company must protect the castle and honour its chivalric order. Domestic revenge expands into a ceremonial compliment.

Within the plot, Falstaff is deceived and exposed. For a courtly audience, the language also celebrates Windsor and the Garter. Local comedy and royal entertainment occupy the same scene.

The German Count at Windsor

Frederick, Count of Mömpelgard, visited England in 1592. He became Duke of Württemberg the following year.

His secretary Jacob Rathgeb recorded the journey. The account appeared in print in 1597 and describes a traveller interested in royal residences, universities and English institutions.

James Orchard Halliwell later compared the visit with the comedy’s German references. Frederick’s titles, his dealings over transport and his ambition to join the Garter supplied possible topical associations.

The count was elected to the Order in 1597 and installed in 1604. His relationship with the English court therefore continued after the journey.

Jacob Rathgeb’s account of the 1592 visit; the Folger’s Elizabethan court chronology for 1592.

The German visitors and the horses

The Host of the Garter supplies horses to supposed German gentlemen, who disappear with them. His preparations to profit from important visitors end in loss.

The episode belongs to the comedy’s international world rather than the central courtship plot. Foreign status, an expected duke and the obligations of hospitality become instruments for deceiving the innkeeper.

The early quarto’s “Garmombles” has attracted particular attention because it can be compared with the names Mömpelgard and Württemberg. The proposed allusion depends upon the combination of the name, German visitors and transport arrangements.

Rathgeb’s account supplies the historical journey; Shakespeare supplies the comic transformation of expectations surrounding distinguished strangers.

Samuel Lewkenor and Württemberg

Samuel’s continental travels give the German connection a further family setting. His description of Tübingen praises its university:

“which Academy yet maintayneth well his place and dignity among the most learned and florishing Universities of Germany. Many excellent learned schollers haue issued from this Universitie, among the which most worthily may be numbred John Stoflerus, a sage and profound Mathematician, who did write a learned Treatise of Astronomy.”

Samuel Lewkenor, A Discourse Not Altogether Unprofitable, nor Unpleasant for Such as Are Desirous to Know the Situation and Customs of Foreign Cities (1600), description of Tübingen.

Frederick belonged to the princely house governing Württemberg. Samuel describes the region’s intellectual institutions, while Lewes’s Egham letter introduces him immediately after his return from Bohemia.

The brothers’ continental knowledge and their presence near Windsor are recorded separately. Together they give substance to the international setting surrounding the comedy.

Foreign visitors and Lewkenor’s court service

Lewkenor’s later ceremonial office made the reception of foreign princes and ambassadors his professional responsibility. Transport, lodging, invitations and precedence could all carry political consequences.

The royal commission describes the necessary treatment of visitors:

“with all Respects due to them received used and entertained, both during their Abode with Us and in their Journeys also”

Royal grant establishing Lewkenor’s office as Master of the Ceremonies.

The comedy turns a related practical world into farce. The Host expects important foreign guests, provides resources and finds that the supposed honour of serving them has made him vulnerable.

Lewkenor’s documented presence at Egham belongs to 1594. His later office shows the kind of international hospitality that became central to his career.

The French physician and the Welsh parson

Doctor Caius and Sir Hugh Evans make differences of language audible. Their pronunciation, rivalries and challenges turn learning and professional dignity into comic performances.

The Host addresses Caius with another continental name:

“Is he dead, my Ethiopian? is
he dead, my Francisco? ha, bully!”

The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II, scene iii.

The language belongs beside the mixture of nationalities and professions in Lewkenor’s accounts of soldiers abroad. Titles, unfamiliar names and linguistic differences can become occasions for insult, misunderstanding or exaggerated honour.

The dramatic Caius is also part of the established comic tradition of the foreign doctor. The name recalls the celebrated Cambridge physician John Caius, while the character’s French speech gives the theatrical figure a different national identity.

Religious concealment and the laundry basket

Falstaff’s concealment in dirty linen transforms a household object into a means of escape. Ford’s search gives domestic jealousy the form of a raid.

For an Elizabethan audience, the discovery of concealed people inside houses also had a serious contemporary context. Searches for Catholic priests made hidden rooms and protected household spaces politically charged.

Lewkenor’s Catholic family and social connections supply a setting for that reading. The comic business can evoke the familiar anxiety of a search without losing its immediate domestic purpose.

The wives govern the concealment and removal. Ford’s determination to expose them instead makes his own judgement a public spectacle.

Herne’s Oak and the Windsor forest

The final deception uses a local story:

There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter,
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest,
Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg’d horns;

The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act IV, scene iv.

The Lewkenor family had an older connection with the forest. Thomas Lewkenor’s royal service included appointment as forester of Batales Bailly in Windsor Forest during the fifteenth century.

The connection places the family within the administration of the royal landscape. Lewes’s own Egham letter supplies a later, personal location in the same district.

Falstaff enters that landscape wearing horns and expecting pleasure. The householders and children turn his expectations into a performance directed against him.

The Windsor fairy revels and the Sussex progress

The woodland entertainment belongs beside the spectacles staged for Elizabeth during her progresses. Trees, paths and gardens could become settings for allegorical encounters.

At Cowdray in August 1591, the Queen encountered woodland figures, speeches and entertainments staged across the estate. The progress continued to West Dean, where she dined at the house of Mr Richard Lewkenor, Lewes’s uncle.

The family therefore belonged to a local world through which the royal party moved and in which landscape became a setting for performance.

Windsor’s fairy scene turns that ceremonial language towards both compliment and comedy. The castle is blessed while Falstaff is punished.

Falstaff and the military world

Falstaff brings the appetites and opportunism of the history plays into Windsor’s households. Lewkenor’s account of dependent Englishmen in Spanish service makes a striking comparison with the town:

“As for those that have their pensions granted them to follow the court without any obligation of service, as in a manner all the pensions granted to the Englishmen are, the Spanish soldier maketh the most base and contemptible reckoning of them that may be, even as of men that live by charity, as our poor knights do at Windsor.”

Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595).

The comparison names Windsor itself. Courtly dependence and the uncertain means of a knight become part of Lewkenor’s criticism of foreign service.

The comedy gives Falstaff continental associations. Mistress Page describes him as:

“this Flemish drunkard”

The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II, scene i.

Captain John Smith of Norfolk and Sir John Smythe of Essex belong to the separate military histories examined in the soldier investigations. Here Lewkenor’s own reference to Windsor gives the comparison a precise local expression.

The cumulative Windsor case

The strongest local evidence is Lewkenor’s letter of 2 September 1594. It places him at Egham, identifies Samuel as its bearer and records a manuscript passing between Lewkenor, Cecil and an unnamed interested reader.

Samuel’s account of Tübingen supplies knowledge of Württemberg. Rathgeb’s narrative records Frederick’s English visit, while the comedy’s Germans and horses have long invited comparison with it.

The Garter language connects the final entertainment with Windsor’s royal institutions. Carey’s patronage supplies a possible occasion, and the Sussex progress offers a family setting for woodland pageantry.

Lewkenor’s reference to the “poor knights” at Windsor adds a direct textual connection to Falstaff’s social world. His later career makes foreign hospitality and the practical handling of visitors central professional concerns.

The comedy joins these kinds of experience in one town: royal ceremony, international travel, military dependence and household ingenuity.

Film: Falstaff and Shakespeare’s Soldiers

Explore the historical military personalities and experiences associated with Shakespeare’s Falstaff.

Sources and Further Reading

Lewes Lewkenor to Robert Cecil, Egham, 2 September 1594, introducing Samuel and requesting the return of a manuscript.

Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595), comparison with the poor knights of Windsor; royal commission establishing the office of Master of the Ceremonies.

Samuel Lewkenor, A Discourse Not Altogether Unprofitable, nor Unpleasant (1600), description of Tübingen.

Jacob Rathgeb, account of Frederick of Mömpelgard’s visit to England in 1592, published in 1597; James Orchard Halliwell’s discussion of the German references in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Records concerning George Carey, second Baron Hunsdon, his theatrical patronage, appointment as Lord Chamberlain and election to the Garter in 1597.

Accounts of Elizabeth’s August 1591 progress to Cowdray and West Dean; family records concerning Thomas Lewkenor’s appointment in Windsor Forest.

William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, early quarto (1602) and First Folio (1623). The German episode differs between the texts. Read the play.

The Master of the Ceremonies, 18 October 2026, Windsor, Egham, the Lewkenor brothers and the German Count. Historical quotations follow the transcriptions collected there.

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