The Merry Wives of Windsor is not only one of the least respected plays in the canon, it's often openly derided, particularly by commentators who have taken a personal liking to Falstaff the character. It seems as if they find it hard to watch him suffer at the hands of the title characters, their husbands and other various pranksters. Some even question whether it's the "real" Falstaff who appears in the play: Harold Bloom calls this one, "pseudo-Falstaff". I find this a bit much. In fact, the Windsor-based Falstaff has several lines that rate with his funniest, including one from the opening scene, wherein he answers the accusations of Justice Shallow in his inimitable way:

FALSTAFF

Now, Master Shallow, you'll complain of me to the king?

ROBERT SHALLOW

Knight, you have beaten my men, killed my deer, and

broke open my lodge.

FALSTAFF

But not kissed your keeper's daughter?

ROBERT SHALLOW

Tut, a pin! this shall be answered.

FALSTAFF

I will answer it straight; I have done all this.

That is now answered.

I'll be writing more about this under-appreciated play in posts to come.

Many current critical approaches to Shakespeare seek to place his work firmly in his time period, the product of the social and political forces of his day. But I'm rarely convinced that they're onto anything. Yes, it must be granted that these things were factors in his output (as was food to eat and air to breathe), but they were transcended by a superior power: the force of his mind. To not understand this is to not understand Falstaff or Hamlet or the history plays. In fact, it is the history plays that are often brought up in these contexts, and having spent quite a bit of time with them recently, I'm even more convinced than I was before: Any attempt to diminish Shakespeare's work, to consider it dated or of decreasing relevance is to bring these results upon one's own. Think about it: how could the creator of Falstaff, a character who easily slips out of any attempt at ideological restraint, allow it to happen to himself?

I think I would argue that Falstaff is to comedy what Hamlet is to tragedy: a character who embodies virtually every element of his genre, and more. And just as Hamlet's role, somewhat ironically, contains a lot of humour, so does Falstaff's in terms of sadness. Also, both characters are given great soliloquies that can be appreciated outside of the action. Falstaff's great aria on honour in 1 Henry IV, although perhaps not quoted as often as any of Hamlet's, strikes me as one of the most influential ever written. Not only did it supply Charlie Chaplin, and thousands of other comedians, with the subversive tone at the heart of their work, but it seems to be much closer to a twenty-first century mindset toward war and violence than anything written recently. Here's a link to the scene (http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=henry4p1&Act=5&Scene=1&Scope=scene). The excerpt I'm referring to is found at the end, and is the result of Prince Hal responding to Falstaff's request (to be defended if he's found on the ground) with a joke.

In response to the eloquent comment that my February 1 post received, I would posit the following in support of its position: Falstaff's self-interest grows relentlessly throughout the two plays, until there is virtually not a moral fiber left in him. It's all very funny, but equally disturbing. The trajectory finally reaches a crescendo in the Gloucerstershire scene in Shallow's orchard, when Pistol comes to tell the news of the death of Henry IV and the impending coronation of Prince Hal as Henry V. Falstaff, who has no other intention than to leverage his friendship with the young king toward all kinds of profiteering, reaches his apex of anarchy by saying: "I know the young king is sick for me. Let us take any man's horses: the laws of England are at my commandment." Looking at the statement objectively, it seems clear that his thinking couldn't be allowed to continue. And it isn't.

I have mixed feelings about Chimes at Midnight (a.k.a. Falstaff), Orson Welles' cinematic re-assembling of the story of Sir John from 1965, which uses lines from no less than five Shakespeare plays (Richard II, Henry IV, Parts One and Two, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor), as well as Holinshed's Chronicles to do so. I would certainly recommend it, but with some reservations regarding decisions made in terms of story-telling and interpretation. As you may know from previous posts, I'm not a fan of productions that make cuts in Shakespeare texts, and this movie partakes of that approach in an extreme way. Also Welles' portrayal of Falstaff is odd, in that he looks for pathos rather than humour at every turn. That being said, the movie has many strengths. It is amazing visually, for one thing. The camera work, the lighting and the use of the sets, in particular, are dazzling, despite the fact that the dialogue, recorded separately from the filming, doesn't sync up very well with the actors' speeches. (The same was done in his version of Othello, by the way, which I'll write about on another occasion.)

But what I most admire is the stand that Welles takes in defense of Falstaff (which goes a long way toward explaining his decisions in regard to his own performance). And though the knight does have many defenders (Harold Bloom is a mighty one, for example), I had never seen it put quite the way Welles did when he called Falstaff "the greatest conception of a good man, the most completely good man, in all drama". This might seem like a shocking statement at first, considering the common view of Falstaff as a completely amoral character who is only redeemed by his incomparable wit, but what I think Welles was getting at is that before making such a judgement, we must consider the medieval mind-set of gloryfying injustice, brutality and war that Falstaff opposes with any means he can find.

Shakespeare's use of figurative language also facilitates the portrayal of large-scale emotion, the type that might be hard to render otherwise. Here is an excerpt from Henry IV, Part One that illustrates the point. The following takes place at the end of 1.2, during which we have met Prince Hal and his friends, Falstaff and Poins, for the first time. After an indescribable exchange which features the dueling wits of Hal and Falstaff, the latter leaves and Poins stays behind to try to get Hal to join in an elaborate practical joke to be played on Falstaff. Hal agrees and Poins, satisfied, leaves as well, at which point Hal speaks the following soliloquy - which shows him to be politically motivated in his dealings with his "friends". The nature of the character of the future Henry V is a divisive matter among Shakespeare commentators, but what I'm interested in here is the powerful imagery and emotion that the language conveys. The passage contains three extended metaphors: the first is the comparison of royalty to the sun (not a new one, but handled freshly here); the second involves the nature of human wishes in regard to play and work; and the third, the difference between a shiny substance and the ground. As a whole, the passage's poetic content allows the audience to enter into the emotional world of a young man considering a glorious future:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold

The unyoked humour of your idleness:

Yet herein will I imitate the sun,

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds

To smother up his beauty from the world,

That, when he please again to be himself,

Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,

By breaking through the foul and ugly mists

Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

If all the year were playing holidays,

To sport would be as tedious as to work;

But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come,

And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.

So, when this loose behavior I throw off

And pay the debt I never promised,

By how much better than my word I am,

By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;

And like bright metal on a sullen ground,

My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,

Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes

Than that which hath no foil to set it off.

I'll so offend, to make offence a skill;

Redeeming time when men think least I will.

Perhaps the biggest reason for Falstaff's enduring popularity - many commentators consider him the greatest of comic characters - is the fact that he first appears in histories, not comedies. Thus, he stands out starkly from all the soldiers, princes, rebels, etc. who are running about and ranting about war and honour. Imagine what a liberating thing it must have been to hear a character, in the middle of a battle, say such things as:

Can honour set to a leg? no: or

an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no.

Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is

honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what

is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?

he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no.

Doth he hear it? no. 'Tis insensible, then. Yea,

to the dead. But will it not live with the living?

no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore

I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so

ends my catechism.

(1H4.5.1)

Think of how many comedians, from Charlie Chaplin to the men of Monty Python, were influenced by this counter-historical positioning. And somehow he still retains his freshness and ability to surprise. In the two parts of Henry IV, that is, because the only other play he appears in - The Merry Wives of Windsor, a comedy of course - is not loved by Falstaffians, for reasons that were discussed yesterday. I'll give my own thoughts on the play tomorrow.