ABSTRACT
A. C. Bradley admirably sums up the prevailing nineteenth-century view of Sir John Falstaff, just as in his essays on Shakespearean tragedy Bradley gives most eloquent and finished expression to the study of William Shakespeare's characters. Rejecting out of hand the hoodwinked and humiliated Falstaff of Merry Wives as not the real Falstaff, Bradley sees in the Henry IV plays a comic figure whom people hugely enjoy, one who is no mere reprobate and cowardly sensualist but a devoted companion of the Prince. Of the two persons principally concerned in the rejection of Falstaff, Henry, both as Prince and as King, has received, on the whole, full justice from readers and critics. Falstaff, on the other hand, has been in one respect the most unfortunate of Shakespeare's famous characters. The main source, then, of the sympathetic delight in Falstaff is his humorous superiority to everything serious, and the freedom of soul enjoyed in it.
