Falstaff, Sir John
Falstaff, Sir John,a character in Shakespeare's 1 and 2 Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor . To Dr Johnson ‘unimitated, unimitable’ a ‘compound of sense and vice’; the subject of Morgann 's important early critical essay. His remote historical original seems to have been the Wyclifite Sir John Oldcastle , but his more important literary foundations lie in the stock figure of the Vice , together with some elements of the Plautine miles gloriosus . He is fat, witty, a lover of sack and of jests, and skilful at turning jokes on him to his own advantage—‘I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men’ (2 Henry IV, i. ii. 8–9). In 1 Henry IV he is shown as the drinking companion of Prince Hal , and anticipates great advancement when Hal becomes king. Hal humours him, allowing him to give his own version of the Gadshill encounter with the men ‘in buckram’, to...
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