ABSTRACT
But it is not only in those untried regions of magic or of witchery that the creative power of Shakespeare has exerted itself. By a very singular felicity of invention he has produced in the beaten field of ordinary life characters of such perfect originality that we look on them with no less wonder at his invention than on those preternatural beings, which ‘are not of this earth;’ and yet they speak a language so purely that of common society that we have but to step abroad into the world to hear every expression of which it is composed. Of this sort is the character of Falstaff. (269-70)
This leader of the gang which the wanton extravagance of the Prince was to cherish and protect, it was necessary to endow with qualities sufficient to make the young Henry, in his society, ‘daff the world aside,/And bid it pass’ [1 Henry IV, 4.1.96f.] Shakespeare therefore has endowed him with infinite wit and humour, as well as an admirable degree of sagacity and acuteness in observing the characters of men; but has joined those qualities with a grossness of mind which his youthful master could not but see, nor seeing but despise. With less talents Falstaff could not have attracted Henry; with profligacy less gross and less contemptible he would have attached him too much. Falstaff’s was just ‘that unyoked humour of idleness,’ which the Prince could ‘a while uphold,’ and then cast off for ever [1.2.195ff.]. The audience to which this strange compound was to be exhibited were to be in the same predicament with the Prince, to laugh and to admire while they despised. To feel the power of his humour, the attraction of his wit, the justice of his reflections, while their contempt and their hatred attended the lowness of his manners, the grossness of his pleasures, and the unworthiness of his vice.
