ABSTRACT
The pastoral has moved from its urban container, the tavern, to its home. The rural idyll is actual and authentic. It is the realization of the green fields of which Falstaff, in his final act of self-definition, babbled. The pastoral takes on the form of a late-summer feast where, under ideal but perfectly natural conditions, the old men can enjoy the last of the summer wine. The experience seems an absolute, a haven of spiritual and physical well-being. The symbolic manoeuvres of the authority figures, and those who would resist or replace them, give the clue to the meaning of the tavern and Cotswold scenes. Authority gets the last word in Henry IV, and its hard-won victory is seen as inevitable and right. Falstaff's principle of life is most accurately caught by Pistol, who has clearly been listening to his leader's table-talk: 'Base is the slave that pays'.
