Complete. Number 73 of the Observer.

WHEN it had entered into the mind of Shakespeare to form an historical play upon certain events in the reign of Henry IV. of England, the character of the Prince of Wales recommended itself to his fancy, as likely to supply him with a fund of dramatic incidents; for what could invention have more happily suggested than this character, which history presented ready to his hands? a riotous, disorderly young libertine, in whose nature lay hidden those seeds of heroism and ambition, which were to burst forth at once to the astonishment of the world and to achieve the conquest of France. This prince, whose character was destined to exhibit a revolution of so brilliant a sort, was not only in himself a very tempting hero for the dramatic poet, who delights in incidents of novelty and surprise, but also offered to his imagination a train of attendant character, in the persons of his wild comrades and associates, which would be of themselves a drama. Here was a field for invention wide enough even for the genius of Shakespeare to range in. All the humors, passions, and extravagances of human life might be brought into the composition, and when he had grouped and personified them to his taste and liking, he had a leader ready to place at the head of the train, and the truth of history to give life and interest to his drama.

  With these materials ready for creation, the great artist sat down to his work; the canvas was spread before him, ample and capacious as the expanse of his own fancy; Nature put her pencil into his hand and he began to sketch. His first concern was to give a chief or captain to this gang of rioters; this would naturally be the first outline he drew. To fill up the drawing of this personage, he conceived a voluptuary in whose figure and character there should be an assemblage of comic qualities; in his person he should be bloated and blown up to the size of a Silenus, lazy, luxurious; in sensuality a satyr; in intemperance a bacchanalian. As he was to stand in the post of a ringleader amongst thieves and cutpurses, he made him a notorious liar, a swaggering coward, vainglorious, arbitrary, knavish, crafty, voracious of plunder, lavish of his gains, without credit, honor, or honesty, and in debt to everybody about him. As he was to be the chief seducer and misleader of the heir apparent of the crown, it was incumbent on the poet to qualify him for that part in such a manner as should give probability and even a plea to the temptation; this was only to be done by the strongest touches and the highest colorings of a master; by hitting off a humor of so happy, so facetious, and so alluring a cast as should tempt even royalty to forget itself and virtue to turn reveler in his company. His lies, his vanity, and his cowardice, too gross to deceive, were to be so ingenious as to give delight; his cunning evasions, his witty resources, his mock solemnity, his vaporing self-consequence, were to furnish a continual feast of laughter to his royal companion; he was not only to be witty himself, but the cause of wit in other people; a whetstone for raillery; a buffoon whose very person was a jest. Compounded of these humors, Shakespeare produced the character of Sir John Falstaff; a character which neither ancient nor modern comedy has ever equaled, which was so much the favorite of its author as to be introduced in three several plays, and which is likely to be the idol of the English stage as long as it shall speak the language of Shakespeare.

  This character almost singly supports the whole comic plot of the first part of “Henry the Fourth”; the poet has, indeed, thrown in some auxiliary humors in the persons of Gadshill, Peto, Bardolph, and Hostess Quickly; the first two serve for little else except to fill up the action, but Bardolph as a butt to Falstaff’s raillery, and the hostess in her wrangling scene with him when his pockets had been emptied as he was asleep in the tavern, give occasion to scenes of infinite pleasantry. Poins is contrasted from the rest of the gang, and as he is made the companion of the prince, is very properly represented as a man of better qualities and morals than Falstaff’s more immediate hangers-on and dependants.

  The humor of Falstaff opens into full display upon his very first introduction with the prince; the incident of the robbery on the highway, the scene in Eastcheap, in consequence of that ridiculous encounter, and the whole of his conduct, during the action with Percy, are so exquisitely pleasant, that upon the renovation of his dramatic life in the second part of “Henry the Fourth,” I question if the humor does not, in part, evaporate by continuation; at least I am persuaded that it flattens a little in the outset, and though his wit may not flow less copiously, yet it comes with more labor and is further fetched. The poet seems to have been sensible how difficult it was to preserve the vein as rich as at first, and has therefore strengthened his comic plot in the second play with several new recruits, who may take a share with Falstaff, to whom he no longer intrusts the whole burden of the humor. In the front of these auxiliaries stands Pistol, a character so new, whimsical, and extravagant, that if it were not for a commentator now living, whose very extraordinary researches, amongst our old authors, have supplied us with passages to illuminate the strange rhapsodies which Shakespeare has put into his mouth, I should, for one, have thought Ancient Pistol as wild and imaginary a being as Caliban; but I now perceive, by the help of these discoveries, that the character is made up in great part of absurd and fustian passages from many plays, in which Shakespeare was versed, and, perhaps, had been a performer. Pistol’s dialogue is a tissue of old tags of bombast, like the Middle Comedy of the Greeks, which dealt in parody. I abate of my astonishment at the invention and originality of the poet, but it does not lessen my respect for his ingenuity. Shakespeare founded his bully in parody, Jonson copied his from nature, and the palm seems due to Bobadil, upon a comparison with Pistol; Congreve copied a very happy likeness from Jonson, and, by the fairest and most laudable imitation, produced his Noll Bluff, one of the pleasantest humorists on the comic stage.

  Shallow and Silence are two very strong auxiliaries to this second part of Falstaff’s humors, and though they do not absolutely belong to his family, they are nevertheless near of kin, and derivatives from his stock. Surely, two pleasanter fellows never trod the stage; they not only contrast and play upon each other, but Silence sober and Silence tipsy make the most comical reverse in nature; never was drunkenness so well introduced or so happily employed in any drama. The dialogue between Shallow and Falstaff, and the description given by the latter of Shallow’s youthful frolics, are as true nature and as true comedy as man’s invention ever produced. The recruits are also, in the literal sense, the recruits of the drama. These personages have the further merit of throwing Falstaff’s character into a new cast, and giving it the seasonable relief of variety.

  Dame Quickly also, in this second part, resumes her rôle with great comic spirit, but with some variation of character, for the purpose of introducing a new member into the troop in the person of Doll Tearsheet, the common trull of the times. Though this part is very strongly colored, and though the scene with her and Falstaff is of a loose as well as ludicrous nature, yet if we compare Shakespeare’s conduct of this incident with that of the dramatic writers of his time, and even since his time, we must confess he has managed it with more than common care, and exhibited his comic hero in a very ridiculous light, without any of those gross indecencies which the poets of his age indulged themselves in without restraint.

  The humor of the Prince of Wales is not so free and unconstrained as in the first part; though he still demeans himself in the course of his revels, yet it is with frequent marks of repugnance and self-consideration, as becomes the conqueror of Percy, and we see his character approaching fast towards a thorough reformation; but though we are thus prepared for the change that is to happen, when this young hero throws off the reveler and assumes the king, yet we are not fortified against the weakness of pity, when the disappointment and banishment of Falstaff takes place, and the poet executes justice upon his inimitable delinquent, with all the rigor of an unrelenting moralist. The reader or spectator, who has accompanied Falstaff through his dramatic story, is in debt to him for so many pleasant moments, that all his failings, which should have raised contempt, have only provoked laughter, and he begins to think they are not natural to his character, but assumed for his amusement. With these impressions we see him delivered over to mortification and disgrace, and bewail his punishment with a sensibility that is only due to the sufferings of the virtuous.

  As it is impossible to ascertain the limits of Shakespeare’s genius, I will not presume to say he could not have supported his humor, had he chosen to have prolonged his existence through the succeeding drama of “Henry the Fifth”; we may conclude that no ready expedient presented itself to his fancy, and he was not apt to spend much pains in searching for such. He therefore put him to death, by which he fairly placed him out of the reach of his contemporaries, and got rid of the trouble and difficulty of keeping him up to his original pitch, if he had attempted to carry him through a third drama, after he had removed the Prince of Wales out of his company, and seated him on the throne. I cannot doubt but there were resources in Shakespeare’s genius, and a latitude of humor in the character of Falstaff, which might have furnished scenes of admirable comedy by exhibiting him in his disgrace, and both Shallow and Silence would have been accessories to his pleasantry. Even the field of Agincourt, and the distress of the king’s army before the action, had the poet thought proper to have produced Falstaff on the scene, might have been as fruitful in comic incidents as the battle of Shrewsbury. This we can readily believe from the humors of Fluellen and Pistol, which he has woven into his drama; the former of whom is made to remind us of Falstaff, in his dialogue with Captain Gower, when he tells him that: “As Alexander is kill his friend Clytus, being in his ales and his cups, so also Harry Monmouth, being in his right wits and his goot judgments, is turn away the fat Knight with the great pelly-doublet. He was full of jests and gypes and knaveries, and mocks; I am forget his name.—Sir John Falstaff.—That is he.” This passage has ever given me a pleasing sensation, as it marks a regret in the poet to part with a favorite character, and is a tender farewell to his memory. It is also with particular propriety that these words are put into the mouth of Fluellen, who stands here as his substitute, and whose humor, as well as that of Nym, may be said to have arisen out of the ashes of Falstaff.