Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592

by Arthur Acheson

Prince. Yes, and elsewhere, so far as my coin would stretch; and where it would not, I have used my credit.

Fal. Yea, and so used it that, were it not here apparent that thou art heir apparent—but, I prithee, sweet wag, shall there be gallows standing in England when thou art king? And resolution thus fobbed as it is with the rusty curb of old father antic the law? Do not thou, when thou art king, hang a thief.

Falstaff's impertinent and suggestive reference to the prince's intimacy with the hostess, not being taken well, he quickly gives the conversation a turn to cover up the mistake he finds he has made. It is palpable that the characterisation of the hostess in the First Part of Henry IV., in its original form, was not the same as that presented in the Second Part of this play in which she is represented as Mistress Quickly, an old, unattractive, and garrulous widow. In the First Part of Henry IV. she is mentioned only once as Mistress Quickly. In Act III. Scene iii. the prince addresses her under this name and inquires about her husband.

Prince. What sayest thou, Mistress Quickly? How doth thy husband? I love him well; he is an honest man.

This single mention of the hostess as Mistress Quickly is evidently an interpolation made at the period of the revision of this play late in 1597, or early in 1598. It is also probable that the revision at this time was made with the intention of linking the action of the First Part to the Second Part of the play, the outline of which Shakespeare was probably planning at that time.

The dramatic time of the First Part of the play has been estimated as at the outside covering a period of three months, and of the Second Part, a period of two months. No long interval is supposed to have elapsed between the action of the two parts; yet, in the First Part of the play the hostess is young, attractive, and has a husband. In the Second Part, she is old, unattractive, and is a widow. This divergence is evidently to be accounted for by the fact that the First Part of Henry IV. in its earliest, and unrevised, form was written, not long after the composition of Love's Labour's Won (All's Well that Ends Well in its early form), and during the estrangement between Southampton and Shakespeare in 1594, caused by the nobleman's relations with the "dark lady," that "most sweet wench," "my hostess of the tavern."

I have indicated a certain continuity and link of characterisation between Parolles, as we leave him in All's Well that Ends Well, and Falstaff, as we first encounter him in the First Part of Henry IV. I shall now demonstrate parallels between the characterisation of Falstaff in the First Part of Henry IV., and the tone and spirit of the conversations between the imaginary characters of Florio's Second Fruites. Fewer resemblances are to be found between the Second Fruites and the Second Part of Henry IV. From this I infer that when Shakespeare composed the First Part of Henry IV. in its original form, his personal acquaintance with Florio was recent and limited, and that he developed his characterisation of Falstaff in that portion of the play largely from Florio's self-revelation in the Second Fruites, and that in continuing this characterisation later on, in the Second Part of the play, he reinforced it from a closer personal observation of the idiosyncrasies of his prototype.

The Earl of Southampton, who was shadowed forth as Bertram in Love's Labour's Won, with Parolles as his factotum,—representing Florio in that capacity,—becomes the prince in Henry IV., while Florio becomes Falstaff. The First Part of the play in its original form reflected their connection and the affair of the "dark lady" in 1593-94. The First Part of Henry IV., in its revised form, and the Second Part of Henry IV. reflect a resumed, or a continued, familiarity between Southampton and Florio in 1598. This leads me to infer that Florio may again have accompanied Southampton when he left England with Sir Robert Cecil for the French Court in February 1598, in much the same capacity as he had served him on his first visit to France in 1592, when they were first reflected as Bertram and Parolles.

In the original development of the characterisation of Parolles, Armado, and Falstaff, I am convinced that Shakespeare worked, not only from observation of his prototype in their daily intercourse, but that he also studied Florio's mental and moral angles and literary mannerisms in his extant productions. If Armado's letters to Jaquenetta and to the King be compared with Florio's dedication of his Second Fruites—which was published in 1591, several months preceding the original composition of Love's Labour's Lost—and also with his "Address to the Reader," a similitude will be found that certainly passes coincidence. A comparison of Parolles' and Falstaff's opportunist and materialistic philosophy with Florio's outlook on life as we find it unconsciously exhibited in his Second Fruites, reveals a characteristic unity that plainly displays intentional parody on Shakespeare's part.

Didactic literature seldom presents the real character and workaday opinions and beliefs of a writer. The teacher generally speaks from a height transcending his ordinary levels of thought and action. In Florio's Second Fruites his intention is didactic only in relation to imparting a colloquial knowledge of Italian. In this endeavour he arranges a series of twelve conversations on matters of everyday life between imaginary characters, who are, presumably, of about the same social quality as his usual pupils—the younger gentry of the time. In these talks his intention was to be entirely natural and to reproduce, what he conceived to be, ordinary conversation between gentlemen of fashion. In doing this he reveals ethics, manners, and morals of a decidedly Falstaffian flavour. The gross and satyr-like estimate of women he displays; his primping enjoyment of apparel; the gusto with which he converses of things to eat and drink—of ale, and wine, and capons; his distrust of the minions of the law; his knowledge and horror of arrest and imprisonment, and his frankly animal zest of life, all suggest Shakespeare's knowledge of the book as well as the man.