To perform this task, however, with unfailing effect, demanded, on the part of Falstaff, incessant intellectual vigour, and a perpetual command of temper, and these Shakspeare has bestowed upon him in their full plenitude. His wit is inexhaustible, his gaiety and good-humour undeviating, his address shrewd and discriminating, and, as the favourable opinion of his associates is, to a certain extent, essential to his enjoyments, he endeavours to impress the prince with confidence in his friendship and courage, his gratitude and fidelity, and to impose on his equals and inferiors a sense of his military and political importance. It is also requisite that, though an incorrigible lover of wine, of dainty fare, and of all libidinous delights, he should exhibit nothing either as the accompaniment or consequence of these pursuits, which should be beastly or loathsome; he is, therefore, never represented as in a state of intoxication, nor loaded with more infirmities than what corpulency produces; but is always himself,
crafty, sprightly, selfish, and intelligent, ever ready to invent and to enjoy the sport, the revel, and the jest.
Thus constituted, his social and intellectual qualities so blending with the dissolute propensities of his nature, that the epicure, and free-booter, the whore-monger and vain-glorious boaster, lose in the composition their native deformity, Falstaff becomes the most entertaining and seductive companion that the united powers of genius, levity, and laughter have ever, in the most felicitous hour of their mirth and fancy, created for the sons of men.
Yet, dangerous as such a delineation may appear, Shakspeare, with his usual attention to the best interests of mankind, has rendered it subservient to the most striking moral effects, both as these apply to the character of Falstaff himself, and to that of his temporary patron, the Prince of Wales; for while the virtue, energy, and good sense of the latter are placed in the most striking point of view by his firm dismissal of a most fascinating and too endeared voluptuary, the permanently degrading consequences of sensuality are exhibited in their full strength during the career, and in the fate, of the former.
It is very generally found that great and splendid vices are mingled with concomitant virtues, which often ultimately lead to self-accusation, and to the salutary agonies of remorse; but he who is deeply plunged in the grovelling pursuits of appetite is too frequently lost to all sense of shame, to all feeling of integrity or conscious worth. Polluted by the meanest depravities, not only religious principle ceases to affect the mind, but every thing which contributes to honour or to grandeur in the human character is gone for ever; a catastrophe to which wit and humour, by rendering the sensualist a more self-deluded and self-satisfied being, lend the most powerful assistance.
Thus is it with Falstaff—to the last he remains the same, unrepentant, unreformed; and, though shaken off by all that is valuable or good around him, dies the very sensualist which he had lived!
We may, therefore, derive from this character as much instruction as entertainment; and, to the delight which we receive from the contemplation of a picture so rich and original, add a lesson of morality as aweful and impressive as the history of human frailty can present.
In order fully to unfold the extraordinary character of Falstaff, it was necessary to throw around him a set of familiar associates, who might, through all the privacies of domestic life, lay open his follies and knaveries, while, at the same time, they themselves contributed, in no small degree, to the amusement of the scene. How admirably the poet has succeeded in this design, the spirited and glowing sketches of Bardolph, Pistol, and Mrs. Quickly, and of Justices Shallow and Silence, will bear an ever-during testimony. Than the scenes in which the two magistrates appear, nothing can be conceived more characteristically pleasant and original. The garrulity, vanity, and knavish simplicity of Shallow; the asinine gravity of Silence when sober, and his irrepressible hilarity when tipsy; Falstaff's exquisite appreciation of their characters, and his patronage of Shallow, are presented to us with a naïveté, raciness, and completeness of conception, which it is in vain to look for elsewhere.
We have further to remark, that the fable of the Two Parts of Henry the Fourth is connected with peculiar skill through the intervention of the comic incidents. It was essential, in fact, for the purposes of representation, that there should be a satisfactory close to each Part, while, at the same time, such a medium of communication should exist between the two, as to form a perfect whole. To effect this, the serious and the ludicrous departments of these dramas are conducted in a different way; the former exhibiting two catastrophes while the latter has but one. Thus the death of Percy in the first play, and the death of Henry the Fourth in the second, form two judicious terminations of the tragic portion, while the rich vein of comedy running through both divisions, is only bounded by the Reformation of Henry the Fifth, and the Fall of his vicious but facetious companion; a denouement at once natural and complete, and
springing from intrinsic causes, being the sole result of firmness and penetration in the prince, and of self-delusion in the knight.