Sir John Falstaff, a retired Oxford University don and Professor Emeritus with a big ego is running out of money due to his decadent lifestyle of conspicuous consumption of food and drink. The piece commences the morning after a night of excess with Dr. Caius bursting in to the bar lock-in and accusing him of unseemly behavior the night before. He then further accuses Falstaff’s two companions of having robbed him whilst he was drunk too. Unable to reach a resolution whilst his hangover is increasingly getting the better of him Dr. Caius departs. The Hostess approaches Falstaff and hands him an extensive bill that Falstaff has racked up at the bar, which only serves to increase his financial pressures. Falstaff's solution is to try to seduce two wealthy married women – Alice Ford and Meg Page – by sending them identical love letters, hoping to get access to their husband’s wealth.
Bardolfo and Pistola refuse to deliver the letters that Falstaff has written to the two women, so instead Falstaff instructs a young impressionable student to do so instead. The disobedience of his own companions has riled him, so with the letters on their way Falstaff lectures Bardolfo and Pistola on the ridiculousness of their new found sense of honor, and then throws them out of the bar.