Part 17 (1/2)

And it succeeded Henry _always_ succeeded

You will see what I a, for thethat our fault lies not in our resentment at Henry's conduct, but in our surprise at it; that if we had read his character truly in the light that Shakespeare gave us, we should have been prepared for a display both of hardness and of policy at this point in his career, And although this suggestion does not suffice to solve the problem before us, I am convinced that in itself it is true Nor is it rendered at all improbable by the fact that Shakespeare has made Henry, on the whole, a fine and very attractive character, and that here he makes no one express any disapprobation of the treatment of Falstaff

For in similar cases Shakespeare is constantly misunderstood His readers expect him to mark in some distinct way his approval or disapproval of that which he represents; and hence where _they_ disapprove and _he_ says nothing, they fancy that he does _not_ disapprove, and they blame his indifference, like Dr Johnson, or at the least are puzzled But the truth is that he shows the fact and leaves the judgain, when he makes us like a character we expect the character to have no faults that are not expressly pointed out, and when other faults appear we either ignore them or try to explain the Shakespeare We want the world's population to be neatly divided into sheep and goats, and ant an angel by us to say, 'Look, that is a goat and this is a sheep,' and we try to turn Shakespeare into this angel His impartiality makes us unco up everything and judging nothing And this is perhaps especially the case in his historical plays, where we are always trying to turn him into a partisan He shows us that Richard II

was unworthy to be king, and we at once conclude that he thought Bolingbroke's usurpation justified; whereas he shows merely, what under the conditions was bound to exist, an inextricable tangle of right and unright Or, Bolingbroke being evidently wronged, we suppose Bolingbroke's statements to be true, and are quite surprised when, after attaining his end through them, he mentions casually on his death-bed that they were lies Shakespeare ly, e see Hotspur discussing with others how large his particular slice of his nise theit, we complain that Shakespeare is inconsistent Prince John breaks a tottering rebellion by practising a detestable fraud on the rebels We are against the rebels, and have heard high praise of Prince John, but we cannot help seeing that his fraud is detestable; so we say indignantly to Shakespeare, 'Why, you told us he was a sheep'; whereas, in fact, if we had used our eyes we should have known beforehand that he was the brave, determined, loyal, cold-blooded, pitiless, unscrupulous son of a usurper whose throne was in danger

To co he is deservedly a favourite, and particularly so with English readers, being, as he is, perhaps the lish of all Shakespeare's men In _Henry V_ he is treated as a national hero In this play he has lost much of the hich in him seems to have depended on contact with Falstaff, but he has also laid aside the ree fear, enthusiasm, and affection; thanks to his beautiful hty warrior, Coriolanus; his youthful escapades have given hi of simple folk, and sy, 'There is sos evil'; and he is ious thanthese and other fine qualities, and being without certain dangerous tendencies which ic heroes, he is, perhaps, the most _efficient_ character drawn by Shakespeare, unless Ulysses, in _Troilus and Cressida_, is his equal And so he has been described as Shakespeare's ideal man of action; nay, it has even been declared that here for once Shakespeare plainly disclosed his own ethical creed, and showed us his ideal, not simply of a man of action, but of a man

But Henry is neither of these The poet who drew Haht that even the ideal ht upon the brohich at once transfigures them and marks their doom It is as easy to believe that, because the lunatic, the lover, and the poet are not far apart, Shakespeare would have chosen never to have loved and sung Even poor Ti in him that Henry never shows Nor is it merely that his nature is limited: if we follow Shakespeare and look closely at Henry, we shall discover with the

Henry IV describes hie of his own youth; and, for all his superiority to his father, he is still his father's son, the son of the ion, for exaenuine, it is rooted in his modesty; but it is also superstitious--an atteeance for Richard's blood; and it is also in part political, like his father's projected crusade Just as he went to war chiefly because, as his father told him, it was the way to keep factious nobles quiet and unite the nation, so when he adjures the Archbishop to satisfy hiht to the French throne, he knows very well that the Archbishop _wants_ the war, because it will defer and perhaps prevent what he considers the spoliation of the Church This same strain of policy is what Shakespeare marks in the first soliloquy in _Henry IV_, where the prince describes his riotous life as a lory later It implies that readiness to use other people as means to his own ends which is a conspicuous feature in his father; and it re hi himself cheap by his incessant public appearances And if I am not mistaken there is a further likeness Henry is kindly and pleasant to every one as Prince, to every one deserving as King; and he is so notaffection for any one, such an affection as we recognise at a glance in Hamlet and Horatio, Brutus and Cassius, and many more We do not find this in _Henry V_, not even in the noble address to Lord Scroop, and in _Henry IV_ we find, I think, a liking for Falstaff and Poins, but no , for instance, in his soliloquy over the supposed corpse of his fat friend, and he never speaks of Falstaff to Poins with any affection The truth is, that the members of the family of Henry IV have love for one another, but they cannot spare love for any one outside their fa its royal position against attack and instinctively isolating itself froest that Henry's conduct in his rejection of Falstaff is in perfect keeping with his character on its unpleasant side as well as on its finer; and that, so far as Henry is concerned, we ought not to feel surprise at it And on this viee e incident of the Chief Justice being sent back to order Falstaff to prison (for there is no sign of any such uncertainty in the text ashis father's words about Henry, 'Being incensed, he's flint,' and re the prisoners when he is incensed, we er influenced by the face of his old coer at the indecent fa scene on the most ceremonial of occasions and in the presence alike of court and crowd, and that he sent the Chief Justice back to take vengeance And this is consistent with the fact that in the next play we find Falstaff shortly afterwards not only freed from prison, but unmolested in his old haunt in Eastcheap, ithin ten er had soon passed, and he knew that the requisite effect had been produced both on Falstaff and on the world

But all this, however true, will not solve our problem It seems, on the contrary, to increase its difficulty For the natural conclusion is that Shakespeare _intended_ us to feel resentainst Henry And yet that cannot be, for it ireeably; and no one who understands Shakespeare at all will consider that supposition for a moment credible No; he h he made Henry's action consistent And hence it follows that he must have intended our sympathy with Falstaff to be so far weakened when the rejection-scene arrives that his discomfiture should be satisfactory to us; that we should enjoy this sudden reverse of enor always ludicrous if syhtly over that disclosure of unpleasant traits in the King's character which Shakespeare was too true an artist to suppress Thus our pain and resent, in the sense that they do not answer to the dra in a further sense They ht, because the drah the draest In the Falstaff scenes he overshot his , and fixed hiht to dethrone him he could not The ht, and the coure as a baffled schee, either in our attitude or in our syn and much joy of his crew of hypocritical politicians, lay and clerical; but our hearts go with Falstaff to the Fleet, or, if necessary, to Arthur's bosom or wheresomever he is[4]

In the remainder of the lecture I will try to o back to the Falstaff of the body of the two plays, the immortal Falstaff, a character al one aspect of this character must be content to hold another in reserve

2

Up to a certain point Falstaff is ludicrous in the sa, so far, chiefly in the h at aappetites; at the inconveniences he suffers on a hot day, or in playing the footpad, or when he falls down and there are no levers at hand to lift hiruity of his unwieldy bulk and the nie and his youthful lightness of heart; at the enormity of his lies and wiles, and the suddenness of their exposure and frustration; at the contrast between his reputation and his real character, seen most absurdly when, at the mere mention of his name, a redoubted rebel surrenders to his, this is no place to inquire; but unquestionably we do Here we have them poured out in endless profusion and with that air of careless ease which is so fascinating in Shakespeare; and with the enjoyment of them I believe many readers stop But while they are quite essential to the character, there is in it s by the at Falstaff, we are h _with_ him He is not, like Parolles, a mere _object_ of mirth

The main reason why he makes us so happy and puts us so entirely at our ease is that he himself is happy and entirely at his ease 'Happy' is too weak a word; he is in bliss, and we share his glory Enjoy a dull life, nor any vacant convulsiveenjoy If you ask _what_ he enjoys, no doubt the answer is, in the first place, eating and drinking, taking his ease at his inn, and the cos, e count the graver interests of life are nothing to him But then, while we are under his spell, it is iravity is to us, as to hiravy; and what he does enjoy he enjoys with such a luscious and good-humoured zest that we sympathise and he makes us happy And if any one objected, we should ansith Sir Toby Belch, 'Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no ain, is far from all Falstaff's ease and enjoyment are not simply those of the happy man of appetite;[5] they are those of the hu comic to you and serious to himself, he is more ludicrous to himself than to you; and he makes himself out more ludicrous than he is, in order that he and others h Prince Hal never made such sport of Falstaff's person as he his about hiown, and that he walks before his page like a sow that hath o'erwhelmed all her litter but one And he jests at himself when he is alone just as much as when others are by It is the sa hi at this enjoyment; and for all his addiction to sack you never see him for an instant with a brain dulled by it, or a temper turned solemn, silly, quarrelso his brain with nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes--this, and his humorous attitude towards it, free him, in a manner, fro for better things (those who attribute such a longing to hiious and prevents our sy disturbed

The bliss of freedoained in humour is the essence of Falstaff His huainst obvious absurdities; he is the ene that would interfere with his ease, and therefore of anything serious, and especially of everything respectable and ations, and make us the subjects of old father antic the law, and the categorical imperative, and our station and its duties, and conscience, and reputation, and other people's opinions, and all sorts of nuisances I say he is therefore their ene; to say that he is their enenises their pohen in truth he refuses to recognise the _ad absurdu and to walk about free and rejoicing This is what Falstaff does with all the would-be serious things of life, sometimes only by his words, sometimes by his actions too He will make truth appear absurd by soleravity and which he expects nobody to believe; and honour, by de, and that neither the living nor the dead can possess it; and law, by evading all the attacks of its highest representative and alh at his own defeat; and patriotis his pockets with the bribes offered by competent soldiers ant to escape service, while he takes in their stead the halt andhow he labours in his vocation--of thieving; and courage, alike byto have killed Hotspur; and war, by offering the Prince his bottle of sack when he is asked for a sword; and religion, by a else to do; and the fear of death, byperfectly untouched, in the face of imminent peril and even while he _feels_ the fear of death, the very sae that he shohen he sits at ease in his inn These are the wonderful achievements which he perforaiety of a boy And, therefore, we praise him, we laud him, for he offends none but the virtuous, and denies that life is real or life is earnest, and delivers us frohtmares, and lifts us into the atmosphere of perfect freedom

No one in the play understands Falstaff fully, any more than Hamlet was understood by the persons round hienius Mrs

Quickly and Bardolph are his slaves, but they know not why 'Well, fare thee well,' says the hostess whoiven; 'I have known thee these twenty-nine years, come peas-cod time, but an honester and truer-hearted ht in hi hiine; but they often take him much too seriously Poins, for instance, rarely sees, the Prince does not always see, andcritics never see, that when Falstaff speaks ill of a companion behind his back, or writes to the Prince that Poins spreads it abroad that the Prince is to marry his sister, he knows quite well that what he says will be repeated, or rather, perhaps, is absolutely indifferent whether it be repeated or not, being certain that it can only give hi, and almost the sae even by sympathisers Falstaff is neither a liar nor a coward in the usual sense, like the typical cowardly boaster of comedy He tells his lies either for their own huet himself into a difficulty He rarely expects to be believed, perhaps never He abandons a statement or contradicts it thethan in the huerations which he pours out in soliloquy just as much as when others are by

Poins and the Prince understand this in part You see theerly to convict him, not that they reater lie that will s up the less But their sense of hus behind his Even the Prince seems to accept as half-serious that relee at the idea of taking a purse, and his request to his friend to bestride him if he should see him down in the battle Bestride Falstaff! 'Hence!

Wilt thou lift up Olyain, the attack of the Prince and Poins on Falstaff and the other thieves on Gadshi+ll is contrived, we knoith a view to the incomprehensible lies it will induce hi to the occasion, he turns two men in buckram into four, and then seven, and then nine, and then eleven, almost in a breath, I believe they partly misunderstand his intention, and too ether Shakespeare was not writing a mere farce

It is preposterous to suppose that a ross, palpable, open lies with the serious intention to deceive, or forget that, if it was too dark for him to see his own hand, he could hardly see that the three reen No doubt, if he _had_ been believed, he would have been hugely tickled at it, but he no more expected to be believed than when he claimed to have killed Hotspur Yet he is supposed to be serious even then Such interpretations would destroy the poet's whole conception; and of those who adopt theht ask this out of some twenty similar questions:--When Falstaff, in thetwice at short intervals for sack, and then a little later calls for ue if I drunk to-day,' and the Prince answers, 'O villain, thy lips are scarce wiped since thou drunk'st last,' do they think that _that_ lie was ranted that the others were? I suppose they consider that Falstaff was in earnest when, wanting to get twenty-two yards of satin on trust from Master Dombledon the silk-mercer, he offered Bardolph as security; or when he said to the Chief Justice about Mrs Quickly, who accused hi his promise to marry her, 'My lord, this is a poor mad soul, and she says up and down the town that her eldest son is like you'; or when he explained his enorrief! It blows a man up like a bladder'; or when he accounted for his voice being cracked by declaring that he had 'lost it with singing of anthems'; or even when he sold his soul on Good-Friday to the devil for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon's leg Falstaff's lies about Hotspur and the men in buckram do not essentially differ fro serious in any of the seriously

This is also the explanation of Falstaff's cowardice, a subject on which I should say nothing if Maurice Morgann's essay,[6] now more than a century old, were better known That Falstaff soenerally call a cowardly way is certain; but that does not show that he was a coward; and if the word er, and yields to that fear in spite of his better feelings and convictions, then assuredly Falstaff was no coward The stock bully and boaster of comedy is one, but not Falstaff

It is perfectly clear in the first place that, though he had unfortunately a reputation for stabbing and caring not what mischief he did if his weapon were out, he had not a reputation for cowardice

Shallow rean's head at the court-gate when he was a crack not thus high; and Shallo hiht of him till about twenty years after, when his association with Bardolph began; and that association implies that by the time he was thirty-five or forty he had sunk into the mode of life itness in the plays Yet, even as we see him there, he remains a person of consideration in the ar for hi's tent at Shrewsbury, where the only other persons are the King, the two princes, a nobles the false report of the battle to Northumberland mentions, as one of the important incidents, the death of Sir John Falstaff Colvile, expressly described as a famous rebel, surrenders to him as soon as he hears his name And if his oish that his name were not so terrible to the enemy, and his own boast of his European reputation, are not evidence of the first rank, they nored in presence of these other facts What do these facts mean? Does Shakespeare put them all in with no purpose at all, or in defiance of his own intentions? It is not credible

And when, in the second place, we look at Falstaff's actions, what do we find? He boldly confronted Colvile, he was quite ready to fight with hiave hi, Falstaff, instead ofoff in a panic, stayed to take his chance if Hotspur should be the victor He _led_ his hundred and fifty ragamuffins where they were peppered, he did not _send_ them To draw upon Pistol and force hireat feat, perhaps, but the stock coould have shrunk from it When the Sheriff came to the inn to arrest him for an offence whose penalty was death, Falstaff, as hidden behind the arras, did not stand there quaking for fear, he immediately fell asleep and snored When he stood in the battle reflecting on ould happen if the weight of his paunch should be increased by that of a bullet, he cannot have been in a tremor of craven fear He _never_ shows such fear; and surely the er of his life, and with no one by to hear hi honour as Sir Walter hath Give me life: which if I can save, so; if not, honour comes unlooked-for, and there's an end,' is not e commonly call a coward

'Well,' it will be answered, 'but he ran away on Gadshi+ll; and when Douglas attacked him he fell down and shammed dead' Yes, I am thankful to say, he did For of course he did not want to be dead He wanted to live and be merry And as he had reduced the idea of honour _ad absurdum_, had scarcely any self-respect, and only a respect for reputation as a means of life, naturally he avoided death when he could do so without a ruinous loss of reputation, and (observe) with the satisfaction of playing a colossal practical joke For _that_ after all was his first object If his one thought had been to avoid death he would not have faced Douglas at all, but would have run away as fast as his legs could carry hilas had been one of those exceptional Scotchht of pursuing so ridiculous an object as Falstaff running So that, as Mr Swinburne reuishes Falstaff from his companions in robbery: 'For two of them, I know them to be as true-bred cowards as ever turned back; and for the third, if he fight longer than he sees reason, I'll forswear arms' And the event justifies this distinction For it is exactly thus that, according to the original stage-direction, Falstaff behaves when Henry and Poins attack him and the others The rest run away at once; Falstaff, here as afterwards with Douglas, fights for a blow or two, but, finding himself deserted and outmatched, runs away also Of course