Falstaff.
On the first, as on every subsequent, production of ‘Henry IV’ the main public interest was concentrated neither on the King nor on his son, nor on Hotspur, but on the chief of Prince Hal’s riotous companions. At the outset the propriety of that great creation was questioned on a political or historical ground of doubtful relevance. Shakespeare in both parts of ‘Henry IV’ originally named the chief of the prince’s associates after Sir John Oldcastle, a character in the old play. But Henry Brooke, eighth lord Cobham, who succeeded to the title early in 1597, and claimed descent from the historical Sir John Oldcastle, the Lollard leader, raised objection; and when the first part of the play was printed by the acting-company’s authority in 1598 (‘newly corrected’ in 1599), Shakespeare bestowed on Prince Hal’s tun-bellied follower the new and deathless name of Falstaff. A trustworthy edition of the second part of ‘Henry IV’ also appeared with Falstaff’s name substituted for that of Oldcastle in 1600. There the epilogue expressly denied that Falstaff had any characteristic in common with the martyr Oldcastle.
Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. But the substitution of the name ‘Falstaff’ did not pass without protest. It hazily recalled Sir John Fastolf, an historical warrior who had already figured in ‘Henry VI’ and was owner at one time of the Boar’s Head Tavern in Southwark; according to traditional stage directions, [170] the prince and his companions in ‘Henry IV’ frequent the Boar’s Head, Eastcheap. Fuller in his ‘Worthies,’ first published in 1662, while expressing satisfaction that Shakespeare had ‘put out’ of the play Sir John Oldcastle, was eloquent in his avowal of regret that ‘Sir John Fastolf’ was ‘put in,’ on the ground that it was making overbold with a great warrior’s memory to make him a ‘Thrasonical puff and emblem of mock-valour.’
The offending introduction and withdrawal of Oldcastle’s name left a curious mark on literary history. Humbler dramatists (Munday, Wilson, Drayton, and Hathaway), seeking to profit by the attention drawn by Shakespeare to the historical Oldcastle, produced a poor dramatic version of Oldcastle’s genuine history; and of two editions of ‘Sir John Oldcastle’ published in 1600, one printed for T[homas] P[avier] was impudently described on the title-page as by Shakespeare.
But it is not the historical traditions which are connected with Falstaff that give him his perennial attraction. It is the personality that owes nothing to history with which Shakespeare’s imaginative
power clothed him. The knight’s unfettered indulgence in sensual pleasures, his exuberant mendacity, and his love of his own ease are purged of offence by his colossal wit and jollity, while the contrast between his old age and his unreverend way of life supplies that tinge of melancholy which is inseparable from the highest manifestations of humour. The Elizabethan public recognised the triumphant success of the effort, and many of Falstaff’s telling phrases, with the names of his foils, Justice Shallow and Silence, at once took root in popular speech. Shakespeare’s purely comic power culminated in Falstaff; he may be claimed as the most humorous figure in literature.