ABSTRACT
Mistress Quickly is similar to but not the same as Hostess Quickly in Henry IV and Henry V. In this play she is ‘nurse, or his dry nurse, or his cook, or his laundry, his washer and his wringer’ and unknown to Falstaff at the beginning. However, she is similarly shrewd and comic, and very happy to meddle in other people’s affairs, as her counterpart in the history plays. She also has a happy knack of (innocently) getting her words wrong and of sometimes making up completely new ones. Although she is generally played older, she could be as young as mid-twenties.
