Sir John Falstaff: Sage or Satan?

Sir John Falstaff is one of the most intriguing characters in the entire Shakespeare canon. He appears in three plays, Henry IV, part 1 (1597), Henry IV, part 2 (1597-1598), and The Merry Wives of Windsor (there is controversy over the date, but 1599-1600 seems the most likely). Indeed Falstaff was so compelling that composers, authors, and directors have created material built around the character up to the present day.

Several operas were created around this larger-than-life Elizabethan persona; these include Antonio Salieri's Falstaff (1799), Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff (1843), Otto Nicolai's Di Lustigen Weiber von Windsor (1849; "The Merry Wives of Windsor"), Gustav Holst's At the Boar's Head (1925), and Vaughn Williams's Sir John in Love (1929). In addition Edward Elgar examined the character in a symphonic study for full orchestra entitled Falstaff, op. 68 (1913), while Orson Welles in the movie Chimes at Midnight created probably the most memorable film interpretation of the fat knight. Falstaff was even the subject of Richard Nye's 1976 novel Falstaff, which was written in the form of an autobiography. Although Falstaff is not particularly moral and certainly not heroic, there is something in his character--perhaps its very duality--that has captivated generations. Companion to Prince Hal in the Henry plays, Falstaff is seen as both the clown and the fool; he is laughed at for his pompous posturing and generates laughter through the use of his trenchant wit.

The dichotomy of Falstaff's personality was underscored by critical reviews of the 2003-2004 production of Henry IV at New York City's Lincoln Center Theater. The critics, Michael Kuchwara of the Associated Press and David Scott Kastan of the New York Times, offered two divergent views of the character. In the Nov. 23, 2003, edition of the Salt Lake Tribune, Kuchwara defines Falstaff as "that bibulous, bellowing, carnal creature," whereas Kastan in the Nov. 9, 2003, edition of the New York Times offers both sides of the persona when he asks whether Falstaff is "the vitalist truth-teller who exposes the life-denying lies of power," or the "disruptive force of misrule who threatens the hope for order and coherence."

Academics as well as critics take opposing views of Falstaff. In Shakespeare's History Plays, E. M. W. Tillyard presents Falstaff as "a complicated figure combining several functions which it might tax the greatest author to embody in even separate persons. First . . . he stands for sheer vitality, for the spirit of youth, ready for any adventure . . . [But] he also goes on from the harmless comic Vice to the epitome of the Deadly Sins at war with law and order." Tillyard also reveals Falstaff's great appeal through the words of George Orwell, who saw a bit of the Elizabethan knight in every human. "There is one part of you that wishes to be a hero or a saint, but another part of you is a little fat man who sees very clearly the advantages of staying alive with a whole skin. . . . The high sentiments always win in the end; leaders who offer blood, toil, tears, and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. . . . It is only that the other element in man . . . can never be suppressed altogether and occasionally needs a hearing."

Harold Bloom, on the other hand, lays his personal affection for Falstaff bare in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Rather than seeing a "fat little man" struggling against his foibles, Bloom finds a character who "transcends virtually all our cataloguing of human sin and error . . . Falstaff, who is free, instructs us in freedom, not a freedom in society, but from society. . . . The immortal Falstaff, never a hypocrite and rarely ambivalent . . . is essentially a satirist against all power."

When duty calls at the end of Henry IV, part 2, Prince Hal, now King Henry V, rejects and banishes Falstaff, for with Hal's assumption of power comes a sense of responsibility that will not allow chaos to triumph. Although Hal must abandon outsized passions and view a disregard for the rules as inappropriate, we remain charmed by Falstaff--the rogue who loves life, who schemes and plots, who laughs and makes others laugh--even as we explore the truths he tells about power and ourselves.

Regardless of whether critics and academics see Falstaff as a sage or a buffoon, all maintain that he is immensely human. Indeed, what makes an author or playwright great is the ability to create characters in whom large numbers of readers, or theatergoers, see something of themselves. Falstaff's role, in many ways, is that of the fool who imparts truths through his jokes and jests. That we still debate his meanings after more than four centuries is a tribute to the power of a master playwright.