Quarto, or pamphlet, copies of many of Shakespeare’s plays circulated before his collected works were f irst published together in the Folio of 1623. This Second Quarto of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor reprints an edition of 1602, the title page of which shows that the play was performed in front of Elizabeth I. The text varies greatly from the version we know from the First Folio, and may have been written from memory by someone who had acted in the play.