A Shakespeare Antidote to the Feeling of Overwhelm:

Get Creative

Photo by RhondaK Native Florida Folk Artist on Unsplash

The word that best describes the first three weeks of 2025 for me (and maybe for you, too):

Overwhelm.

Call it what you will: stress, anxiety, confusion, exhaustion, uneasiness, discomfort, dread, apprehension. Give it a metaphor: in the valley of the shadow of death, up to your neck in alligators, tossed about in a tempest. Whatever label you choose, the bottom line is that it’s uncomfortable.

It makes that avoidant, sand-loving ostrich’s burial ritual seem pretty darn appealing.

In fact, the epidemic of stress, anxiety, and overwhelm is so widespread that the National Institute of Mental Health has devoted a substantial portion of its website to the topic of managing stress and anxiety, including a fact sheet entitled “I’m So Stressed Out!”

The fact sheet gives clues for identifying stress and anxiety in our lives, as well as suggested methods for coping:

· Keep a journal

· Download an app with relaxation exercises

· Exercise and eat healthy

· Get regular sleep

· Avoid excess caffeine

· Identify and challenge your negative thoughts

· Reach out to your friends or family

These are excellent strategies; I have tried all of them with a modicum of success. Give them a go for at least a week or two; you might find that they offer some relief.

Since I have what I call a healthy *cough* obsession with William Shakespeare, the epidemic of overwhelm got me thinking about whether the bard might have an addition to the NIMH’s list.

He does.

We need look no further than one of his bawdiest comedies: The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Shakespeare’s Own Overwhelm

But first, let’s look at Shakespeare himself, because life in the 16^th century was not as different from today’s chaos as we might think.

Around 1597, the time that most scholars believe that The Merry Wives of Windsor was written, Shakespeare was reeling from the unthinkable: the death of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet in the prior year. In addition, he and his actor friends were trying to make a living in the theatre during multiple outbreaks of the bubonic plague and royal accusations of seditious behavior on the stage, both of which closed London playhouses for several months in 1596 and 1597.

Queen Elizabeth I had survived three well-known assassination attempts – the Ridolfi Plot in 1571, the Throckmorton Plot in 1583, and the Babington Plot in 1586. In 1597, her relationship with her hot-headed “favourite” courtier, Robert Devereaux, the Second Earl of Essex, was rapidly deteriorating, possibly owing to their 30-year age difference and Devereaux’s growing resentment of his aging regent’s restrictions on his behavior. In the summer of 1597, QE I ordered the London playhouses closed and torn down.

At the same time, Shakespeare had endured just about enough of the histrionic shenanigans of his fellow actor, Will Kemp, who had a penchant for going off-script and an unbridled desire for personal celebrity, preferring the limelight over camaraderie with his fellow actors. Kemp apparently invested more energy into his post-play jigs and Morris dances than the troupe’s dramatizations.

In short, in addition to the plague, the death of his child, and a government leader threatening his livelihood, Shakespeare was suffering from the perennial workplace dilemma: the insufferably obnoxious coworker whose antics threatened to tank the whole company.

Overwhelm in the Merry Wives of Windsor

With all of this in mind, Shakespeare sat down to pen The Merry Wives of Windsor. Those merry wives have their own versions of stress and anxiety to deal with, as household managers for their middle-class families, handling all domestic duties, raising children, managing the family finances, and keeping their husbands out of trouble (the merry Mrs. Ford has a much more difficult job in the husband department than her merry counterpart, Mrs. Page).

The merry wives are also targets for an impoverished knight who tries to seduce them and take their husband’s money along with their honor and integrity. In Elizabethan times and prior, this was known as “cuckoldry,” a common notion that a wife’s infidelity transformed her husband into a dishonorable horned beast known as a cuckhold. Family honor and reputation were of paramount importance at that time, and for a husband to become a cuckold by virtue of his wife’s infidelity was often considered a fate worse than death.

At the play’s outset, the corpulent, “greasy”, down-on-his-luck, aging knight, Sir John Falstaff, finds himself in the town of Windsor. He immediately sets his lusty sights on Mrs. Page and Mrs. Ford, hoping to secure their riches, both literally and figuratively, by enticing them to cheat on their husbands.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Page is trying to manage the overtures of three suitors for her lovely daughter, Anne Page: the nervous Abraham Slender, the demanding French Dr. Caius, and the above-her-station Master Fenton. Wooing in Shakespeare’s time was a complex and detailed endeavor, and Mrs. Page has her hands full with that as well as the education of her young son, William. She is perplexed and outraged to receive a letter from Sir John Falstaff proclaiming his love to her:

MISTRESS PAGE

What an unweighted behavior hath this Flemish drunkard

Picked – with the devil’s name! – out of my conversation,

That he dares in this manner assay me?

Why, he hath not been thrice in my company!

What should I say to him? I was then frugal of my mirth.

Heaven forgive me! Why, I’ll exhibit a bill

In the Parliament for the putting down of men.

How shall I be revenged on him? For revenged I will be,

As sure as his guts are made of puddings.

The Merry Wives of Windsor, act 2, scene 1

Mrs. Ford’s husband (played magnificently by actor Ben Kingsley in the BBC’s 1982 version of the comedy, by the way) is a handful in and of himself, wracked by jealousy and wild fits of imagination, a ball of nervous energy for his wife to tame. She is none too happy to receive a twin letter from Sir John Falstaff, professing the same love for her as he did for Mrs. Page:

MISTRESS FORD

What tempest, I trow, threw this whale,

With so many tuns of oil in his belly, ashore at Windsor?

How shall I be revenged on him?

I think the best way were to entertain him with hope

Till the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease.

The Merry Wives of Windsor, act 2, scene 1

It’s quite clear that the wives are stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, and disgusted by Sir John’s presumptuous overtures. The lascivious old knight has ridden into town seeking to upend their bucolic middle-class life and their honor.

What do they do with their stress?

They get together and get creative, deciding to have some fun along the way, devising hilarious (and quite devious) situations to put the bully Falstaff in his place, while at the same time curing the delusional Mr. Ford and his jealousies.

I won’t spoil the fun – there are lots of free film versions of The Merry Wives of Windsor available for viewing on the internet – but suffice it to say that the salacious John Falstaff is humiliated not once, not twice, but three times in the play. At the same time, Mr. Ford’s baseless suspicions are comedically revealed in front of the entire community to be just that – baseless. And Anne Page thwarts the adults who try to run her life by secretly running away with the suitor she likes best.

One Antidote to Overwhelm – Get Creative

The merry wives do not sit back and bemoan their fate, even though societal odds are stacked against them. They get together and get creative, devising plans to take their power back while revealing the bad intentions of those who attempt to take advantage of them.

The positive effect of creativity on mental health has been widely researched and consistently supported by scientific data. A recent study found that creative expression helps with emotional regulation, promotes feelings of autonomy and self-empowerment, provides a greater ability to cope with stress, and increases confidence in our ability to overcome obstacles.

The type of expression doesn’t matter – visual media, writing, music, crafts, DIY projects, dance, gardening, and the list goes on. Any way we are called to express ourselves and our creativity can work its mental health magic in our lives.

The merry wives devise a plan to thwart their would-be oppressor and solicit their friends’ aid with their project. They don’t get creative in a vacuum (although solo self-expression works well, too); instead, they collaborate and lean on each other as well as trusted members of their community. I personally believe that’s what makes the play so funny and the mental health advice so valuable – the best friends and their co-conspirators get to celebrate together when their zany plan bears fruit.

And finally, that brings me back to my buddy, Will Shakespeare and the dilemma with his workplace nemesis, Will Kemp. Kemp had played the beloved character, Sir John Falstaff, in Shakespeare’s prior history plays, Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2. Shakespeare likely wrote those parts for Kemp, who, until his departure in 1599, often played the clown in the performances of Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Think Dogberry from Much Ado About Nothing, Nick Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Lancelot Gobbo from The Merchant of Venice.

Bombastic and over-the-top, which is great when the clown sticks to the script, and not so great when he tries to make his performances all about him.

However, as Shakespeare became more fed up with Kemp’s antics, I can’t help but laugh to imagine that Shakespeare addressed his own overwhelm with a bit of theatrical creativity: he wrote the part for Kemp in The Merry Wives of Windsor as a washed-up, foiled-at-every-turn, drunk who was shoved in a buck-basket with the dirty laundry, dumped in the muddy Thames, dressed up like the “witch of Brentford”, beaten with a cudgel, cajoled into wearing the cuckold’s horns, and pinched and poked by the children of Windsor dressed up as fairies.

Take that, Will Kemp!

Shakespeare followed the advice he’s suggesting to us in The Merry Wives of Windsor and which is supported by current mental health science: when we’re stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed, one of the most fun ways to process those feelings and move beyond them is to get creative. Give it a try and let me know if it works for you!