Mistress Nell Quickly is a fictional character who appears in several plays by William Shakespeare. She is an inn-keeper, who runs the Boar's Head Tavern, at which Sir John Falstaff and his disreputable cronies congregate.
Falstaff and Mistress Quickly from The Merry Wives of Windsor, Francis Philip Stephanoff, c. 1840
The earliest depiction of Mistress Quickly (labelled "hostes[s]") with Falstaff, in a print from 1662 that depicts popular stage characters of the time
Sir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare and is eulogised in a fourth. His significance as a fully developed character is primarily formed in the plays Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2, where he is a companion to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V of England. Falstaff is also featured as the buffoonish suitor of two married women in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Though primarily a comic figure, Falstaff embodies a depth common to Shakespeare's major characters. A fat, vain, and boastful knight, he spends most of his time drinking at the Boar's Head Inn with petty criminals, living on stolen or borrowed money. Falstaff leads the apparently wayward Prince Hal into trouble, and is ultimately repudiated after Hal becomes king.
Adolf Schrödter: Falstaff and his page
Mistress Page and Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, staged by Pacific Repertory Theatre in 1999
1829 watercolor by Johann Heinrich Ramberg of Act II, Scene iv: Falstaff enacts the part of the king
Falstaff with Doll Tearsheet in the Boar's Head tavern, illustration to Act 2, Scene 4 of the play by Eduard von Grützner