Knight-errant, Sir John Falstaff
Reality, fantasy, and comic juxtaposition. Shakespeare's comedy, in the self-proclamation of the Falstaffian virtues - King Henry IV, Part One.
“...sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff”
As the epigraph attests (Act 2, Scene 4, lines 462-464), Sir John (Jack) Falstaff - as presented in King Henry IV, part one - has a rather high opinion of himself!
Shakespeare’s readers, in sympathy with the play’s cast, might find Falstaff’s self-praise as ridiculous as it is unmerited. This is because to the reader, Falstaff’s grotesque flaws are so obviously clear, and his self-attestations to personal greatness are so obviously specious.
This is what makes him funny.
Shakespeare’s genius for juxtaposition; of the factual man against the self-defined myth, is the generative source of Falstaff’s sublime comic value. Although it is true Sir John’s humorous pomp and bombast do make him funny, these attributes alone (his physical and intellectual humour) form only a fragment of his comic profile.
In the whole, it is the added, persistent sense of audacity - his sheer chutzpah - in maintaining an unshakeably confident pretence to honourable gentlemanliness, that elevates his personal comedy to the stuff of literary legend. The Falstaffian self-determination, the will to persist with one’s self-mythologising despite obvious contrary evidence pointing to an already devastatingly impeached character, is remarkable. It is quietly admirable. It is perhaps also a little troubling. Most importantly, it is comic genius.
There are two episodes of such myth-making before an already wised-up cast and audience which climax Falstaff’s comedy in King Henry IV, Part One. The first is the highway robbery in Act 2. The second is the post-mortem wounding of Hotspur, and subsequent attempt at taking credit for his slaying. This takes place in the play’s penultimate scenes, in Act 5, scene 4.
The pleading soliloquy at the end of Act 2, scene 4 is the first focal point in the revelation of Falstaff’s personal farcicality. That is because it is the first time in the play that the reader can assess Jack Falstaff’s behaviour having accumulated some important preliminary understandings about his character.
Specifically, there are three parts to the exposition and development of Falstaff’s comedy by the end of Act 2 which bear considering.
Firstly, by now the reader is aware, generally, of who Jack Falstaff might be. He appears as a man of high-title, in the post-Ricardian swill of royal intrigue. Act One also reveals he has a precedent reputation as a fraudster and a sluggard. Before Act 2, scene 3 however, there is no reason not to suspect he may well just be concealing brave and valourous traits behind a clown’s facade.
After all, he is likeable, and his frauds seem without malicious intent. Even when the ‘gang’ of degenerates Harry keeps as friends are plotting their highway robbery in act 1, scene 2, we might still reasonably suspect that Sir John, as part of a rascallous group of friends, would respect and obey a kind of ‘for the boys’ honour-code for thieves, as his lofty language suggests;
‘There’s neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee, nor thou cam’st not of the blood royal, if thou darest not stand for ten shillings’ (Act 1, scene 2, 132-134)
Alas, through the tale of the robbery, we are brought unequivocally to the second key understanding in the set-up of Falstaff’s comedy; that of who Jack Falstaff really is! We see him commit a crime with our own eyes, without remorse or hesitation. As he aggressively harasses his victims;
‘Hang ye, gorbellied knaves...You are grand-jurors, are ye? We’ll jure ye, faith.’ (Act 2, scene 2, 86-89)
When the robbery plot is picked up again in act 2, scene 4, it is the further revelation of Falstaff’s patheticness, his boastful lying and sloven cupidity, that force the reader to reassess this ‘noble clown’ estimation of his character. We may, stubbornly, still like Falstaff, but we can not deny his criminality - morally or legally. He is fully unmasked, and perhaps now best described in the words of a flabbergasted Prince Hal;
‘These lies are like their father that begets them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable. Why, thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch’ (Act 2, scene 4, 218-221)
Thirdly , we have been made aware, literally and subtextually, of what Falstaff is, to Prince Hal. In the repartee between the prince and Falstaff over the course of the play, we are brought to the implicit understanding that Falstaff is a kind of contrarian mentor to young Hal. This is established early in Act 1, scene 2, when the prince persistently asks questions of Falstaff, in the manner of an apprentice. On Falstaff’s part, his interest in Hal’s future flourishing is highlighted in the same passages, as he foreshadows the life they’ll lead as compatriots once Harry takes the throne;
‘Marry then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us that are squires of the night’s body be called thieves of the day’s beauty. Let us be Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon, and let men say we be men of good government, being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal’ (Act 1, scene 2, 22-28)
The very fact that Falstaff adopts such confidence in his mentorship of Harry, stands as his claim to the status of a distinguished and honorable man. A character presenting themselves as a mentor must necessarily hold a store of moral authority, presumably won in battle, or at least divined in the academy. Though it is not clear if or when Falstaff held any honestly-won authority, it is certain that his vested interest in Harry’s royal succession motivates him to maintain their connection.
Critically, this interest in Harry’s ascension to the throne provides Falstaff with a motive for perpetuating the fantasy of his own good character. We are not aware of precisely why Falstaff will need Harry’s continued patronage, but the power derived from Harry’s royal lineage would provide countless possibilities. Any of these would justify the desperate urgency a man like Falstaff feels in preserving his own reputation.
It is that desperation that sets up Falstaff’s comedy. It behooves him to scheme at the construction of his own reputation with greater urgency. When Falstaff’s urgent claims to good character are juxtaposed against the otherwise universal foreknowledge of his true wretchedness, they serve to elevate his humour. Denial after all, can only become so funny, when the truth is so blinding!
Falstaff invites our judgement and laughter when he - having recently been unveiled as a fraud - role-plays the King in practicing Prince Hal’s pending conversation at court. Without blinking, he purports that the King would have the highest estimation of himself, imitating Henry IV in conversation with his son;
‘A goodly, portly man...of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye and a most noble carriage...And now I remember me: His name is Falstaff. If that man should be lewdly given, he deceiveth me, for, Harry, I see virtue in his looks....there is virtue in that Fallstaff’ (Act 2, Scene 4, 410-418)
This brazen disposition established, Falstaff is shameless enough to endure the fiasco of the robbery without any attempt at self-reflection. Further, he seems not to suffer from a sense of embarrassment over his failure (Act 4, scene 2) to procure a worthy army for Harry, and therefore subsequently fails to reform himself. That failure complete, his desperation to maintain his grand charade can only be sustained.
This brings us to the penultimate scenes of the play, where two key narrative features are set up to contrast to Falstaff’s slipshod lies and criminality . Firstly, the reader witnesses a fully matured Prince Hal kill Hotspur. Secondly, we witness this loss of life itself as the unmistakably honourable death of a noble man, by way of the exchange between Prince Hal and his victim. This is remarkable writing, Shakespearean to its core in its multiplicity of themes, meanings and linguistic nuance;
HOTSPUR:
‘O, I could prophesy,
But that earthy and cold hand of death
Lies on my tongue. No, Percy, thou art dust
And food for - [He Dies]
PRINCE:
For worms, brave Percy. Fare thee well, great heart.
Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk!
When that this body did contain a spirit
A kingdom for it was too small a bound…’ (Act 5, scene 4, 82-89)
Harry then, has outgrown any subordinate relationships he may previously have required as a young buck prince. He is battle-capable, stands on his own two feet and emerges as worthy of slaying Hotspur. Importantly also, Hotspur himself provides a shining example of what it means to be a brave and honourable knight in battle. The foil, morally, narratively, and ultimately for the reader, comically, has been set double-fold for Falstaff.
Of course, the fat knight can’t help himself, and his disgrace is soon complete. He gratuitously adds an extra wound to the corpse of Hotspur, who’s eloquence in dying renders him graceful in death. Falstaff’s defilement of his corpse not sufficing, he then takes him upon his back to claim his body as proof-of-kill. He first reminds the audience though that indeed, he won’t soon resile from his unmatched capacity for self-justification. He is able to promote himself as a virtuous person in even the most ridiculous circumstances. In this case, it means wriggling out of the shame of playing dead on the battlefield;
‘I am no counterfeit. To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man. But to be counterfeit dying when a man thereby liveth is to be no counterfeit but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valour is discretion, in which the better part I have saved my life.’ (Act 5, scene 4, 114-120)
Upon the discovery and exposure of this final sin, Falstaff’s farcical protestations reach their apex. It should be noted too, that there is also a structural element which elevates the comedy here to a higher climax than that of the highway robbery.
That element is pacing.
In the robbery, the exposition of Falstaff’s true behaviour and his post-event mythologising is separated by an intense intermittent scene featuring Hotspur and Lady Percy. In the battle death scene there is no such separation. Falstaff sins, lies and then self-justifies immediately after we witness him defile Hotspur’s body, claiming Harry’s rightful battle-kill as his own. His deftness at adapting to the sudden revelation is breathtaking;
FALSTAFF:
[drops Hotspur’s body.] But, if I be not Jack Falstaff, then I am a jack. There is Percy. If your father will do me any honour, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy himself. I look to be either earl or duke, I can assure you.
PRINCE:
Why, Percy I killed myself, and saw thee dead.
FALLSTAFF:
Didst thou? Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! (Act 5, scene 4, 139-146)
When the juxtaposition occurs so jarringly, the reader is invited to a higher sense of exasperation - and subsequent comedy - in assessing Sir John. By this stage in the play, only 60 or so lines from the conclusion, there is no longer a need for another cast member to recite a detailed indictment of Falstaff’s criminal behaviour (as in the earlier incident). In its stead, Lancaster and Prince Hal need only state the obvious;
LANCASTER:
This is the strangest tale that I ever heard
PRINCE:
This is the strangest fellow, brother John. (Act 5, scene 4, 154-155)
That Falstaff is funny can never be in doubt. But humour alone can’t elevate a character to comic genius. To achieve this, an author must vest his character with some kind of extraordinary ‘otherness’. Falstaff’s otherness is his ability to twist a virtuous self-image out of what normal people would consider outrageous and irreconcilably deviant behaviour. In that persistence, and the subsequently inescapable juxtaposition between real and imagined worlds, Shakespeare creates the jarring contrast that allows us to find the absurd humour in his knight-errant. Further, through the accelerating dramatic pace within which Falstaff dispatches his misdeeds, we are pushed to appreciate a character that grows steadily in his ridiculousness as the play develops.
In this endeavour, Shakespeare has created a comic profile unprecedented in literary history, and a despicable, loveable, character that lives on as both the best, and first of his kind, in the English Language.
Benjamin Crocker
November 2, 2021