“I can undoubtedly interpret the character to your most complete satisfaction,” said I to the manager, “but there is an obstacle, which, while by no means unsurmountable, must, nevertheless, be overcome at once or not at all.”
“And what is that?” he inquired.
“Why,” said I, “I am not fat enough.”
“What odds?” he answered; “while there are pads and pillows, this should be no matter for despair. You have only to stuff your doublet and pad your hose until you are as swollen as you like.”
“That,” I protested, “may do very well for your merely commercial actors who have no concern in their acting beyond the matter of drawing a salary; but I, Sir, am an actor, not a mere buffoon, not a vulgar clown to waddle about a stage wagging a hypocritical belly and passing off feathers for fat. If I am to play Falstaff, I will be Falstaff, in the flesh as well as in the spirit. My corporosity shall be sincere, my puffing and grunting shall be genuine; I will eat real food and drink real liquor upon your stage, and when I waddle I shall waddle as Nature intended fat men to waddle—because I can not help it. My calves shall be as natural as Sir John’s own, so that if I am pricked with the point of a rapier, I shall give utterance to a howl which is not mere mockery, but as real as a howl may well be, and which will delight the audience as no feigned howl ever could do.
“No, no! I shall not play Falstaff like a clown in a pantomime, but like that very knight himself. My performance shall be as real as the performance of Nature. I will be Sir John redivivus. Falstaff shall live again in me. He shall be I and I will be he, and there is an end of it.”
Well, Sir, to be brief, the manager was so struck with my unusual and, I may say, unaffected, sincerity, that he voluntarily advanced me a portion of my salary and agreed to my proposal that, instead of wasting valuable time in rehearsing a part in which I was already practically letter-perfect, my part in the rehearsals should be taken by a substitute, while I retired to the country and devoted myself to my labor of love—to the task of putting on so much flesh as would be necessary to act with fidelity the pursy knight errant. And this I did to so good purpose that from my normal weight of about one hundred and ninety pounds, I soon came to weigh upward of two hundred and eighty, and was as fat as any one could wish when we opened in Henry the Fourth in the Autumn.
To say, Sir, that my performance was a success is to do scant justice to the literary ability of William Shakespeare and to my own histrionic powers. It was not merely a success—it was a triumph! Ah, Sir, if I could but whisper in your ear the name by which I was known in those days of superlative glory, you would recall in the flash of an eye the days when the whole of the English-speaking world was convulsed with merriment at my performance and when press and public were vying with each other to do me honor! Never was such a performance of Falstaff given before, and never, I fear, will such a performance be given again. I was Falstaff to the very life! Falstaff in person and not to be mistaken for any one else. You could have sworn that I had stepped bodily out of the pages of the folio edition and thrust my way into the theater of my own volition, usurping the place of the actor.
Four whole seasons we played to crowded houses—New York, Chicago, San Francisco and London—and everywhere the critics all agreed that never had such a perfect Falstaff been seen before. This we followed with The Merry Wives of Windsor, repeating our success for two seasons, so that for six years I was known to every actor and patron of the theater as the greatest Falstaff that ever was.
But Fate, alas! however prodigal she may appear for a time, is not constant in her favors. All things come to an end sooner or later, and our production of The Merry Wives ran its course in time. How well do I remember that last night of all—the glitter of the electrics overhead, the glare of the footlights, the music of the orchestra, and, oh, above all else, the thunderous applause that greeted me when I appeared before the curtain, clad in trunks and doublet, to make my farewell speech! There ended our production, and there ended my greatness and my life. My grossness I have still, but my greatness has fled forever! Disconsolate I wander through the haunts of stageland, a fat pale ghost of my former self; a Falstaff out of place and out of time; a Falstaff without jollity or joy. I, Sir, have become that thing which I hate above all other things in the world, I have become an Anachronism!