ABSTRACT
Shakespeare's comic sense serves the body politic by generating Sir John Falstaff in an attempt to immunize comparatively Merrie England against foreign organism also in rejection of Falstaff, the victory of the Protestant ethic, presents a social triumph as a psychological event and the decision of Henry V to labor in his vocation, to do his duty in that royal station. Falstaff came into being, almost four centuries ago, during the first insurgency of the Protestant ethic and, perhaps, in response to it. Falstaff antiembodies is authoritatively described and accounted for by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The method of the Protestant ethic is to glorify time's rectilinearity, to proclaim time the element not of pleasure, but of duty, of the worldly achievement that ratifies faith in our election. Monsieur Remorse is pretty clearly a Puritan gentleman. He is one of the Protestant Saints whom the Prince of Wales has so far misled.
