This article contains spoilers!
William Shakespeare’s comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor, staged in 1602, features the main character Sir John Falstaff and his arrival to the town of Windsor. Realizing that he does not have the financial means necessary to thrive in this new environment, he decides the quickest way to make money is to court two wealthy married women—Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. He sends them both long love letters professing his adoration for each of them, but the wives soon find out that they are each receiving identical letters. At this discovery, they decide that the best form of revenge is to publicly humiliate Sir John in a series of elaborate pranks.
Betty Thomas’s contemporary rendition of this plot line, showcased in the 2006 teen comedy John Tucker Must Die, follows basketball star John Tucker and his attempt to sustain relationships with three different girls simultaneously: cheerleader Heather, academic overachiever Carrie, and vegan teen activist Beth. Once they discover they are all being cheated on and lied to, they recruit a timid girl, new to the school, named Kate in order to help them with their plans for vengeance. Using Kate as their pawn, they plan to mold her personality and looks in order to best attract John, and then have Kate ceremoniously break up with him and break his heart just as he broke all of theirs.
In both stories, the revenge the women seek is severe. Notably, the mistresses of Shakespeare’s work trick Sir John Falstaff into entering a laundry hamper that gets thrown into a river. Additionally, they lure him into a home while dressed as poor old women in need of assistance. Once he enters the home, they both collectively beat him. In the final act of the play, the women go so far as to trick Falstaff into venturing into the middle of the woods in order to be tormented by small children dressed as fairies; their amusement at his suffering is unending.
Similarly seeking their own taste of revenge for his dishonest and reckless behavior, the teenage girls in John Tucker Must Die exhibit no restraint in their version of pranks. One day before an important basketball tournament, Heather spikes John’s protein powder with estrogen powder, and he spends the rest of his game confused and disoriented. The girls request he pose shirtless for a photo shoot, and then proceed to use this picture in a genital herpes awareness ad. Finally, tricked by Kate into entering a female coach’s hotel room one night wearing nothing but underwear, John is confronted by his basketball coach and humiliated worst of all—in front of not only his team but also his entire high school through the vicious power of social media.
Both of these stories recount how the women who have been betrayed ultimately rally together to reach their end goal of humiliating their male tormenters. The original play showcases the male protagonist partaking in these selfish and deceptive acts in the hopes of financial gain. In Thomas’ rendition, however, John simply wants to date three girls at once.
The Merry Wives of Windsor served as a departure from Shakespeare’s usual work in its lightheartedness. Whereas his iconic Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth all end in a gruesome manner, this play simply concludes with Falstaff’s ego considerably bruised—Mistresses Ford and Page report back to their husbands about Sir John’s antics, and they conspire for one final prank in the heart of town. The male protagonist in John Tucker Must Die comes to face an equally embarrassing fate in front of his entire school. At his birthday party, the girls play a video clip detailing John’s selfish and disrespectful attempt to maintain a relationship with Heather, Carrie, and Beth.
While arguably not as profound as Shakespeare’s typical work, The Merry Wives of Windsor is charming nonetheless and sure to captivate its audience. John Tucker Must Die portrays an equally hilarious story modified to fit the pranks and setting changes of modern-day American high school. Regardless of the time period, it is clear that audiences have always been entertained by the humbling of a man’s ego.
