Whitsun week

Whitsun week is named as the time of a remembered incident in Falstaff’s account of his past with Prince Henry and his companions. Its specific weekday gives an otherwise anecdotal recollection a concrete temporal anchor, though the play supplies no year or broader calendar date.

The remembered Wednesday

Falstaff places the incident on a Wednesday in Whitsun week. He recalls sitting in his Dolphin-chamber at a round table beside a sea-coal fire, with a parcel-gilt goblet involved in the exchange. The detailed setting makes the date part of a vivid, material memory rather than a detached chronological note.

Place in the recollection

The Wednesday is associated with Prince Henry breaking a man’s head after he compared the prince’s father to a singing-man of Windsor. Falstaff invokes the episode while recalling an oath and money, blending a precise date with the tavern world of quarrels, drinking, and remembered obligations. Beyond fixing that anecdote in time, Whitsun week is not given a wider calendrical or plot function.