Knights and their days

by Dr. Doran

SIR JOHN FALSTAFF.

“I accept that heart

Which courts my love in most familiar phrase.”— Heywood.

Henry, Earl of Richmond, always creates a favorable impression on young people who see him, for the first time, without knowing much about him, previously, at the end of Shakespeare’s tragedy of Richard the Third. This is a far higher degree of favor than he merited, for Henry was a very indifferent personage indeed. On the other hand Sir John Falstaff has had injustice done him by the actors; and of Shakespeare’s jolly old gentleman they have made what, down to Macklin’s times, they made of Shylock, a mere mountebank.

In the very first scene, in the first part of Henry IV., when the Prince and Sir John appear in company, the knight is, by far, a more accomplished gentleman than the heir-apparent, for he speaks more refinedly of phrase, and indeed seldom indulges in scurrilous epithets, until provoked. Strong language is the result of his infirmity of nature, not of vicious inclination. Lord Castlereagh was not accounted the less a gentleman for using, as he could do, very unsavory phrases occasionally.

The Prince is the first to rail, while Sir John shows his breeding and, I will add, his reading, by quoting poetry. But, if he is poetical, still more is he philosophical. How gravely does he beseech Hal to trouble him no more with vanity! And what a censure does the heavy philosopher fling at the King’s son, when he tells the latter that he was hurt to hear the wise remarks of a lord of the council touching that son’s conduct! The fault of the knight is, that he is easily led away into evil; a common weakness with good-natured people. It is only since he held fellowship with the Prince, that the fat follower of the latter had become knowing in evil, and Heaven help him, little better, as he says, than one of the wicked. Nay, he has enough of orthodoxy left to elicit praise, even from the editor of the Record. “O, if a man were to be saved by merit,” he exclaims, “what hole in hell were hot enough to hold him!”

He robs on the highway, it will be said. Well, let us not be too ready to doubt his gentility on that account. There was many a noble cut-purse in the grand gallery at Versailles, when it was most crowded; and George Prince of Wales once nearly lost the diamond-hilt of his sword, at one of his royal mother’s “drawing-rooms.” The offenders here were but petty-larceny rascals, compared with Falstaff on the highway. That he defrauded the King’s exchequer is, certainly, not to be denied. But again, let us not be too hasty to condemn good men with little foibles. Recollect that St. Francis de Sales very often cheated at cards.

Robbery on the highway was, after all, only, as I may call it, a rag of knighthood. Falstaff robbed in good company. It was his vocation. It was the fashion. It was an aristocratic pastime. Young blood would have it so; and Sir John was a boy with the boys. In more recent times, your young noble, of small wit and too ample leisure, flings stale eggs at unsuspecting citizens, makes a hell of his quarters, if he be military, and breaks the necks of stage-managers.

Sir John was, doubtless, one of those of whom Gadshill speaks as doing the robbing profession some grace for mere sport’s sake. “I am joined,” says Gadshill, “with no foot land-rakers, no long-staff sixpenny strikers, none of those mad mustachio, purple-hued, malt-worms, but with nobility, and sanguinity; burgomasters, and great mongers.” Indeed, it is matter of fact that, there were graver, if not greater men than these among the noble thieves, “who would, if matters were looked into, for their own credit-sake, make all whole.” There was one at least who, for being a highway robber, made none the worse justice, charged to administer halters to poorer thieves.

But let us return to our old friend. Poor Sir John, I doubt if he would have gone robbing, even in the Prince’s company, only that he was bewitched by his Royal Highness’s social qualities. But even then, while patiently enduring all sorts of hard jokes, he is really the Mentor of the party, and does not go to rob the travellers without first seriously reminding the gentlemen of the road, that it was a hanging matter. He would keep them from wrong, but as they are resolved on evil commission he accompanies them. He has explained the law, and he is not too proud to share the profits.

He is brave, too, despite all his detractors! When the Prince and Poins, in disguise, set upon the gentle robbers, as they are sharing their booty, Falstaff is the only one who is described as giving “a blow or two,” before he imitates “the rest,” and runs away. When he attacked the travellers he was content to fight his man; there were four to four. And as to the imaginative description of the assault given by Falstaff, I believe it to have been uttered in joke and gayety of heart. I have implicit faith in the assertion, that he knew the disguised parties as well as their mothers did. See how readily he detects the Prince and Poins, when they are disguised as “drawers” at the inn in Eastcheap. If Falstaff was right in the latter case, when he told the Prince that he, Falstaff, was a gentleman, I think, too, he had as sufficient authority for saying to Hal, “Thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules.” I can not believe otherwise of a man whose taste was so little vitiated that he could at once detect when there was “lime” in his sack, and who no sooner hears that the state is in danger, than he suggests to the young Prince that he must to court. His obesity may be suspected as not being the fruit of much temperance, but there is a Cardinal Archbishop in England who is the fattest man in the fifty-two counties, and why may we not conclude in both cases, that it is as Falstaff says, and that sighing and grief blow up a man like a bladder?

Then, only consider the reproof which Falstaff addresses to the Prince, speaking in the character of King to that illustrious scapegrace. Wisdom more austere, or graver condemnation of excess, could hardly be uttered by the whole college of cardinals, at any time. The prince is a mere plagiarist from the knight, and when he accuses the latter of being given to licentious ways, with what respectful humility does the old man plead guilty to his years, but “saving your reverence,” not to the vices which are said to accompany them?

Not that he is perfect, or would boast of being so. “He has had,” he says touchingly, “a true faith and a good conscience, but their date is out.” How ill is he requited by the Prince, in whose service he has lost these jewels, when his Highness remarks, before setting out to the field, “I’ll procure this fat rogue a charge of foot, and I know his death will be a charge of fourscore.” And this is said of one who has forgotten what the inside of a church is like through keeping this Prince’s villanous company; till when, he had been “as virtuously given as a gentleman need be.” What he considers as the requisite practice of a gentleman, is explained by Falstaff in his low estate, and not in the spirit which moved him when he “lived well and in good compass.”

But there is a Nemesis at every man’s shoulder, and if Falstaff was cavalierly careless enough to run up a score at the Boar’s Head, and to accept even a present of Holland shirts, which he ungratefully designates as “filthy dowlas,” the way in which he was dunned must have been harsh to the feelings of a knight and a gentleman. In reviewing his gallantries and his extravagances, we must not, in justice to him, forget that he was a bachelor. If he degraded himself, he inflicted misery on no Lady Falstaff at home. Heroes have been buried, with whole nations for mourners, whose offences in this worse respect have been forgotten. Not that I would apologise for the knight’s familiarity with either the Hostess or that remarkably nice young lady, Miss Dorothea Tearsheet. I do not know what the private life of that Lord Chief Justice may have been who was so very merciless in his censure upon the knight; but I do know that there have been luminaries as brilliant who have hidden their lights in very noisome places and who had not Falstaff’s excuse.

I am as little embarrassed touching Sir John’s character as a soldier, as I am about his morals. I do not indeed like to hear him acknowledge that he has “misused the King’s press most damnably,” or that he has pocketed “three hundred and odd pounds” by illegally releasing a hundred and fifty men. But at this very day practices much worse than this are of constant observance in the Russian service, where officers and officials, whose high-sounding names “exeunt in off,” rob the Czar daily, and are decorated with the Order of St. Catherine.

In the field, I maintain that Falstaff is a hero. As for his catechism on honor, so far from detracting from his reputation, it seems to me to place him on an equality with that modern English hero who said that his body trembled at the thought of the perils into which his spirited soul was about to plunge him. Falstaff did not court death. “God keep lead out of me,” is his reasonable remark; “I need no more weight than mine own bowels!” But the man who makes this prayer and comment was not afraid to encounter death. “I have led my ragamuffins where they are peppered.” He went then at their head. That there was hot work in front of him is proved by what follows. “There’s but three of my hundred and fifty left alive; and they are for the town’s end, to beg during life!” A hundred and forty-seven men killed out of a hundred and fifty-one; of the four who survived, three are illustriously mutilated; while the bold soul who led them on is alone unscathed! Why, it reminds us of Windham and the Redan. It is Thermopylæ, with Leonidas surviving to tell his own story.

His discretion is not to be taken as disproving his valor. He fought Douglas, remember, and did not run away from him. He found the Scot too much for him, it is true; and quietly dropped down, as if dead. What then? When the Muscovite general fell back so hurriedly from Eupatoria, how did he describe the movement? “Having accomplished,” he said, “all that was expected, the Russians withdrew out of range.” So, Sir John, with respect to Douglas.

Nor would some Muscovite officers and gentlemen object to another action of Falstaff’s. The knight it will be remembered with regret, stabs the body of Hotspur, as the gallant Northumbrian lies dead, or wounded, upon the field. Now, by this we may see that Russia is not only some four centuries behind us in civilization. The barbarous act of Falstaff was committed a score of times over on the field of Inkerman. Many a gallant, breathing, but helpless English soldier, received the mortal thrust which they could not parry, from the hands of the Chevalier Ivan Falstaff, who fought under the doubtful inspiration of St. Sergius. And, moreover, there were men in authority there who virtually remarked to these heroes what Prince Henry does to Sir John,

“If a lie may do thee grace,

I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.”

That our Falstaff bore himself with credit on the field, is made clear in spite of the incident of Hotspur. I do not pause to point out the bearing of Morton’s answer, when Northumberland asks him, “Didst thou come from Shrewsbury?”—“I ran from Shrewsbury, my noble lord,” is the reply; confessing that he ran from a foe, among whom Falstaff was a leader: I am more content to rest on the verdict of so dignified yet unwilling a witness as the Lord Chief Justice. It is quite conclusive. “Your day’s service at Shrewsbury,” says my lord, “hath a little gilded over your night’s exploit at Gadshill.” Nothing can be more satisfactory. The bravery of Falstaff was the talk of the town.

When peace has come, or that Sir John has received permission to return home, on urgent private affairs, he enters a little into dissipation, it is true. He is not, however, guilty of such excess as to materially injure his health; otherwise his page would not have brought him so satisfactory a message from his doctor. He may, perhaps, be also open to the charge of being too easily taken by such white bait as he might find in the muslin of Eastcheap. Heroes, however, have usually very inflammable hearts. When Nelson was ashore, he immediately fell in love.

In spite of a trifle of rioting, the overflowing of animal spirits, Falstaff is governed by the laws of good society. Jokes are fired at him incessantly, but he takes them with good-humor, and repays them with interest. “I am not only witty in myself,” he says, “but the cause that wit is in other men.” Gregoire and La Bruyere expressly define the great rule of conversation to be that, while you exhibit your own powers, you should endeavor to elicit and encourage those of your companions. What they put down as a canon, Sir John had already, and long before, put in excellent practice. He had wit enough to foil the Chief Justice, but he left to his lordship ample opportunity to exhibit his own ability; and then the compliment to the great judicial dignitary, that he was not yet clean past his youth, although he had in him some relish of the saltness of time—this, combined with the benevolent recommendation that his lordship would have a reverend care of his health, robs the latter personage of any prejudice he might have entertained against the knight. Indeed, it would be difficult to conceive how the religiously-minded Lord Chief Justice could have entertained prejudice against a gallant old gentleman who had lost his voice with “hollaing” (his men to the charge), “and singing of anthems.”

Brave! there can be no question touching his bravery. And if he does really rust a little at home, and impose a little upon the weakness of the Hostess and other ladies, whom he weekly woos to marry, and who find his gallantry and saucy promises irresistible; he is ever ready for service. He does not look for unlimited absence from scenes of danger. If he led his company of three hundred and a half to death, and comes out scot-free himself, he is by no means prepared to hang about town, inactive for the remainder of the campaign. When he is appointed on perilous enterprise with Prince John of Lancaster, he simply remarks, with a complacency which is doubtless warranted by truth, “There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head, but I am thrust upon it. Well, I can not last for ever;” and, with this remark buckled on to some satirical wit which he points at the Lord Chief Justice, he sets forth cheerily on his mission, the gout in his toe, and in his purse not more than seven groats and twopence. He has a rouse and a riot at the Boar’s Head before he starts; but nothing more disreputable seems to have occurred than one might hear of at a modern club, before some old naval lion is hiccupped on to deeds of daring. Besides, the knight is no hypocrite; and he will not be accounted virtuous, like many of his contemporaries, by “making courtesy and saying nothing.” Not, on the other hand, that even in his moments of jolly relaxation, he would be unseemly noisy. He can troll a merry catch, but, as he says to a vulgarly roystering blade, “Pistol, I would be quiet.” It has been thought unseemly that he should quarrel with and even roughly chastise the “ancient” with whom he had been on such very intimate terms. But such things happen in the best society. At the famous Reform Club dinner, Sir James gave permission to Sir Charles to go and make war; but, since that time, Sir Charles, with words, instead of rapiers, has been poking his iron into the ribs of Sir James, after the fashion of Falstaff and Pistol.

And so, as I have said, Sir John girds him for the battle. If he did in his youth, hear the chimes at midnight, in company with Master Shallow, the lean, but light-living barrister of Clement’s Inn, he did not waste his vigor. So great indeed is his renown for this, and for the bravery which accompanies it, that no sooner does the doughty Sir John Colville of the Dale meet him in single combat, than Colville at once surrenders. The very idea of such a hero being face to face with him impels him to give up his sword at once. “I think you are Sir John Falstaff, and in that thought yield me.” Was ever greater compliment paid to mortal hero?

Of this achievement Prince John most ungenerously says, that it was more the effect of Colville’s courtesy than Falstaff’s deserving. But, as the latter remarks, the young sober-blooded boy of a prince does not love the knight; and “that’s no marvel,” exclaims Falstaff, “he drinks no wine.” The teetotaler of those days disparaged the deeds of a man who increased the sum of his country’s glory. He was like a sour Anglo-Quaker, sneering down the merit of a Crimean soldier. We do not, however, go so far as Falstaff in his enthusiasm, when he exclaims that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack. There is something in the remark, nevertheless, as there is when Sir John subsequently says in reference to his wits suffering by coming in dull contact with obtuse Shallow. “It is certain,” says he, “that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of another; therefore let men take care of their company.” Victor Hugo has manifestly condescended to plagiarize this sentiment, and has said in one of his most remarkable works, that “On devient vieux à force de regarder les vieux.”

And, to come to a conclusion, how unworthily is this gallant soldier, merry companion, and profound philosopher, treated at last by an old associate, Prince Hal, when king. Counting on the sacredness of friendship, Sir John had borrowed from Master Shallow a thousand pounds. He depended upon being able to repay it out of the new monarch’s liberality, but when he salutes the sovereign—very inopportunely, I confess—the latter, with a cold-hearted and shameless ingratitude, declares that he does not know the never-to-be-forgotten speaker. King Henry V. does indeed promise—

“For competence of life, I will allow you;

That lack of moans enforce yon not to evil;”

and departs, after intimating that the knight must not reside within ten miles of court, and that royal favor will be restored to the banished man, if merit authorize it.

“Be it your charge, my lord, to see performed the tenor of our word,” says the King to the Chief Justice; and Falstaff, though sorely wounded in feelings, is still not without hope. But see what a royal word, or what this royal word is! The Monarch has no sooner passed on his way, than the Chief Justice fulfils its meaning, by ordering Sir John Falstaff and all his company to be close-confined in the Fleet! The great dignitary does this with as much hurried glee as we may conjecture Lord Campbell would have had, in rendering the same service to Miss Agnes Strickland, when the latter accused the judge of stealing her story of Queen Eleanor of Provence.

However this may be, the royal ingratitude broke the proud heart in the bosom of Sir John. He took to his bed, and never smiled again. “The King has killed his heart,” is the bold assertion of Dame Quickly, at a time when such an assertion might have cost her her liberty, if not her life. How edifying too was his end! He did not “babble o’ green fields.” Mr. Collier has proved this, to the satisfaction of all Exeter Hall, who would deem such light talk trifling. But he died arguing against “the whore of Babylon,” which should make him find favor even with Dr. Cumming, for it is a proof of the knight’s Protestantism—and “Would I were with him,” exclaims honest lieutenant Bardolph, with more earnestness than reverence—“Would I were with him, wheresome’er he is; either in heaven or in hell.” If this has a profane ring in it, let us think of the small education and the hard life of him who uttered it. There was more profanity and terrible blasphemy to boot, in the assertion of Prince Menschikoff, after the death of the Czar Nicholas, namely, “that his late august master might be seen in the skies blessing his armies on their way to victory!” Decidedly, I prefer Bardolph to Menschikoff, and Falstaff to both.

I am sorry that Queen Elizabeth had the bad taste to request Shakespeare to represent “Falstaff in love.” The result is only an Adelphi farce in five acts; in which the author, after all, has made the knight far more respectable than that sorry fool, Ford. The “Wives” themselves are not much stronger in virtue than Dorothea of Eastcheap, unless Sir John himself was mistaken in them. Of Mrs. Ford, who holds her husband’s purse-strings, he says, “I can construe the action of her familiar style,” and he tells us what that manner was, pretty distinctly. When he writes to Mrs. Page, he notices a common liking which exists in both, in the words, “You love sack, and so do I.” The “Wives,” for mere mischief’s sake, we will say, tempted the gallant old soldier. In their presence he had left off swearing, praised woman’s modesty, and gave such orderly and well-behaved reproof to all uncomeliness, that Mrs. Page thought, perhaps, that drinking sack, and, in company with Mrs. Ford, talking familiarly with him, would not tempt him to turn gallant toward them. This consequence did follow; and then the sprightly Wives, in place of bidding their ridiculous husbands cudgel him, come to the conclusion that “the best way was to entertain him with hope,” till his wickedly raised fire should have “melted him in his own grease.” A dangerous process, ladies, depend upon it!

Then, what a sorry cur is that Master Ford who puts Falstaff upon the way to seduce his own wife! Had other end come of it than what did result, is there a jury even in Gotham, that would have awarded Ford a farthing’s-worth of separation. Falstaff is infinitely more refined than Ford or Page. Neither of these noodles could have paid such sparkling compliments as the knight pays to the lady. “Let the court of France show me such another! I see how thine eyes would emulate the diamond; thou hast the right-arched bent of the brow, that becomes the ship-tire, the tire-valiant, or any tire of Venetian admittance!” Why this is a prose Anacreontic! And if the speaker of it could offend once, he did not merit to be allured again by hope to a greater punishment than he had endured for his first offence.

For one of the great characteristics of Falstaff is his own sense of seemliness. When he was nearly drowned by being tossed from the buck-basket into the river, his prevalent and uneasy idea was, how disgusting he should look if he were to swell—a mountain of mummy! The Mantelini of Mr. Dickens borrowed from Falstaff this aversion to a “demmed damp body.” It is not pleasant!

Once again, Sir John, though he could err, yet he was ashamed of his offence. Otherwise, would he have confessed, as he did, when recounting how the mock fairies had tormented him, “I was three or four times in the thought they were not fairies, but the guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprise of my powers drove the grossness of the foppery into a received belief.” How exquisitely is this said! How does it raise the knight above the broad farce of most of the other characters! How infinitely superior is he to the two dolts of husbands who, after hearing the confession of guilty intention against the honor of their wives, invite him to spend a jolly evening in company with themselves and the ladies. And so they—

“Every one go home,

And laugh this sport o’er by a wintry fire,

Sir John and all.”

This may be accounted too gross for probability; but worse than this is in the memory of our yet surviving fathers. There was, within such a memory, a case tried before Sir Elijah Impey, in which Talleyrand was the defendant, against whom a husband brought an action, the great statesman having robbed him of his wife. The action was brought to the ordinary issue; and a few weeks subsequently, plaintiff, defendant, judge, and lady, dined together in the Prince’s residence at Paris.

Of Stage Falstaffs, Quin, according to all accounts, must have been the best, provided only that he had a sufficiency of claret in him, and the house an overflowing audience. Charles Kemble, I verily believe, must have been the worst of stage Falstaffs. At least, having seen him in the character, I can conscientiously assert that I can not imagine a poorer Sir John. He dressed the character well; but as for its “flavor,” it was as if you had the two oyster-shells, minus the fat and juicy oyster. What a galaxy of actors have shined or essayed to shine in this joyous but difficult part! In Charles the Second’s days, Cartwright and Lacy, by their acting in the first part of Henry IV., made Shakespeare popular, when the fashion at Court was against him. Betterton acted the same part in 1700, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the Haymarket. Four years later, he played the Knight in the “Merry Wives;” and in 1730, at Drury Lane, he and Mills took the part alternately, and set dire dissension among the play-goers, as to their respective merits.

Popular as Betterton was in this character, after he had grown too stout for younger heroes, his manner of playing it was not original; and his imitation was at second-hand. Ben Jonson had seen it played in Dublin by Baker, a stone-mason. He was so pleased with the representation, that he described the manner of it, on his return to London, to Betterton, who, docile and modest as usual, acknowledged that the mason’s conception was better than his own, and adopted the Irish actor’s manner, accordingly.

Chetwood does not tell us how Baker played, but he shows us how he studied, namely in the streets, while overlooking the men who worked under him. “One day, two of his men who were newly come to him, and were strangers to his habits, observing his countenance, motion, gesture, and his talking to himself, imagined their master was mad. Baker, seeing them neglect their work to stare at him, bid them, in a hasty manner, mind their business. The fellows went to work again, but still with an eye to their master. The part Baker was rehearsing was Falstaff; and when he came to the scene where Sir Walter Blunt was supposed to be lying dead on the stage, gave a look at one of his new paviors, and with his eye fixed upon him, muttered loud enough to be heard, ‘Who have we here? Sir Walter Blunt! There’s honor for you.’ The fellow who was stooping, rose on the instant, and with the help of his companion, bound poor Baker hand and foot, and assisted by other people no wiser than themselves, they carried him home in that condition, with a great mob at their heels.”

Estcourt’s Falstaff was flat and trifling, yet with a certain waggishness. That of Harper was droll, but low and coarse. The Falstaff of Evans seems to have been in the amorous scenes, as offensive as Dowton in Major Sturgeon; and the humor was misplaced. Accordingly, when we read in old Anthony Aston, that “Betterton wanted the waggery of Estcourt, the drollery of Harper, and the lasciviousness of Jack Evans,” we are disposed to imagine that his Falstaff was none the worse for this trial of wants.

Throughout the eighteenth century, the character did not lack brilliant actors. In the first part of Henry IV., Mills played the character, at Drury, in 1716. Booth had previously played it for one night, in presence of Queen Anne. Bullock filled Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, with it, in 1721. Quin, in 1738, used to play the character in the two parts of Henry IV. on successive nights, and eight years later his Falstaff attracted crowds to “the Garden.” Barry played it against him at Drury, in 1743 and 1747; but Barry was dull and void of impulse as a school-boy repeating his task. In 1762, the part, at Drury, fell to Yates, for whom the piece was brought out, with the character of Hotspur omitted! To give more prominence to our knight, a scene was left out. The public did not approve of the plan, for in the same year Love, celebrated by Churchill for his humor, made his first appearance at Drury, as Sir John, when Holland, the baker of Chiswick, played Hotspur, with well-bred warmth. I will add, that though Quin drew immense houses, yet when Harper, some years previously, played the same part at Drury, with Booth in Hotspur, Wilks as the Prince, and Cibber as Glendower, the combined excellence drew as great houses for a much longer period. So that Harper’s Falstaff, although inferior to Quin’s, was, as was remarked, more seen, yet less admired by the town. Shuter played it almost too “jollily” at the Garden, in 1774. But all other Falstaffs were extinguished for a time, when Henderson, although not physically qualified for the part, astonished the town with his “old boy of the castle,” in 1777 at the Haymarket, and delighted them two years later, at Covent Garden. At the latter house, eight years subsequently, Ryder played it respectably, to Lewis’s Prince of Wales; and in 1791, when the Drury Lane company were playing at the Haymarket, Palmer represented Falstaff, and John Kemble mis-represented Hotspur. King tried the knight at the same “little house,” in 1792, but King, clever as he was, was physically incapable of representing Falstaff, and he soon ceased to pretend to do so. The next representative was the worst the world had yet seen—namely, Fawcett, who first attempted it at the Garden, in 1795. Blisset appeared in it in 1803, and disappeared also. From this time no new actor tried the Sir John, in the first part of Henry IV., till 1824, when Charles Kemble made the Ghost of Shakespeare very uneasy, by executing a part for which he was totally unfit. He persevered, however, but the success of Elliston in the part, two years later, settled the respective merits of two performers, to the advantage of Robert William, as effectually as Grisi showed the town that there was but one Norma, by playing it the night after the fatal attempt made on the Druidess, by Jenny Lind.

The succession of actors who represented Falstaff, in the second part of Henry IV., was as brilliant as that of the line of representatives above noticed. Ten years after Betterton and Mills, in 1720, we have Harper, and it is somewhat singular that when Mills resigned Falstaff to Harper, he took the part of the King. Hulett, two years subsequently played it at Covent Garden; and, after another two years, Quin made Drury ecstatic with his fun. He held the part without a real rival, and fifteen years later, in 1749, he was as attractive as ever in this portion of the knight’s character, at Covent Garden. Shuter succeeded him in the part at this theatre, in 1755; but in 1758, all London, that is the play-goers of London, might be seen hurrying once more to Drury, to witness lively Woodward’s very old Falstaff played to Garrick’s King. The Garden can not be said to have found a superior means of attraction, when Shuter again represented Sir John, at the Garden, in 1761, on which occasion the parts of Shallow and Silence were omitted! The object, however, was to shorten the piece, and the main attraction was in the coronation pageant, at the conclusion, in honor of the then young King and Queen, who were well worthy of the honor thus paid to them.

Love and Holland, who played Falstaff and Hotspur, at Drury Lane, in 1762, played the Knight and the Prince of Wales, at the same house, two years subsequently. Nine years after this, the Garden found a Prince in Mrs. Lessingham, Shuter played Falstaff to her, but the travesty of the former character was only in a slight degree less incongruous than that made by Mrs. Glover, in the present century, who once, if not twice, played the fat knight, for her own benefit. For the next eight or nine years, the best Falstaff possessed by London was Henderson. He played the part first at Drury, and afterward at Covent Garden. Since Quin, there had been no better representative of Sir John; and even Palmer, in 1788, could not bring the town from its allegiance to “admirable Henderson.”

The Falstaffs of the present century, in the second part of this historical play, have not achieved a greater triumph than Henderson. Cooke, who played the obese cavalier, in 1804, was not equal to the part; and Fawcett, in 1821, when the play was revived, with another coronation pageant in honor of George IV., was farther from success than Cooke. The managers at this period were wiser than those who “got up” the play at the period of the accession of George III., for they retained Shallow and Silence, and never were the illustrious two so inimitably represented as, on this occasion, by Farren and Emery.

The chief Falstaffs of the “Merry Wives of Windsor” are Betterton (1704), Hulett (1732), Quin (1734), Delane, the young Irish actor (1743), of whom Garrick was foolish enough to be jealous; Shuter (1758), Henderson, who first played it at the Haymarket in 1777, and Lee Lewis in 1784. Bartley, Phelps, and a clever provincial actor, now in London, named Bartlett, have also played this character with great effect. The Falstaff of the last-named actor is particularly good.

I have said that Quin was the greatest of Falstaffs, but the greatest in the physical acceptation of the term, was undoubtedly Stephen Kemble. This actor was born almost upon the boards. His clever, but not very gentle-tempered mother, had just concluded her performance of Anne Bullen, in a barn, or something like it, at Kingstown, Herefordshire (1758), when Stephen was born, about the period when, according to the action of the play, the Princess Elizabeth is supposed to first see the light. Stephen when he had grown to manhood, weighed as much as all his sisters and brothers put together; and on the 7th of October, 1802, he made his appearance at Drury, in the character of Falstaff. This was nearly twenty years after he had made his début in London, at Covent Garden, in Othello. Bannister junior prefaced his performance of the companion of Prince Hal, by some humorous lines, joking on the heaviness of the actor. As Pope played Hotspur, I should fancy, if Pope then was anything like what he was some fifteen or sixteen years later, that Hotspur was even heavier than Sir John. The lines alluded to were accounted witty; and I will conclude my record of the principal actors who have represented the knight, by reproducing them.

A Falstaff here to-night, by nature made,

Lends to your fav’rite bard his pond’rous aid;

No man in buckram, he! no stuffing gear,

No feather bed, nor e’en a pillow here!

But all good honest flesh and blood, and bone,

And weighing, more or less, some thirty stone.

Upon the northern coast by chance we caught him,

And hither, in a broad-wheeled wagon, brought him:

For in a chaise the varlet ne’er could enter,

And no mail-coach on such a fare would venture.

Blessed with unwieldiness, at least his size

Will favor find in every critic’s eyes.

And should his humor and his mimic art

Bear due proportion to his outward part,

As once was said of Macklin in the Jew,

“This is the very Falstaff Shakespeare drew.”

To you, with diffidence, he bids me say,

Should you approve, you may command his stay,

To lie and swagger here another day.

If not, to better men he’ll leave his sack,

And go, as ballast, in a collier back.

In concluding this section of my gossiping record, I will add that the supposition of Shakespeare having intended to represent Sir John Oldcastle under the title of Sir John Falstaff, is merely a supposition. It has never been satisfactorily made out. Far otherwise is the case with that gallant Welsh man-at-arms, Fluellin. The original of this character was a David Gam of Brecknock, who having killed a cousin with an unpronounceable name, in the High Street of Brecknock, avoided the possibly unpleasant consequences by joining the Lancastrian party. Gam was merely a nickname, having reference to an obliquity of vision in the doughty and disputative David. The real name was Llewellyn; and if Shakespeare disguised the appellation, it was from notions of delicacy, probably, as the descendants of the hero were well known and respected at the English court in Shakespeare’s time. Jones, in his “History of Brecknockshire,” identifies the personage in question in this way: “I have called Fluellin a burlesque character, because his pribbles and prabbles, which were generally out-heroded, sound ludicrously to an English as well as a Welsh ear; yet, after all, Llewellyn is a brave soldier and an honest fellow. He is admitted into a considerable degree of intimacy with the King, and stands high in his good opinion, which is a strong presumptive proof, notwithstanding Shakespeare, the better to conceal his object, describes the death of Sir David Gam, that he intended David Llewellyn by his portrait of the testy Welshman, for there was no other person of that country in the English army, who could have been supposed to be upon such terms of familiarity with the King.” It is singular that the descendants of the Welsh knight subsequently dropped the proud old name with more l’s in it than syllables, and adopted the monosyllabic soubriquet. Squinting David, who fought so well at Agincourt, would have knocked down any man who would have dared to address him personally as “Gam,” that is, “game,” or “cock-eyed.” His posterity proved less susceptible; and Mr. Jones says of them, in a burst of melancholy over fallen greatness: “At different periods between the years 1550 and 1700, I have seen the descendants of the hero of Agincourt (who lived like a wolf and died like a lion) in the possession of every acre of ground in the county of Brecon; at the commencement of the eighteenth century, I find one of them common bellman of the town of Brecknock, and before the conclusion, two others, supported by the inhabitants of the parish where they reside; and even the name of Gam is, in the legitimate line, extinct.” Mr. Jones might have comforted himself by remembering that as the Gams went out, the Kembles came in, and that the illustrious Sarah dignified by her birth the garret of that “Shoulder of Mutton” public-house, which stood in the street where chivalrous but squinting Davy had slain his cousin with the unpronounceable name.

John Kemble occasionally took some unwarrantable liberties with Shakespeare. When he produced the “Merry Wives of Windsor” at Covent Garden, in April, 1804 (in which he played Ford to Cooke’s Falstaff), he deprived Sir Hugh Evans of his knightly title, out of sheer ignorance, or culpable carelessness. Blanchard was announced for “Hugh Evans,” without the Sir. Hawkins, quoting Fuller, says that “anciently in England, there were more Sirs than Knights;” and as I have noticed in another page, the monosyllabic Sir was common to both clergymen and knights. To the first, however, only by courtesy, when they had attained their degree of B. A. In a “New Trick to cheat the Devil,” Anne says to her sire, “Nay, sir;” to which the father replies—

“Sir me no sirs! I am no knight nor churchman.”

But John Kemble was complimentary to Shakespeare, compared with poor Frederick Reynolds, who turned the “Merry Wives of Windsor” into an opera, in 1824; and although Dowton did not sing Falstaff, as Lablache subsequently did, the two wives, represented by Miss Stephens and Miss Cubitt, warbled, instead of being merry in prose, and gave popularity to “I know a bank.” At the best, Fenton is but an indifferent part, but Braham was made to render it one marked especially by nonsense. Greenwood had painted a scene representing Windsor under a glowing summer sky, under which Fenton (Braham) entered, and remarked, very like Shakespeare: “How I love this spot where dear Anne Page has often met me and confessed her love! Ha! I think the sky is overcast—the wind, too, blows like an approaching storm. Well, let it blow on! I am prepared to brave its fury.” Whereupon the orchestra commenced the symphony, and Mr. Braham took a turn up the stage, according to the then approved plan, before he commenced his famous air of “Blow, blow, thou winter wind!” And the fun-anent Falstaff and the Fords was kept waiting for nonsense like this!

While on the subject of the chivalrous originals of the mock knights of the Stage, I may be permitted to mention here, that Jonson’s Bobadil was popularly said to have been named after, if not founded upon, a knight in the army of the Duke of Alva, engaged in subduing the Netherlands beneath the despotism of Philip II. According to Strada, after the victory at Giesen, near Mons, in 1570, Alva sent Captain Bobadilla to Spain, to inform Philip of the triumph to his arms. “The ostentation of the message, and still more of the person who bore it, was the origin of the name being applied to any vain-glorious boaster.” The Bobadilla family was an illustrious one, and can hardly be supposed to have furnished a member who, in any wise, resembles Jonson’s swashbuckler. On the other hand, there was Boabdil, the last sultan of Granada, who had indeed borne himself lustily, in his early days, in the field, but who at last cried like a child at losing that Granada which he was not man enough to defend. But it would be injustice even to the son of Muley Abel Hassan, to imagine that Jonson only took his name to distinguish therewith the knight of huge words and weapons who lodged with Oliver Cob the Water-bearer.

The few other Stage Knights whom I have to name, I will introduce them to the reader in the next chapter.