That Falstaff is "Shakespeare's greatest comic character" seems such an accepted opinion as almost to have achieved the status of a cliche. I recently read again the two parts of King Henry IV and, though he makes you laugh, isn't there something pretty uncomfortable about the "jokes"? I mean that the humor is so subversive as to make a shadow over the fun.
These plays famously alternate scenes of the "high" and "low"—the king at court, Falstaff & fellow revelers at a tavern in Eastcheap; the king receiving war counsel from his top advisors, working stiffs on the road complaining about the lack of chamber pots at a cheap roadside inn; etc. It's Prince Hal, heir to the throne, who moves in both worlds. The dramatic interest created in the early scenes concerns the question of whether or not Hal will reform himself, slough off his low friends, preeminently Falstaff, and prove himself worthy of the throne. This he does, and it seems the proof of his reformation offered by the play is the valor he displays in battle against the rebels angry at his father for having deposed the prior king, Richard II. In what feels like the climactic scene in the story of his rise, Hal slays Hotspur, the hot-tempered and fanatical leader of the insurrection. It is (to me) an amusing artificiality that the outcome of this "battle" is signaled by a confrontation between two principals when of course there are actually opposing forces of nameless soldiers trying to kill one another. But you can't really represent that on a stage, and anyway Shakespeare's purpose is to highlight Hal's transformation. The play doesn't appear to treat this story with any irony. The question was whether Hal could pull himself up and do what's needed. He does it. His accomplishment is demonstrated on the stage. It's meant to be satisfying.
But then there is Falstaff. As a subject of the king, one with connections, he also serves—specifically, in "the king's press," that is, conscription. His approach is to press "good householders," "yeomen's sons," "contracted bachelors"—in other words, men of means with obvious reasons for wanting to avoid military service, with the result that they pay Falstaff for an exemption. In this way, he bankrolls his dissipation, and the "soldiers" he ends up with are a ragtag collection of impoverished misfits. When his ways then cross with Hal's, the following exchange occurs:
PRINCE: But tell me, Jack, whose fellows are these who come after?
FALSTAFF: Mine, Hal, mine.
PRINCE: I did never see such pitiful rascals.
FALSTAFF: Tut, tut! good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder. They'll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.
Is "funny" the word for this? "What difference does it make, bad soldiers will fill a mass grave as well as good ones—war is butchery." The argument perhaps isn't sincere, inasmuch as it's advanced to cover corruption, but that doesn't make it a less devastating comment on the events of the "high" plot wherein Prince Hal proves his mettle in glorious combat. This is why I say he's "subversive." A bit later, Falstaff gets a little too close to the fighting and expresses fear for his life. Hal, by now gallant Hal, provides high-minded encouragement: "Why, thou owest God a death." He then exits and Falstaff soliloquizes:
'Tis not due yet: I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honor set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Honor hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is honor? A word. What is that word honor? Air—a trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died a Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. 'Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon—and so ends my catechism.
By the logic of the "high" plot, such a "catechism" needs repudiation, but I don't know when this happens. It just stands as a commentary—take it or leave it—on the elevated affairs suggested by the title, The History of Henry IV.
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