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Last week, we had reached the point in the discourse by Ellen Terry (1847-1928) on “The Letters in Shakespeare’s Plays” where she was musing about the nature of friendship, and using the letter written by Antonio to Bassanio in the Merchant of Venice as an example of the great importance which William Shakespeare put on friendship.
The letter she next takes up is the one from Sir John Falstaff to the young Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part II, at a time when the Prince is beginning to think about reforming his wild ways, especially since his father is very ill. He’s still on close terms with Sir John, the ‘old man,’ but is spending more time with Ned Poins.
Terry describes Falstaff as fearing “his influence is on the wane,” and there is more than a little jealousy in his warning to the prince, but there is also genuine affection, for which much has been tolerated from this fat old sinner:
“Sir John Falstaff, knight, to the son of the King, nearest his father, Harry Prince of Wales, greeting: I will imitate the honourable Romans in brevity…I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave thee. Be not too familiar with Poins; for he misuses thy favours so much, that he swears thou art to marry his sister Nell. Repent at idle times as thou mayest, and so, farewell…”
— Henry IV,Part II, Act 2, Scene 2
Unfortunately for Falstaff, his letter is read aloud between Harry and the very man that he tries to warn the Prince against: Ned Poins. Now Falstaff is a scoundrel, a drunkard and a braggart, who is all too willing to go along with any prank, even though they usually rebound onto him — even a robbery engineered by Poins and the highwayman Gadshill — another disreputable “friend” Falstaff has introduced to the young prince.
Yet Sir John lacks the meanness and calculation of Poins. He’s such a bumbling and entertaining rapscallion that audiences from Shakespeare’s day to the present always have a soft spot for him.
Poins, when asked pointblank by the Prince, denies he ever said that Hal would marry his sister. Then the Prince, offended by the letter, and egged on by Poins, decides to pay Falstaff back for his presumption, and asks: “How might we see Falstaff bestow himself to-night in his true colours and not ourselves be seen?” Poins suggests they put on leather jerkins and aprons, pretending to be drawers (waiters) at the Boar’s Head Inn, where Falstaff is “supping with Mistress Doll Tearsheet.”
This will be the last prank that Prince Hal plays on Falstaff, for his father is dying, and he is about to become King, so, very soon as Terry describes it, he “mends his madcap ways and becomes dignified, sober and virtuous.” But before that, Shakespeare gives us his last huzzah as a merry prankster.
I agree with Terry that even drunk, Falstaff would have to recognize the drawers, as the Prince surmises, and he revels in scoring off them. Terry: “The spectator of this scene should, if the actor who plays Falstaff sets off his wit with charm, be able to say as sincerely as Doll Tearsheet: ‘I love thee better than I love e’er a scurvy young boy of them all.’ ”
For all his faults and the bad influence he has had over the heir to the throne, we feel for Falstaff when the newly-crowned King “answers his salutation: ‘God save thee, my sweet boy,’ with the freezing rebuke: ‘I know thee not, old man; fall to thy prayers.’ ”
Falstaff was such a popular character that Shakespeare had to bring him out of his grave, ‘by request’ in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Terry describes this version of the old knight: “...we still love him, but we have to admit he has deteriorated. His wit is not so brilliant. He has become more garrulous, in his letters as well as in his conversation. You may remember that he writes two love-letters, word for word the same, to two women living in the same town, who, as he must have known, met often and exchanged confidences. This alone shows that the Falstaff of the Merry Wives is not quite the man he was in Henry IV. Perhaps this is because he does not carry his sack quite as well!”
The Merry Wives of Windsor is different from Shakespeare’s other plays. It is set in a real English town, which he depicts accurately, most of the characters are middle-class, and the two main female characters are not only shrewd and witty, but another example of the importance of friendship.
Falstaff as usual is very short of money — he’s in trouble with the local justice of the peace, and his bill at the Garter Inn is growing quite alarming — so he decides to romance the wealthy (and very married) Mistress Page to persuade her to share her husband’s money with him. And if this brilliant plan will work with one woman, why not two? For there is another wife, Mistress Ford, who ‘has all the rule of her husband’s purse.’ So he copies out the same love-letter twice, and sends it first to Mistress Page.
But her reaction is not at all what he thinks it will be:
Act II, Scene 1
[Enter MISTRESS PAGE, with a letter]
Mistress Page: What, have I scaped love-letters in the holiday-
time of my beauty, and am I now a subject for them?
Let me see.
[Reads]
'Ask me no reason why I love you; for though
Love use Reason for his physician, he admits him
not for his counsellor. You are not young, no more
am I; go to then, there's sympathy: you are merry,
so am I; ha, ha! then there's more sympathy: you
love sack, and so do I; would you desire better
sympathy? Let it suffice thee, Mistress Page,—at
the least, if the love of soldier can suffice,—
that I love thee. I will not say, pity me; 'tis
not a soldier-like phrase: but I say, love me. By me,
Thine own true knight,
By day or night,
Or any kind of light,
With all his might
For thee to fight, JOHN FALSTAFF'
What a Herod of Jewry is this! O wicked
world! One that is well-nigh worn to pieces with
age to show himself a young gallant! What an
unweighed behavior hath this Flemish drunkard
picked—with the devil's name!—out of my
conversation, that he dares in this manner assay me?
Why, he hath not been thrice in my company! What
should I say to him? I was then frugal of my
mirth: Heaven forgive me! Why, I'll exhibit a bill
in the parliament for the putting down of men. How
shall I be revenged on him? for revenged I will be,
as sure as his guts are made of puddings.
At this point, Mistress Ford arrives, with her copy of the letter, just as angry as Mistress Page:
What tempest, I trow,
threw this whale, with so many tuns of oil in his
belly, ashore at Windsor? How shall I be revenged
on him? I think the best way were to entertain him
with hope, till the wicked fire of lust have melted
him in his own grease. Did you ever hear the like?
Mistress Page:
I warrant he hath a
thousand of these letters, writ with blank space for
different names…
Let's be revenged on him: let's
appoint him a meeting; give him a show of comfort in
his suit and lead him on with a fine-baited delay,
till he hath pawned his horses to mine host of the Garter.
Falstaff is no match for two smart determined women — first they trick him into a laundry basket from which servants dump him into the Thames, then they talk him into disguising himself as a famous local ghost for a midnight assignation, where not only the women but their husbands, their children, various suitors for the eldest Page daughter’s hand, and even a Welsh parson are all lying in wait for him in Act V, Scene 5.
The children, dressed up as fairies, are exhorted to:
Pinch him, fairies, mutually;
Pinch him for his villany;
Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,
Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out.
Falstaff, completely humiliated, finally:
I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass…
Have I laid my brain in the sun and dried it, that
it wants matter to prevent so gross o'erreaching as
this? Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? shall I
have a coxcomb of frize? 'Tis time I were choked
with a piece of toasted cheese…
Well, I am your theme: you have the start of me; I
am dejected; I am not able to answer the Welsh
flannel; ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me: use
me as you will.
But Mistress Page ends his punishment, inviting everyone, even Falstaff, to come to the Page house to enjoy discussing the evening’s events in comfort:
Good husband, let us every one go home, And laugh this sport o'er by a country fire; Sir John and all.
There is more to Ellen Terry’s discourse on Shakespeare’s letters, but I couldn’t resist digressing into the rest of The Merry Wives of Windsor for two of my favorite characters, Mistress Page and Mistress Ford. Besides, it leaves me with some letters to write about next April!
Meanwhile, please join us Monday, April 18, for Part One of a discussion that Ellen Terry calls “The Triumphant Women” in Shakespeare!
Sources and Further Reading:
- Ellen Terry’s Four Lectures on Shakespeare was originally published in 1932, and last reissued in 1969, so copies of the book are hard to find and pricey, but it seems to be available now online here: free-ebooks-download.info/...
- Her autobiography, The Story of My Life, is found online here: www.gutenberg.org/...
-
Ellen Terry & Bernard Shaw: A Correspondence is somewhat more available as a used book at fairly reasonable prices
- My trusty reference for Shakespeare’s plots: Stories from Shakespeare, © 1956 by Marchete Chute, World Publishing Company (Reissue edition, October 1, 1959, Meridian Books by Penguin Books) — still the best!
- My first Shakespeare posts from last April: www.dailykos.com… and www.dailykos.com/…
- Letters from SHAKESPEARE, Part One — from MOT last week: www.dailykos.com/...