Shakespeare's Falstaff character analysis and significance

Falstaff-Henry IV

The figure of Falstaff in Henry IV

Falstaff is memorable, because he is funny. He is the comic relief in the play, and in the life of the prince. In a way, Falstaff is that "bad boy" we all seem to want to be when we are children. He is an outlaw and not totally off base when he speaks of dying on the gallows, as that is the punishment meted out to thieves and highwaymen. He also takes advantage of his friendship with the prince to live better than he could otherwise. One wonders if he thinks maybe his friendship with Prince Harry might actually save him from the gallows if he were caught, but this is never said.

Falstaff made life exciting for Prince Harry, and he was fun to be around. His character is in sharp contrast with the nobility which will be Harry's companions at court when he becomes King, and seems to be quite dishonest by comparison. However, in some ways, he is truer than any of the noblemen, because he is quite candid concerning his own self-interest. It is not that he does not lie. He does, in the last scene of Act II, when he tells about how he and his companions were robbed by other highwaymen after capturing their prize, "All! I know not what you call all; but if I fought not with fifty of them, I am a bunch of radish: if there were not two or three and fifty upon poor old Jack, then am I no two-legged creature." Harry and Poins were, of course, the robbers who fell on them as a practical joke, and they all fled immediately. As Falstaff tells the tale and answers questions the lies become more and more exaggerated.

So Falstaff will lie, but he is a good council to Harry when he warns that the nobles are plotting against him and he needs to get back to the palace. In one sense, Falstaff is a truer friend than any Harry has, and more loyal. He is a robber, and a rogue, but he does not pretend to anything else. He says honor is worthless if it does not give some tangible reward. The nobility, however, can be quite hypocritical, pretending and even claiming honor, while they plot against the heir apparent.

Falstaff has been Harry's mentor, being a reasonably good judge of character. Henry learned a great deal from Falstaff about human nature. Their role playing showed this quite well, but it also served to show how much cultural difference and difference of station and education there was between them. He was a very complicated character, though seemingly simple on the surface. His friendship with Harry was truer than many of the nobility who professed friendship. While Falstaff was not above mooching off Harry and was often impolite, he was never mean and never pretended to be other than himself. Harry, on the other hand, was not above being quite cutting with his remarks and mean. Leaving Falstaff to walk all the way to London after the practical joke of robbing the robbers was effected was really mean, considering his advanced age and portliness. One sometimes wishes there were a little more of Falstaff in Henry.

In this way, Falstaff was actually more noble than Prince Harry, as Harry was using him part of the time, to make everyone think he was lower than a proper royal should be. His intention was to create more contrast when he "supposedly" reformed to become a good heir to the throne. Harry has no trouble casting his friend aside in order to make himself look good, even though Falstaff entreats him not to break the friendship, because he has genuine affection for the prince. We cannot help feeling a little disappointed in Prince Harry and sorry for Falstaff.

Falstaff is not a bad man, just a lazy rogue. He was patterned upon an actual real person, though I could not find out if the character of both matched. In fact, he was renamed to hide the origin of the character, so maybe there was some similarity.

At that point the character we know as Falstaff was called Oldcastle, based on an ancestor of Sir William Brooke, Lord Cobham. It is Cobham who, as Lord Chamberlain from 8 August 1596 to 5 March 1597, appears to have forced Shakespeare to change Oldcastle to Falstaff in what has become the most celebrated act of Elizabethan censorship."(Weis 9)

It is doubtful that the model for Falstaff was an actual highwayman, but it is possible he was not as well behaved as would have been expected by his family, perhaps a black sheep.

Falstaff appears in several of Shakespeare's plays, but there is contention whether he is the same in all. Goddard finds a rather schizophrenic portrait of both Falstaff and Henry IV.

A colossus of sack, sensuality, and sweat -- or a wit and humorist so great that he can be compared only with his creator, a figure, to use one of Shakespeare's own great phrases, livelier than life? One might think there were two Falstaffs he truth is that there are two Falstaffs, just as there are two Henrys, the Immortal Falstaff and the Immoral Falstaff, and the dissension about the man comes from a failure to recognize that fact. That the two could inhabit one body would not be believed if Shakespeare had not proved that they could. That may be one reason why he made it so huge."

Goddard 110-111)

The first character who comes to mind when I think of Falstaff is Lex Luthor in the Smallville and Superman series. He was a good friend to the youthful Superman, in spite of being somewhat self-centered and a bit of a rogue. He was even sometimes funny, though not the comic relief of Falstaff. One might think that Lex Luthor represents the two sides of Falstaff, the friendly rogue in Smallville and the more serious viallain, that is an outlaw, in Superman. There are really quite a few parallels in modern literature, especially if you include movies as literature. It seems that Shakespeare's idea to provide comic relief has been widely imitated.

Bloom sees Falstaff as the penultimate comic wit, and credits him as one of Shakespeare's greatest creations.

Falstaff is of the company both of the heroic wits, Rosalind and Hamlet, and of the heroic vitalists, the Wife of Bath and the Panurge of Falstaffian Rabelais. He could also ride into the world of Sancho Panza and the Don, because in some sense he is their synthesis, fusing Sancho's ribald realism and the Don's faith in his own imagination and in the order of play. The Don's chivalric madness is shared by Hotspur, and not at all by Falstaff, but Cervantes is perhaps the only author except Chaucer, and Shakespeare himself, who could have imagined Sir John Falstaff. Hazlitt charmingly remarked that the Fat Knight "is perhaps the most substantial comic character that ever was invented," and certainly Falstaff is the patron of all fat men forever.

Bloom 2) have to agree with Bloom, as I found this character to be the most engaging of all those in this play. I do not wonder that Elizabethan audiences loved him, as he seems to bridge the gap between nobility and the common man, between educated and illiterates, yet he remains more true as a person than most of his betters. He is rogue, but an honest rogue.