Remembering Falstaff
by David P. Gontar (April 2015)??
To the vulgar, Falstaff will be forever just vulgar.
— H. C. Goddard
Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile.
— Duke of Albany
I. Falstaff Dismembered
FLUELLEN
It is not well done, mark you now, to take the
tales out of my mouth ere it is made an end
and finished. I speak but in the figures and comparisons of
it. As Alexander killed his friend Cleitus, being in his
ales and his cups, so also Harry Monmouth, being in
his right wits and with his good judgments, turned away
the fat knight with the great-belly
doublet — he was full of jests and knaveries and mocks —
I have forgot his name.
GOWER
Sir John Falstaff.
FLUELLEN
That is he. I’ll tell you, there is some good men in Monmouth.
(IV, vii, 40-50)
That is, it is not correct to say, as does Gower does, that Henry has never killed any of his friends, because by cruelly banishing his devoted host Jack Falstaff and breaking his heart, Henry is responsible for that death, just as much as Alexander was responsible for the death of Cleitus. Fluellen’s closing words are therefore heavy with sarcasm. Good men don’t do ill deeds. Henry’s lethal rejection of his boon companion and mentor is plainly common knowledge in the ranks.
It may be observed in passing that over the past several years Shakespeare’s Henriad in general and the figures of Hal and Falstaff in particular have been regularly vetted in these pages on a monthly basis. One would think that before leaping into print to proclaim Falstaff’s utter baseness, Mr. Curtis would have perused those many articles, taken their arguments into account, and explained to the readers of New English Review why the appreciation of Falstaff set forth therein may have been unsatisfactory. Yet of these discussions dedicated to the identical issue Curtis is mute. Well, either he read that material or he did not. In either case, a grave omission confronts us. The scholar’s first responsibility is to study the literature and make the reader understand in what way a new contribution is being made to the ongoing conversation. That duty is violated by Mr. Curtis, with predictable consequences. Ironically, though he accuses Falstaff of being selfish and self-centered, Curtis, in complacently ignoring nearly forty pertinent essays which precede him in this very journal, exhibits an inexplicable intellectual solipsism. Not only are the pages of New English Review overlooked, Mr. Curtis somehow manages to overlook the legions of learned defenses of Falstaff, preferring to focus his attack on this sympathetic character in the midst of a film review of Welles’ Chimes at Midnight. Having created his portly straw man, Curtis proceeds to demolish it, as though by trashing Welles’ cinematic encomium he had exorcised the spirit of Jack Falstaff. Following King Harry’s vindictive lead, many have banished Falstaff, but luckily for us he is immortal and will not desert us.
Let’s indulge in a comparison. In Twelfth Night, the steward Malvolio hates Feste the jester. Does that hate have a rational foundation? Feste is a brilliant but melancholy fool who cobbles together an uncertain living by song and riddling wit. The ineffable sadness of life is the foundation of his comic art. He is not a regimented servant, but in all he does, like a naughty child, he colors outside the lines. For example, he outrages Malvolio by loud partying late at night. He goes AWOL and teases the lady of the house. Very well, admit all his faults. Is Malvolio justified in his hatred? It’s a rhetorical question. Readers and theatre-goers have always treasured Feste and laughed at Malvolio. Why? Because seeking to make a career of imposing rules on one’s fellows is to turn oneself into a rigid and sadistic automaton and others into asses-bearing-burdens. We laugh with Feste and at Malvolio. That is the crucial difference. Suppose Falstaff applied for the job of jester at the home of Olivia in Twelfth Night. Though he might alleviate her sorrow by making her laugh, do you think that Malvolio would recommend him for the job? Falstaff? A known thief and drinker? Why, that would be to add another Sir Toby Belch to an already troubled household! Out of the question, m’lady. Such fellows as Feste, Toby and Falstaff are rogues, scoundrels and scalawags, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Imagine that. If Malvolio were successful in this hypothetical scenario, he would deprive Falstaff of the position and consign the Lady Olivia to a routine of unrelieved misery. Isn’t the guy who makes us laugh of any value? If not, why be grateful to Shakespeare for his comedies? When Biron goes to the hospital to bring a few moments of mirth and joy to the patients with his shtick, is he not performing a service? (See, Love’s Labour’s Lost, V, ii, 844-857)
In Act Two of King Henry IV, Part One, after the Gadshill robbery in which Hal and Pointz in disguise relieve Falstaff of the money he has stolen from the stagecoach passengers, Falstaff is confronted by them with the facts: he was not waylaid by fifty men with whom he did battle, as he boasted, but only two: Ned and Hal. Why did he run away instead of defending his ill-gotten gains?
POINTZ
SIR JOHN
By the Lord, I knew ye as well as he that made ye.
Why, hear you, my masters: was it for me to kill the
heir-apparent? should I turn upon the true prince?
why, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules: but
coward on instinct. I shall think the better of
lion, and thou for a true prince. But, by the Lord,
lads, I am glad you have the money. Hostess, clap
to the doors: watch to-night, pray to-morrow.
Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold, all the titles
of good fellowship come to you! What, shall we be
merry? shall we have a play extempore?
(II, v, 269-283)
We see the theme of Falstaff’s cowardice again in the battle of Shrewsbury, where he feigns death in order to protect himself. But as we are taking the measure of a man’s character it is appropriate to set his actions in situ. Has he a compelling reason to sacrifice his life to help resist Hotspur and the northern rebels? Falstaff is characterized as having been in his youth page to Thomas Mowbray, the mortal enemy of Bolingbroke in Richard II. He is keenly aware that the claim to the throne made by Hal’s father is unsound. Bolingbroke stole the kingdom from Richard, and this is well known. To put it simply, the reigning English monarch is worse than a common thief. Why, then, should Falstaff put himself in mortal jeopardy to quell the northern rebels? These civil broils are not about protecting England from its foes, or even extending the kingdom farther afield. Recall, then, the Gadshill incident once more. When Hal declines to participate in the planned robbery, he is met with Falstaff’s sharp admonishment:
FALSTAFF
There’s neither honesty, manhood, nor good
fellowship in thee, nor thou camest not of the blood
royal, if thou darest not stand for ten shillings.
(Part One, I, ii, 136-139)
What wonder that this contradictory being — as deminatured as a satyr or a mermaid, who is forever repeating within himself the original miracle of creation, has taken on the proportions of a mythological figure. He seems at times more like a god than a man. His very solidity is solar, his rotundity cosmic. To estimate the refining power we must know the grossness of what is to be refined. To be astounded by what lifts we must know the weight of what is to be lifted. Falstaff is levitation overcoming gravitation. At his wittiest and most ariel, he is Ariel tossing the terrestrial globe in the air as if it were a ball. And yet — as we must never forget — he is also that fat old sinner fast asleep and snoring behind the arras. The sins, in fact, are the very things that make the miracle astonishing, as the chains and ropes do a Houdini’s escape. (Goddard, 178, emphasis added)
What a curious fellow this Falstaff is! One writer finds nothing in him but a cad or cur (Curtis), yet another discovers in his person the apotheosis of mankind. The latter view is alive and well today in those Shakespeareans who detect in Falstaff a representation or appearance of Bacchus himself, the Lord of Misrule. (See, e.g., Shakespeare After All, Marjorie Garber, 317, 325ff.) Can we measure a god by our petty bourgeois standards? Falstaff, like so many other Shakespearean characters, is an inkblot test. What we see in him tells us more about ourselves than it does about Shakespeare and his characters.
Long before Mr. Carl Curtis thought to edify us by showing that there is nothing in Falstaff but a scoundrel, the battle was already fought and lost by Falstaff’s detractors. The year was 1951, when these words of Harold Goddard were first published by the University of Chicago Press. As it is better to show the best rather than attempt an imperfect summary we quote at length.
Henry IV does have a certain resemblance to a morality play. The two, however, between whom the younger Henry stands and who are in a sense contending for the possession of his soul are not Falstaff and the Chief Justice, but Falstaff and the King. It is between Falstaff and the Father . . . that Henry finds himself.
Now in the abstract this is indeed Youth between Revelry and Responsibility. But the abstract has nothing to do with it. Where Henry really stands is between this particular companion, Falstaff, and this particular father and king, Henry IV. Of these two, which was the better man?
Concede the utmost — that is, take Falstaff at his worst. He was a drunkard, a glutton, a profligate, a thief, even a liar, if you insist, but withal a fundamentally honest man. He had two sides like a coin, but he was not a counterfeit. And Henry? He was a King, a man of ‘honour,’ of brains and ability, of good intentions, but withal a ‘vile politician’ and respectable hypocrite. He was a counterfeit. Which, if it comes to the choice, is the better influence on a young man? Shakespeare, for one, gives no evidence of having an iota of doubt.
But even if Falstaff at his worst comes off better than Henry, how about Falstaff at his best? In that case, what we have is Youth standing between Imagination and Authority, between Freedom and Force, between Play and War. My insistence that Falstaff is a double man, and that the abstract has nothing to do with it, will acquit me of implying that this is the whole of the story. But it is a highly suggestive part of it.
The opposite of war is not ‘peace’ in the debased sense in which we are in the habit of using the latter word. Peace ought to mean far more, but what it has come to mean on our lips is just the absence of war. The opposite of war is creative activity, play in its loftier implications. All through these dramas the finer Falstaff symbolizes the opposite of force. When anything military enters his presence, it instantly looks ridiculous and begins to shrink. Many methods have been proposed for getting rid of war. Falstaff’s is one of the simplest: laugh it out of existence. For war is almost as foolish as it is criminal. ‘Laugh it out of existence’? If only we could. Which is the equivalent of saying: if only more of us were like Falstaff! These plays should be required reading in all military academies. Even the ‘cannon-fodder’ scenes of Falstaff with his recruits have their serious implications and anticipate our present convictions on the uneugenic nature of war.
How far did Shakespeare sympathize with Falstaff’s attitude in this matter? No one is entitled to say. But much further, I am inclined to think, than he would have had his audience suspect or than the world since his time has been willing to admit. For consider the conditions under which Falstaff finds himself: Henry has dethroned and murdered the rightful king of England. The Percys have helped him to obtain the crown, but a mutual sense of guilt engenders distrust between the two parties, and the Percy’s decide to dethrone the dethroner. Falstaff is summoned to take part in his defense. ‘Life is given but once.’ Why should Falstaff risk his life on earth, which he is enjoying as not one man in a hundred million does, to support or to oppose the cause of either of two equally selfish and equally damnable seekers after power and glory? What good would the sacrifice of his life accomplish comparable to the boon that he confers daily and hourly on the world, to say nothing of himself, by merely being? This is no case of tyranny on one side and democracy on the other, with liberty or slavery of a world at stake. This is strictly dynastic quarrel. When two gangs of gunmen begin shooting it out on the streets of a great city, the discreet citizen will step behind a post or into a doorway. The analogy may not be an exact one, but it enables us to understand Falstaff’s point of view. And there is plenty of Shakespearean warrant for it.
‘See the coast clear’d, and then we will depart,’ says the Mayor of London when caught, in Henry VI, between similar warring factions,
I myself fight not once in forty year.’
(Goddard, 185-187)
II. Remembering Falstaff
Another way of assessing Shakespeare’s view of Falstaff, the one he would have us absorb, is to approach this character not via the vexing histories but through comedy, particularly, The Merry Wives of Windsor. Here Falstaff is portrayed as a dedicated adulterer and seducer of other men’s wives. It is an entertaining bedroom farce and wonderfully funny. At the end of the pratfalls, after he is apprehended and punished by pinching for his wanton misbehavior, he finds himself surrounded by those he has wronged. Trapped in his sins, with no way out, Sir John does the decent thing: he confesses his wrongs.
SIR JOHN
me. I am dejected. I am not able to answer the Welsh
flannel. Ignorance itself is a plummet o’er me. Use
me as you will.
(V, v, 59-161)
Page, one of the wronged husbands, responds.
PAGE
Yet be cheerful, knight. Thou shalt eat a posset
tonight at my house, where I will desire thee to
laugh at my wife that now laughs at thee.
(V, v, 168-170)
Mistress Page adds:
Good husband, let us every one go home,
and laugh this sport o’er a country fire,
Sir John and all.
(V, v, 233-235)
To which Page warmly responds,
Let it be so, Sir John.
(V, v, 235)
* * * *
Instead of peering down one’s nose at Falstaff for his human frailty and independence, we might wish to gain perspective by appraising his foibles in the light of his dramatic forebears. It is agreed by just about everyone that he is not a wholly unprecedented or novel character but is compounded by Shakespeare of matter quarried from earlier historical and literary individuals. He is complex. It may be illuminating to trace the features of Falstaff back to some of his predecessors. Though there is no firm and universal consensus as to who they are, at least four will be considered here: (1) Sir John Oldcastle, (2) Sir John Fastolfe, (3) Gargantua and (4) Socrates. Professor Harold Bloom would also nominate King David of ancient Israel and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath as Falstaffian ancestors. We will leave those tantalizing leads to the industrious reader.
1. Sir John Oldcastle (c. 1370 – 1417)
2. Sir John Fastolfe (1380 – 1459)
It’s interesting that sources vary as to whether it was John Oldcastle or John Fastolfe who was page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, a role assigned by Shakespeare to Falstaff. (King Henry IV, Part Two, III, ii, 23-25) This is important because in Richard II we see that Thomas Mowbray was the mortal enemy of Bolingbroke, future King and father of Prince Hal. It is natural, then, that on the unruly ascension of Bolingbroke to the throne that former page would tend to view the reign of King Henry IV with skepticism, to say the least. Falstaff therefore stands in opposition to the Machiavellian seizure and exploitation of power represented by Bolingbroke, a Machiavellianism passed on to his sons, Princes Hal and John.
Fastolfe was a knight who fought in King Henry V’s army. He took part in the seige of Harfleur in 1415 and was elevated to Knight of the Garter in 1426. He fought against the French who were led by Joan of Arc. Because of incidents at the Battle of Patay Fastole was accused of desertion or cowardice, but his reputation was restored on further hearing. He apparently had a proprietary interest in the Boar’s-Head Tavern, which identifies that place as a part of actual history. There were rumours he had been sympathetic to the Lollard cause, but these may have been the result of confusion. Because of his supposed cowardice and association with the Boar’s-Head Tavern, it is believed that Shakespeare adapted his name when dropping Oldcastle’s, thus creating our comic hero. Fastolfe is mentioned expressly in negative terms in King Henry VI as a coward, but in fact we know almost nothing about what sort of person John Fastolfe was. The substance of Falstaff’s personality comes from other sources and from Shakespeare’s poetic imagination.
3. Gargantua (appeared as character in the writings of Rabelais in 1532, 1534)
Gargantua was a major literary character created by Francois Rabelais (1494 – 1553) as part of a massive campaign of satire in the first part of the 16th century. Shakespeare was certainly familiar with him, as we can be sure since (1) he was immediately famous in Europe, (2) the resemblances between Gargantua and Falstaff are uncanny and impressive, and (3) Shakespeare refers to Gargantua in As You Like It (III, ii, 220). In Shakespeare – The Invention of the Human, Prof. Harold Bloom points out that it was Algernon Charles Swinburne who first showed the affinities of Rabelais’ Panurge (one of Gargantua’s relations) and Falstaff.
Gargantua Being Fed Mustard by Four Men by Gustave Doré
A few illustrative comments from M. Pierre Beaudry may be helpful in giving us a sense of the Gargantuan temperament.
In comparison with the smallness of feudal man’s thinking, Rabelais’ Rennaissance man is a giant of intellectual and moral standing, who breaks with all of the old rules, all the taboos, all the old habits of a decrepit medieval society, breaking with all types of formalism and hypocrisy, especially religious hypocrisy. While the Sorbonne theologians based their recruitment to the Church on guilt, Rabelais destroyed guilt and replaced it with laughter. His characters Gargantua and his son Pantagruel are therefore quite naturally giants, because they are accomplishing a gigantic task proportional to their size. Both of them are the most outrageously loquacious talkers, great eaters and great pissers, [See, King Henry IV, Part Two, I, ii, 1] who will overwhelm any in their path, with the most powerful weapons of war against littleness: metaphors which they spin and weave without end, sparing no one in their masterful irony, from parody to satire to gross exaggeration. Their favorite targets are backward monks, manipulative and hypocritical churchmen, scholastic teachers, Aristotelian sophists, lawyers [and] courtly manners . . . .
Even the names of Rabelais’ characters are gigantic. For instance, when Gargantua came into the world he cried out ‘Drink, Drink, Drink’, whereupon his father . . . decided to name him ‘great gullet.’
But laughter is the best thirst quencher of all . . . .
Astute students of cultural history will recognize that Gargantua is a modern version of the Greek god Dionysus, who was worshipped as Bacchus, the god of wine and merriment, by the Romans. Literary presentation of this standpoint begins with The Bacchae of Aristophanes. The Bacchic sensibility is today carried forward in Carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and New Orleans, Louisiana.
4. Socrates (469 – 399 BC)
The man all thought was dead still lived and had something to impart to his friends: death may be an illusion after all, seems to be the implication.
Now update to the battle of Shrewsbury. Hapless Jack Falstaff is dueling with the fierce and implacable Earl of Douglas, an infinitely more skillful and dangerous adversary than himself. He is on the brink of death, then collapses on the ground as though slain. Hotspur and Prince Hal cross words and swords, and after a terrible struggle Hal destroys Hotspur. Seeing the prostrate remains of Sir John, Hal speaks.
What, old acquaintance! Could not all this flesh
Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell.
I could have spared a better man.
O, I should have a heavy miss of thee,
If I were much in love with vanity.
Death hath not struck so fat a deer today,
Though many dearer in this bloody fray.
Embowelled will I see thee by and by.
’Till then, in blood by noble Percy lie.
(Henry IV, Part One, V, iv, 101-109)
Let us bid farewell once more to these two philosophers. Here is the end of Socrates by hemlock.
Up till this time most of us had been fairly successful in keeping back the tears, but when we saw that he was drinking, that he had actually drunk it, we could do so no longer. In spite of myself the tears came pouring out, so that I covered my face and wept brokenheartedly — not for him, but for our own calamity in losing such a friend. Crito had given up even before me, and had gone out when he could not restrain his tears. But Apollodorus, who had never stopped crying even before, now broke out into such a storm of passionate weeping that he made everyone in the room break down, except Socrates himself, who said, ‘Really my friends, what a way to behave! Why this was my main reason for sending away the women, to prevent this sort of disturbance, because I am told that one should make one’s end in a tranquil frame of mind. Calm yourselves and try to be brave.’ This made us feel ashamed, and we controlled our tears. Socrates walked about, and presently, saying that his legs were heavy, lay down on his back — that was what the man recommended. The man — he was the same one who administered the poison — kept his hand upon Socrates, and after a little while examined his feet and legs, then pinched his foot hard and asked if he felt it. Socrates said ‘no’. Then he did the same to his legs, and moving gradually upward in this way let us see that he was getting cold and numb. Presently he felt him again and said when it reached his heart, Socrates would be gone. The coldness was spreading about as far as his waist . . . .
After a little while he stirred, and when the man uncovered him, his eyes were fixed. When Crito saw this, he closed the mouth and eyes.
(Phaedo, 117c – 118)
Again, here is Mistress Quickly talking about Falstaff’s final moments.
So a bade me lay
more clothes on his feet. I put my hand into the bed
and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone.
Then I felt to his knees, and so up’ard and up’ard, and
all was as cold as any stone.
(King Henry V, II, iii, 21-25)
Such congruences are hardly accidental. They reflect the most profound of influences and conjoint purposes.
We may round things out with a medley of Socrates/ Falstaff commonalities, understanding that this enumeration should not be taken as final.
1. Socrates and Falstaff are both poor.
2. They are both physically unhandsome.
3. They both enjoy and provoke laughter
4. Falstaff and Socrates are comic characters. (See Aristophanes, The Clouds)
5. Falstaff and Socrates are both drawn to caritas, philia and eros.
6. Each was the most eloquent speaker of his time.
7. Both raised philosophical questions.
8. The manner of their deaths is strikingly similar.
9. Both had powerful enemies who finally succeeded in destroying them.
10. Each of them died because of his dedication to his chosen nonconformist mode of living.
III. Conclusion
Reducing the richness and complexity of Falstaff to the one-dimensionality of a Vice figure cannot be viewed as anything but a loss. When one of the most important roles in all literature is trivialized, so are the dramas in which he stars. Such diminution of character implicitly challenges the ability and judgment of Shakespeare, who lavished so much care and learning on Falstaff. Shrink wrapping the sage of Eastcheap is a mode of forgetting him, neglecting to consider Shakespeare’s heartfelt injunction to remember this man. It is to attempt to perch in the clouds and look down on Falstaff and his creator. But up so high everything below must seem insignificant. In applying white glove standards to Falstaff one sacrifices greatness on the altar of mediocrity, as though anyone pushing his shopping cart down the aisles of the local discount store could determine the relative merits of Moses, Napoleon, Beethoven and Tolstoy. What was their credit rating? This is to turn the world upside down. The danger of what calls itself literary criticism is that its practitioners sit in judgment on artists whose shoelaces they are unworthy to unlatch. The works of the ages are dismissed with a curt wave of the hand. But we do not sit in judgment on Lear, Hamlet and Falstaff. Their creator, through them, takes our measure, and when we wade into print it is evident to all the limitations we bring to our task. Scorning Falstaff for his irregular deportment is like lashing out at Mt. Everest for its snowy crags and boulders.
?
WORKS CITED:
BOOKS
Leslie Dunton-Downer, Alan Riding, Essential Shakespeare Handbook, DK Publishing Co., 2004.
Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All, Anchor Books, 2004
David P. Gontar, Hamlet Made Simple and Other Essays, New English Review Press, 2013.
R. Hackforth, The Composition of Plato’s Apology, Cambridge University Press, 1933.
Martin Lings, Shakespeare’s Window Into the Soul, Inner Traditions, 2004.
Michel de Montaigne, Complete Essays, M.A. Screech, ed., Penguin Classics, 1991.
Plato, The Collected Dialogues, Edith Hamilton, Huntington Cairns, eds., Bollingen Edition, Princeton University Press, 1996.
William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, G. Taylor and S. Wells, eds., 2d Edition, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2005.
ARTICLES
Hamlet Made Simple and Other Essays, New English Review Press, 2013. His next book, Unreading Shakespeare, will be out in May.
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