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.”