Who is Falstaff?
Talking like common people
I have recently appeared on the William Blair podcast, the Pathless Path podcast, and the Unleashed podcast.
Remember, paid subscribers meet on Sunday 7th April, 19.00 UK time to discuss Henry IV part I. You can find all the Shakespeare essays here, and the schedule for future meetings here. There is a chat threat about the play here.
Why is Falstaff so popular?
It is perhaps little wonder that the first part of Henry IV is Shakespeare’s most popular play. It combines the two core aspects of English culture: tavern life and royal watching. Between the first performance in 1597 and the publication of the First Folio in 1623, there were seven quarto editions of this play, more than for any other Shakespeare play. The heart of Henry IV is the fat knight and gentleman scoundrel Sir John Falstaff. In a reference book made in the 1930s which recorded all references made to Shakespeare in other literature, the index listed Falstaff at the top, saying “for the purpose of this index Falstaff shall be referred to as a work.” There were more entries for Falstaff than for the rest of Shakespeare’s works put together.
There is a story, thought to be true, that when Falstaff came into the stage the groundlings stopped cracking their nuts so that they wound be able to hear him better. It is often said that in creating Falstaff, Shakespeare created a character he could not control, one who escaped the limits of his play. If Hamlet is the Shakespearean character who has given the most phrases and sayings to ordinary language, Falstaff bequeathed us something much greater—a whole archetype, a species of character, a mode of being.
But what is Falstaff? Rogue, smiling villain, court jester, Everyman, Vice personified, the spirit of life, an old soak, a friend betrayed, idler, chancer, turncoat, wit. He is all things. Above all, he is life resisting age. What he seeks to cheat are all the forces conspiring to get him killed: kings, soldiers, diseases, time. Bring me sack is his constant refrain, and in reply the hapless waiter at The Boar’s Head calls back—anon, anon sir, anon, like the reaper whispering a memento mori. Anon anon and Sir John is undone.
But can this explain the enormous interest in this enormous man? It is surely insufficient to say that he is all things to all men. Is that alone what makes him as popular and as referenced as all of the rest of Shakespeare combined? No. The secret lies in language.
Henry IV is largely written in prose, a break from the poetic lyricism of Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Richard II. And remember what makes this play so popular: tavern life and royal watching. Two aspects of life that rely, more than any other, on language, on register. Just think what an achievement it is to put a Prince into a tavern and have him speak vernacular prose and for it to be convincing, natural, enjoyable, entertaining. Hal moves between two poles of the language, extremes of usage, from bawdy banter to formal phrasings. You need only look at the speeches of Henry IV to see how uncourtly the tavern talk is, how accomplished Hal can be in both.
Now we reach the rub: Falstaff is the vernacular.