Certain Nezv Elucidations of Shakespeare 55 



But this, it may be urged, is taking comedy matters too seri- 

 ously. It is an observation altogether warranted, to say that, 

 although it proves too much. We insist always on judging 

 comedies as well as tragedies by comparison with real life. If 

 one is to theorize how Shakespeare came to create such a char- 

 acter, one need not go back into the history of the Elizabethan 

 theater. Our suspicion would be that Falstaff was brought into 

 dramatic being, not for his own sake, but to help lift Prince Hal 

 from traditional disesteem. The object of the two halves of 

 Henry IV and the play of Henry V was in part to enable English 

 playgoers to realize how the madcap Prince, who scandalized his 

 father's court, became not only a glorious chieftain and hero, but 

 also a good king and a good man. Falstaff takes over from the 

 Prince, and Poins, his proper companion, the curse of lawless- 

 ness and self-indulgence, and leaves the pair, not accessories or 

 abettors so much as boyish, or as we say now-a-days, ' adolescent ' 

 applauders, machinators, putters-on. Shakespeare in fact, after 

 having the Prince draw the line (First Part, I. ii. 153, 162) at 

 thieving, makes him declare, awkwardly enough, to be sure, in 

 (11. 218, 219) an aside — lest we should miss the point — his real 

 attitude towards Poins and Falstaff and the rest. 



And what can be said of means by which Shakespeare controls 

 our feelings concerning Falstaff? For the first thing, we may 

 venture this, — he takes us with him into the consciousness of 

 the man. He snares us by the frankness with which he has en- 

 dowed the character. There is implanted in each of us the 

 appetency to know people, to find Man out thoroughly, to know 

 the modes of being, high and low. There could never else have 

 been novels, or plays, and Shakespeare could not otherwise have 

 been discovered. ' Whom we know wholly we cannot hate.' The 

 man who opens his personal self to us, * like a little child,' wins us 

 in our own despite. Rousseau was not a personage that we could 

 wish imitated, or that we should wish to imitate. But he har- 

 bored no reserves. He was great enough to trust us with his 

 faults and follies, and we like him. But the man who hides his 

 Hmitations, and poses — like a Nation reviewer of early days till 

 his anonymity was lifted — as a superintellect, a pharisee, we de- 



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