Following two years of success at Shakespeare’s Globe, Christopher Luscombe’s production of The Merry Wives Of Windsor goes on the road in the Globe’s first ever large-scale UK tour.

Imagining that Mistress Ford and Mistress page have each fallen for him, the fat knight Sir John Falstaff decides to seduce them both, as much for their husbands’ money as for their personal charms. Wise the old rogue’s tricks, the women turn the tales on him with a series of humiliating assignations and a very damp, very smelly laundry basket.

Shakespeare’s hilarious farce gave birth to a tradition that reaches down to the modern TV sitcom.