Such a King Harry: Falstaff Vs. Hal

By Phyllis N. Braxton

This study of Shakespeares Falstaff versus Shakespeare Criticism takes a view of Falstaff that is critically unorthodox but which is supported by the text. This reading of the Falstaff plays sees the playwright basing his fiction on natural law, but bending natural law to present a world of personified natural phenomena. This reading is logically consistent, and conforms to all fictional requirements for necessity and probability, thus eliminating the supposed errors that criticism, which sees the plays as strictly realistic vehicles, appears to find in these plays.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469169019

Phyllis N. Braxton

A native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Braxton came to Washington, D.C. to work with the Federal government, after which she earned a doctorate at The Catholic University of America. She has taught at Howard University, and has published articles on Shakespeare.

Book preview

Contents

Prologue

Introduction

Falstaff

A. Problems in The Merry Wives of Windsor

B. Cosmic Time

C. Civic Time

D. Action

E. Sir John and Prince Hal

F. Sir John Falstaff

Falstaff’s Friends

G. The Crew

H. Mistress Quickly

I. Robert Shallow, Esquire

J. Bardolph

K. Pistol and Nym

L. Related Features

Summary and Conclusions

M. The Sun and the Moon

N. Compliment to the Queen

Falstaff’s Last Phase

Details of the Characters’ Attire

Notes

Works Cited

To my mother 

Fair stood the wind for France,

When we our sails advance;

Nor now to prove our chance

Longer will tarry;

But putting to the main,

At Caux, the mouth of Seine,

With all his martial train

Landed King Harry.

… … … … … .

O when shall English men

With such acts fill a pen,

Or England breed again

Such a King Harry?

—Michael Drayton, Ode XII: To the Cambro-Britons and Their Harp

We see which way the stream of time doth run.

—2 Henry IV 4.1.70

Prologue

Whatever Shakespeare’s purpose may have been for including in Henry V details of the king’s ruthlessness, such as the threat to the French of rape, murder (3.3.14, 34-39), and pillage (3.3.25), and the order to kill the prisoners at Agincourt (4.6.37-38), the play is commonly accepted in criticism as a paean to the glory of this almost-legendary king of England. Michael Drayton’s 1606 Ballad of Agincourt—which, according to Martin Day, was possibly inspired by Shakespeare’s Henry V—and Shakespeare’s play itself illustrate the continuing unqualified admiration of Henry that occupied Britons in Shakespeare’s age.¹

The critical controversy about the relative morality of Henry’s actions that has revolved about Shakespeare’s Henry V in recent years appears to be a product of the modern conscience.² In Shakespeare’s day, the historical Henry V evidently still inspired his countrymen to grant this king the highest level of their adoration as the ideal king, prompting Shakespeare’s appellations for Henry as the mirror of all Christian kings (2.Chor.6), and the star of England (5.Epil.6).³ From here, it was an easy leap to see the king not only symbolized by the sun but also personifying the sun in the plays. In the allegorical mind-set of the Elizabethan age, such relationships were made without embarrassment. John C. Meagher amplifies on this attitude in his Method and Meaning in Jonson’s Masques, saying that one of the most overworked commonplaces of the Renaissance is the correspondence between the king on one hand and the sun and God on the other… [In Jonson’s masque, Love Freed from Ignorance], the king is Phoebus—sun and God in one.⁴

Modern readers and audiences may find it difficult to enter the thought processes of Shakespeare and his contemporaries and see the world through their allegorical frame of reference. Nevertheless, it is within this frame of reference that the portrayal of Falstaff exists: Shakespeare’s invention of Sir John Falstaff emerges from the myth of King Henry V as the sun.

Introduction

Any account of the Falstaff plays must take into consideration the perception of Shakespeare’s works as they were more than likely understood by his contemporaries, in contrast to the way these plays have been viewed in modern criticism. In Elizabethan England, most theatrical productions continued to be presented in the allegorical mode that had developed during the Middle Ages. Because readers and audiences from the Restoration to the present day have commonly assumed that Shakespeare’s plays depart from this contemporary Elizabethan convention and are not allegorical but are realistic representations of the observed world, a tradition has arisen to treat as errors or flaws those features in the plays that appear to be inconsistencies. The question then becomes whether Shakespeare’s plays are flawed, as criticism commonly supposes (and appears to have confirmed with numerous seeming proofs), or whether the problem of the perceived difficulties in the plays lies in the criticism itself as the result of a distorted perspective on these works.

Every one of Shakespeare’s plays has at some time been considered flawed to one degree or another. This circumstance would hardly be worth noticing about the works of a playwright who had been judged by his contemporaries as second-rate or even average; but Shakespeare, from his own day to the present, has been commonly considered the greatest playwright of the English-speaking world, and his works presumably represent the highest accomplishment of dramatic art in every respect. Yet despite the assertion of critics such as Harry Levin in his introduction to the Riverside Shakespeare that Shakespeare was past master of his exacting and exciting medium, linguistic, poetic, dramatic, the same criticism that judges Shakespeare great also finds fault with the individual plays in the canon in the fundamental dramaturgical elements of plot, character, and thought, as well as in other matters, including, but not restricted to, diction, minor details, style, genre, and general effectiveness.¹

While discovery of the so-called problems demonstrates the rigorous care and attention that criticism has expended on the examination of Shakespeare’s plays, the aggregate result of the discovery of these errors is to suggest a playwright who is not his craft’s master. Either Shakespeare’s reputation as a superb playwright is undeserved, as some criticism from the time of Thomas Rymer in the seventeenth century has proposed, or the specific matter in the plays that established Shakespeare’s early reputation as a genius has escaped the notice or the understanding of criticism. A suspicion arises that the perception of numerous puzzling features in the plays may be a condition of examining Shakespeare’s dramas against the background of the modern scientific world view. When an examination of the plays is conducted without reference to a particular point of view, the so-called discrepancies emerge not as errors, but as consistent features in unified, coherent fictional worlds that conform to the Elizabethan allegorical mind-set.

A cursory survey of the criticism reveals some of the problems perceived in Shakespeare’s plays. Most of the supposed errors appear to occur in the plotting, a discovery that seems to support the view expressed by critics such as Christopher Spencer in his Five Restoration Adaptations of Shakespeare that one does not expect a tight structure in Shakespeare.² The difficulties noted in the plotting are numerous and varied, as the following samples illustrate: According to Anne Barton in her introduction to The Merchant of Venice in the Riverside Shakespeare, the fifth act is superfluous in both The Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.³ Other criticism finds that the plot and structure of Cymbeline are problematic;⁴ the events of this play are impossible in any system of life, according to Samuel Johnson.⁵ Hamlet is of no clear shape.⁶ In As You Like It, the juxtaposed characters and attitudes… become… a substitute for a plot;⁷ 3 Henry VI has no principle of ordering in the plot;⁸ The Tempest has not much plot;⁹ Antony and Cleopatra is loose[ly] construct[ed].¹⁰ In All’s Well That Ends Well, the ending is abrupt.¹¹ The clown in Othello has no direct bearing on the main action;¹² no critical agreement has been reached about the absence of Christopher Sly at the end of The Taming of the Shrew;¹³ Antonio in Twelfth Night is left languishing in a legal limbo at the end.¹⁴ In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Valentine’s gift of Sylvia to his friend… is an intolerable clumsiness for which Shakespeare must take the blame.¹⁵ Timon of Athens is left with loose ends; the play is unfinished.¹⁶ The play of 1 Henry IV is open-ended;¹⁷ 2 Henry IV is more miscellaneous… and less co-ordinated by a total creative impulse than 1 Henry IV.¹⁸ In 1 Henry VI, Exeter is surprised when the bishop of Winchester appears as a cardinal (5.1.28-29), although, as Cairncross observes, Winchester had already appeared… in his Cardinal’s robes when Exeter was present (1.3; 3.1; 3.4; 4.1);¹⁹ in this same play, Mortimer dies in the Tower of London, while in 2 Henry VI, his death occurs in Wales.²⁰ In 3 Henry VI, Clifford is killed at the hands of common soldiers early in the first scene (1.1.9) and is slain by the Duke of York in the third scene (1.3.5, 45).²¹ Brutus in Julius Caesar receives news of his wife’s death as if he were hearing it for the first time (4.3.182-92), after he has just told Cassius about it (4.3.147);²² in The Taming of the Shrew, Tranio knows about Hortensio’s plan to go to taming school (4.2.54), before Hortensio tells anyone about it;²³ the archbishop in Richard III implies that he knows of the arrest of Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan (2.4.2) at a time when the text seems to give no indication that he could be aware of the arrest.²⁴

While most of the perceived flaws seem to involve plotting, many other supposed difficulties occur in the plays. Characterization is sometimes considered puzzling. In All’s Well That Ends Well, Bertram’s character is inappropriate… to his role in the resolution,²⁵ while Helen in All’s Well is both assertive… [and] submissive… a contrast [that] is never worked out.²⁶ Henry V has not fared well with the critics… mainly because of Henry’s unattractive character.²⁷ Cassius’s character seems to undergo a striking alteration in Julius Caesar from a cynical hypocrite… to a much nobler man, whose devotion to Brutus now appears to be completely sincere.²⁸ Isabella in Measure for Measure suffers from inhumanity in the opinion of Una Ellis-Fermor,²⁹ while Eric Bentley describes this same Isabel as a bristling virgin [who] becomes the compassionate woman.³⁰

The central thought of some plays has been found wanting. The Merchant of Venice is not altogether assimilated to a single dominating conception;³¹ Othello is essentially without sense or meaning.³²

Some criticism has found difficulties with the style and tone of certain plays. The varying styles of The Two Noble Kinsmen are said to argue for dual authorship;³³ there is a marked difference in the style and tone in Pericles between the first two acts and the last three acts of that play;³⁴ much of the writing of King John is strikingly disjointed;³⁵ there is a large measure of agreement that [in Macbeth] the whole of 3.5 and 4.1.39-43, and 125-32 are spurious.³⁶

Significant details have been considered faulty. The temporal sequence of Othello is judged to be embarrassing[ly] incoherent;³⁷ most of the details relating to time in The Merry Wives of Windsor are inconsistent.³⁸ The duke in Measure for Measure refers to a period as lasting fourteen years, while Claudio speaks of the identical interval as covering nineteen years.³⁹ Among other problems with The Winter’s Tale, critics have directed their attacks upon the ludicrous stage business indicated by the direction ‘Exit pursued by a bear.’⁴⁰ Irregularities and inconsistencies occur throughout 1 Henry VI and names… vary in form or spelling.⁴¹ In The Comedy of Errors, Dromio and Antipholus of Sicily arrive in Ephesus wearing clothes that are identical to those that their doubles and namesakes in Ephesus happen to have put on that morning.⁴²

Anachronisms are said to be a problem in plays such as Titus Andronicus—human sacrifice and panther-hunting were not practiced in Rome, and holy water was not used in marriage;⁴³ and in Troilus and Cressida—Hector of Troy refers to Aristotle, who was not born until centuries after Hector died;⁴⁴ while every high school pupil should know about the anachronistic striking clocks, sweaty nightcaps, ‘tow’rs and windows, yea… [and] chimney-tops’ in Julius Caesar.⁴⁵

The genre of certain plays is discussed by Maurice Charney in the introduction to his Bad Shakespeare, where he claims that Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens and Henry VIII are all works that have a problem in genre and cannot be considered exemplary.⁴⁶ The Riverside Shakespeare says that Troilus and Cressida is neither tragedy nor satire, celebration nor parody.⁴⁷

Many of the plays are considered just not very satisfactory for one reason or another. Among these, Much Ado about Nothing is not perhaps, one of the most immediately attractive or satisfying of Shakespeare’s comedies.⁴⁸ Coriolanus is by no means a favorite.⁴⁹ Cymbeline is an apprentice work.⁵⁰ T. S. Eliot calls Hamlet an artistic failure.⁵¹ King John is thought to be puzzling and uneven.⁵² Bradley notes that King Lear was the least popular of the tragedies.⁵³ Love’s Labour’s Lost continually requires—and baffles—scholarly explanation.⁵⁴ The effect [of Measure for Measure] . . . has always been gloomy and depressing.⁵⁵ The Tempest is Shakespeare’s most consistently overrated play.⁵⁶ Titus Andronicus was called a heap of rubbish by Edward Ravenscroft.⁵⁷ Critics continue to disagree about the tone and meaning of Troilus and Cressida.⁵⁸ The Two Gentlemen of Verona has some claim to be considered Shakespeare’s most tedious play.⁵⁹ Critics have found [Richard II] wanting in dramatic action, arresting characters (except Richard himself) and comic relief.⁶⁰ The Merry Wives of Windsor is one of Shakespeare’s least popular plays.⁶¹ In a departure from the common treatment of the plays, the 1997 edition of the Riverside Shakespeare prints Edward III since some or all of the play was probably written by Shakespeare, but it makes no suggestion that this play includes any problems of the type mentioned for the other thirty-eight plays in the canon.⁶²

The inconsistencies noted here are only representative. In almost every instance, more than one critic has found the same problem with a particular play; while more than one difficulty has been found in almost every play. The point is that numerous discrepancies have been perceived, while the plays have continued to be accepted as masterpieces.

Unable to deny the existence of the supposed flaws in the texts, criticism has attempted to account for their presence with a variety of explanations, ranging from the playwright’s inexperience to sheer forgetfulness on his part. In his edition of Titus Andronicus, J. C. Maxwell determines that problems demonstrating lack of skill and uncertainty of purpose [in Titus Andronicus] . . . [are] not of a kind surprising in an inexperienced dramatist.⁶³ Because the military ranks of Falstaff and his associates seem to be assigned arbitrarily in the Falstaff plays, William Green, in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, supposes that Shakespeare forgot, within the individual plays, and from one play to another, what ranks he had assigned to these soldiers.⁶⁴

Kristian Smidt, in his series on Unconformities in Shakespeare, avails himself of almost the entire gamut of excuses to explain the numerous problems that he purports to have discovered in the plays.⁶⁵ Unconformities in Shakespeare’s Later Comedies, the fourth and last of [this] series, is reviewed in the Shakespeare Quarterly by Philip Edwards, who notes that by unconformities, a geological term, Smidt means broken continuities, contradictions, inconsistencies of all kinds.⁶⁶ Edwards comments that Smidt’s remorseless collection of the confusions in the plays will alarm and embarrass even a hardened Shakespearean, who may have been blithely unaware of quite a number of them. When Smidt has finished with it, Much Ado looks like a jumble of loose ends awkwardly glued together, and Edwards notes that carelessness, or sheer forgetfulness, is only one of the many reasons Smidt advances for the existence of so many discrepancies in Shakespeare’s plays. At the other end of the scale is the possibility of deliberate intent to mystify the audience; Smidt suggests that Shakespeare began a play with little idea of how it was going to turn out, but as Edwards notes, it is challenging to posit a Shakespeare who had so little knowledge of where he was going.⁶⁷

Some criticism tries to vindicate the seeming flaws. T. J. B. Spencer, in Shakespeare’s Careless Art, considers that although there is scarcely a play of Shakespeare’s that does not show flaws, these features may at times be rational economies of art.⁶⁸ Richard Levin, in New Readings vs. Old Plays, groups, according to type, modern critical approaches to a variety of Renaissance plays, including those by Shakespeare: Levin judges that most of the readings have as their object a vindication of the work itself, and he considers that in modern criticism, the assertion that any aspects of the work are defective… is now regarded as a confession of one’s inability to justify them.⁶⁹ Levin objects to such attempts to save the plays; he supposes that the critic’s duty is only to criticize—to take note of any artistic defects in the play, rather than explaining them away as deliberate, and of any deficiencies in its moral standards, rather than replacing them with his own.⁷⁰

A more recent critical trend seems to go beyond Levin’s proposal, and now criticism tends to ignore such inconsistencies instead of even noting features that earlier criticism treated as discrepancies. The suggestion is that the individual critic knows exactly what the play is about and can therefore disregard as insignificant any features that might be puzzling. In this way, Marilyn L. Williamson speaks of the problems of Measure for Measure in her 1986 essay on The Comedies in Historical Context, as a reference to the situation in which the characters are involved; she does not concern herself with the problems raised by features that criticism has judged to be discrepancies in the text, such as the contrast between the tragic first half of the play and the comic second half.⁷¹ Similarly, in a 2002 Shakespeare Quarterly article, Nicholas R. Moschovakis internalizes the horror and violence of Titus Andronicus, never exploring the conflict shown between this and the poetic language in which the story unfolds, and thus escaping any need to analyze the play, limits himself to an examination of the religious aspects of the gory action, making a case from this pagan play for Shakespeare’s opinion of a moral Christian society.⁷²

These methods of handling the seeming difficulties in Shakespeare’s plays have been dismissed by some critics, who have determined that the plays are not worthy of being judged great drama. Among proponents of this view are Voltaire in the eighteenth century, Leo Tolstoy in the nineteenth century, and Ludwig Wittgenstein in the twentieth century—all of whom rejected Shakespeare because of the defects they professed to observe in his plays. The critical rationalizations offered by Shakespeare critics in defense of the supposed inconsistencies were not sufficient to persuade these critics that the plays are works of genius. Voltaire’s judgment emerges from a background of French criticism that, according to Ira O. Wade in The Intellectual Development of Voltaire, regarded [Shakespeare] as a ‘génie fécond,’ powerful in his conception and very original but… ignorant of the rules and lacking in taste.⁷³ Wade observes that this French view was not too far removed from the English contemporary view, as the French accepted the English position that the plays are flawed works of genius.⁷⁴

Some of those who rejected Shakespeare had first tried to appreciate him. After an attempt to understand the English bard and even to imitate him, Voltaire ultimately turned against Shakespeare because of [his] barbarities;⁷⁵ while, according to G. Wilson Knight in The Wheel of Fire, Tolstoy sincerely tried to like Shakespeare, he was definite in his conclusions that Shakespeare is a poor writer… ‘a man quite devoid of the sense of proportion and taste’; his plays are compositions ‘having absolutely nothing in common with art or poetry’; they are ‘works which are beneath criticism, insignificant, empty, and immoral.’ ⁷⁶ Knight observes further that Tolstoy accused Shakespeare specifically of including in his plays poor characterization, impossible events, exaggeration, [and] vulgarity.⁷⁷ In discussing Shakespeare’s conception of King Lear, Knight comments that looking for normal human events, Tolstoy was baffled.⁷⁸ According to Knight, Tolstoy complains that Shakespeare’s work shows no coherent thought at all.⁷⁹ Terence Hawkes, in Wittgenstein’s Shakespeare, notes that, in Wittgenstein’s view, you just have to accept [Shakespeare] as he is if you are going to be able to admire him properly.⁸⁰ At the same time, Hawkes says that the philosopher… found Shakespeare’s poetry ‘bad’ and made no bones about it.⁸¹

Even though such opinions by people of this stature would appear to require an acknowledgment from professional Shakespeareans that at least a serious conflict exists between the seemingly flawed plays and the criticism that accepts them as great works of art, the only reaction by criticism is to assume a failure on the part of critics who have rejected Shakespeare.⁸² Criticism does not accept these judgments as a sign that the arguments might be valid. Instead, as Gary Taylor comments in Reinventing Shakespeare, Wittgenstein and Tolstoy, with other critics who have rejected Shakespeare, have generally been treated as though, by criticizing Shakespeare, they had made fools of themselves.⁸³ Taylor says that as usual, since the days of Dryden and Rymer, the critique is not rationally answered but taken as proof of personal weakness… Voltaire… and Tolstoy and Wittgenstein were foreigners, foreigners can’t be trusted.⁸⁴ Taylor notes that, for a variety of reasons, the usual practice among professional Shakespeareans is to assume that no critic who has rejected Shakespeare’s plays can be trusted.⁸⁵

In some instances, the rejection of Shakespeare is attributed to the critic’s lack of understanding of the plays as complete dramatic structures. Wade appears to credit Voltaire’s final dismissal of Shakespeare to Voltaire’s habit of judging a play on the basis of individual dramaturgical elements instead of seeing the play as a whole.⁸⁶ I know of no place, says Wade, where [Voltaire] seems to comprehend the total effect of a Shakespearean play, or even where he made any effort to comprehend a play as an organic entity.⁸⁷ This is almost the same charge made against Tolstoy by Knight, who, in reference to Tolstoy’s rejection of Shakespeare, asserts that no Shakespearian [sic] play will reveal its riches to anyone who refuses first to accept, and try to understand it, fitting all minor discrepancies in with the main pattern, building the unity in his own mind which the poet has built on paper.⁸⁸ Terence Hawkes does not credit Wittgenstein with this particular approach, but he seizes upon Wittgenstein’s background as the determining factor in the philosopher’s rejection of Shakespeare: No doubt Wittgenstein’s alienated position as a German-speaking Viennese Jew living in Britain urged—even required—him (whether or not at a conscious level) to see Shakespeare as he did.⁸⁹ This curious claim, which Hawkes offers as the cause that prompted Wittgenstein’s intellectual reasons for rejecting Shakespeare, is at one with the judgments of Knight and Wade in finding within the critic himself the source of disappointment with Shakespeare.

Just as these three critics are only a few among many critics to reject Shakespeare, Voltaire was not the first to be recorded as denying that Shakespeare is a genius. This distinction probably belongs to Thomas Rymer, who, as Taylor notes, is the first professional English critic.⁹⁰ In 1693, some thirty years after the Restoration had seen a return of Shakespeare’s plays to the stage, following the eighteen-year hiatus in theatrical productions caused by the English civil war,⁹¹ Rymer presented his Short View of Tragedy, in which he attacked Shakespeare through a critique of Othello.⁹²

Rymer finds fault with every element of Othello, beginning with Shakespeare’s use of Cinthio’s original tale, which Rymer asserts was altered for the worse by Shakespeare.⁹³ Rymer supposes Shakespeare’s characters were not less unnatural and improper, than the fable was improbable and absurd,⁹⁴ and he judges that the thought of the play was without sense or meaning.⁹⁵ By this evaluation, Rymer reveals that in his judgment, Othello is found wanting in the three primary dramaturgical elements of plot, character, and thought. In his criticism of Julius Caesar, Rymer adds that Shakespeares genius lay for Comedy and Humour. In Tragedy he appears quite out of his Element: his Brains are turn’d, he raves and rambles, without any coherence, any spark of reason, or any rule to controul him, or set bounds to his phrenzy.⁹⁶

Except for the hysterical nature of his opinion of Shakespeare’s handling of tragedy, Rymer—together with Voltaire, Tolstoy, and Wittgenstein—said little against Shakespeare that has not been at least hinted at by Shakespeare criticism from that day to the present; and together with all those who have rejected Shakespeare, Rymer has been derided for his opinions. The failure of these critics evidently has not been that they found Shakespeare’s plays seriously flawed. The general body of criticism appears to agree on that point. The failure of these critics seems to be their refusal to accept the playwright, with these supposedly flawed plays, as the greatest dramatist in the English language.⁹⁷

Against Rymer’s repudiation of Shakespeare’s genius, Taylor notes that Samuel Johnson provided the decisive response when, in a passage often quoted, Johnson replied to ‘Rymer… and Voltaire’ by stressing Shakespeare’s indifference to ‘the casual distinction of country and condition.’ ⁹⁸ As Taylor comments, Johnson’s defense and others like it, however illogical, carried the day… Rymer’s critical uprising against Shakespeare was thus eventually suppressed⁹⁹ and thereby effectively determined the treatment to be accorded any other criticism that denied Shakespeare’s genius.

In common with this adverse criticism of Shakespeare, Taylor agrees that the playwright has his faults. Taylor does not accept… the conviction that Shakespeare’s changes made in The Menaechmi to produce his own Comedy of Errors are improvements.¹⁰⁰ What Taylor dislike[s] about Shakespeare’s comedies—and tragedies—is their softness, their central mushiness, their inevitable ‘love interest,’ their wholesomeness.¹⁰¹ His chief complaint, in addition to these others, is that while Shakespeare did many things, turning the world upsidedown [sic] was not one of them.¹⁰² He adds, What I miss most in Shakespeare… is fantasy, the exhilaration of fantasy.¹⁰³

Taylor does not reject Shakespeare outright; he simply prefers to think of him not as a genius, but as "unusually but not uniquely talented… no