ABSTRACT
Henry Mackenzie addresses his remarks to 'the Character of Sir John Falstaff', agreeing that in this remarkable creation Shakespeare shows himself of all poets 'to have possessed a fancy the most prolific, an imagination the most luxuriantly fertile'. Falstaff outdistances anything achieved even by Homer', in the mere creation of fancy. Falstaff is truly and literally 'ex Epicuri grege porcus', placed here within the pale of this world to fatten at his leisure, neither disturbed by feeling nor restrained by virtue. As a man of this world he is endowed with the most superior degree of good sense and discernment of character; his conceptions, equally acute and just, he delivers with the expression of a clear and vigorous understanding; and as seen that he thinks like a wise man even when he is not at the pains to talk wisely. Queen Elizabeth desired Shakespeare to exhibit Falstaff as a lover. He obeyed her, and wrote the Merry Wives of Windsor.
