concerned with misdirected letters. At the end she takes the role of the queen of the fairies in the practical joke played on Falstaff. In Henry V, she is referred to as Nell Quickly. She is with Falstaff at his deathbed, and describes his death to his friends. She marries Falstaff's ensign, Ancient Pistol, despite having previously been engaged to Corporal Nym. While Pistol is away in France, he receives a letter from which he learns that "my Doll is dead", having succumbed to the "malady of France" (syphilis). Many editors take the name Doll to be a misprint for "Nell", but it has also been interpreted as a reference to Doll Tearsheet rather than Quickly. Continuity issues Quickly's role in The Merry Wives is sufficiently different from her role in the other plays that some critics have suggested that she cannot be the same character. Nothing suggests that she already knows Falstaff (or Bardolph and Pistol), and there is no explanation of how she comes to working for Dr. Caius. However, there are also many other continuity problems with other characters in the play. For example, the play is set at an unspecified period in the reign of Henry IV, but Shallow is feuding with Falstaff from the beginning, even though in the Henriad plays he only realises his mistake in trusting him after Henry V is crowned. These oddities may have arisen because the play was written rapidly for a specific occasion. There are some signs of attempts to make the events fit the action of the Henriad plays, for example the brief scene in which Pistol expresses his attraction to her and says "she is my prize". This fits with his marriage to her in Henry V. There is no further reference to his pursuit of her in the play, but he plays the part of her consort in the fairy masque at the end. There are similar, less glaring problems with the Henriad plays. In Henry IV, Part 1 she is evidently a married innkeeper. No reference is made to the death of her husband in Part 2, just that Falstaff promises to marry her. Likewise, the tavern seems to evolve into a reputed brothel by the beginning of Henry V. In other literature Mistress Quickly appears along with Falstaff's other cronies in the play Falstaff's Wedding (1766), a comedy by William Kenrick, which is set