Essay on Falstaff and Hamlet

[DanielBenoit]

Hi, this is my first post, and for a first post I suppose that it isn't going to be modest.
Here is an essay I did a while back concerning the personal philosophies of two of Shakespeare's greatest charecters; Falstaff (from [I]Henry IV[I/]) and Hamlet. It happens to be quite lengthly (20 pages) and so I'll just post every three pages or so per post.
It has been divided into three parts; the first one concerning Falstaff, the other Hamlet, the final concerning both.
I know that it's not perfect, but due to its length and my lack of time I have not been able to get to editting it entirely, so I would very much appretiate comments, criticism, advice, anything.
Thank you.

[DanielBenoit]

I.


Scholars over the centuries have wondered of the autobiographical implications of Sir John Falstaff in relation to its creator. Many have pointed out the most reliable and straightforward source to Shakespeare’s life in his Sonnets. From this, a connection can be seen between the relationship of the Fair Youth of sonnets 1-126 and the relationship between Falstaff and Prince Hal. Though these two comparisons do possess differences (such as the fact that Shakespeare’s relationship with the “Fair Youth” of the Sonnets is erotic, while Hal and Falstaff’s is a non-biological father-son relationship), the one defining similarity is the imminent rejection of the other.
This merely seems significant, due to the role (or rather reflection) that Falstaff seems to play in the mystery of Shakespeare’s life. It has been speculated that Shakespeare was a partygoer just like Falstaff, that he had an outgoing wit and charming personality. What is also significant is the age difference; Shakespeare was evidently older than his male lover, just as Falstaff is considerably older than Hal.
But this comparison serves limited use, for the Falstaff-Hal relationship is clearly not homoerotic, but it does conceptually serve our perception on Shakespeare’s creation of one of his greatest characters, and gives us an insight into his very own psychology.
There was, in fact, a significant father-son relationship in Shakespeare’s life, that being between him and the memory of his deceased son Hamnet, who died in 1596, at the premature age of eleven. But this tragic event, despite having happened during the composition of Henry IV, holds more importance to Hamlet.
Without evading this significant event, I will mention, that the brevity of the dates between the death of his son and the composition of Henry IV does prove that there is an autobiographical connection between the fictional characters of Falstaff and Hamlet, and the real people; Shakespeare and Hamnet (that is, if we make the easy assumption that Shakespeare’s relationship with his son has anything to do with the play Hamlet).

So what is the nature of the relationship between Falstaff and Hal, and what makes it so significant to Henry IV and Shakespeare’s life in general? The former may be an easy answer.
Critics and scholars, ever since the first publication of the two parts of the play, have been fascinated with this relationship, and for so many reasons. Mainly because it involves one of the most witty and intelligent figures in all of literature; Falstaff, whose statue, both physical and personal, transcends the play and all its characters, towering over everyone and making dwarfs of all others around him. The characters of Hotspur, Hal and Henry IV are exceptional Shakespearean roles, but the whole show is stolen by Falstaff under his cheerful mastery of the art of words and laughter, that even the play’s title seems inappropriate. For despite being a minor character in the dramatis personae, Falstaff is the play and is free of it until the very end when the one weakness of the Immortal Falstaff is revealed.
Falstaff was once a knight, and evidently was a great one, though he is now known as being a coward who strays away from battles and spends his time in taverns with “unrestrained loose companions” and in the observant words of Hotspur “Daff[‘d] the world aside / and bid it pass.”
For yes, Falstaff is a coward (in the conventional sense), a thief, a liar, a drunk, a vitalist, but unlike Hal, is never a hypocrite. Falstaff possesses complete freedom from mundane society and rejects its criterion, seeing nothing but hypocrisy and nihilistic meaninglessness in it. For Falstaff, before the play was once a brave valiant knight under the code of chivalry, until he began to see through war and politics, and saw only death. Falstaff is the agent of life, as he declares it himself in one of the most powerfully symbolic exchanges in all of literature, set in the middle of the Battle of Shrewsbury:

PRINCE.
What, stand'st thou idle here? lend me thy sword:
Many a nobleman lies stark and stiff
Under the hoofs of vaunting enemies,
Whose deaths are yet unrevenged: I pr'ythee,
Lend me thy sword.
FAL.
O Hal, I pr'ythee give me leave to breathe awhile. Turk Gregory never did such deeds in arms as I have done this day. I have paid Percy, I have made him sure.
PRINCE.
He is indeed; and living to kill thee.
I pr'ythee, lend me thy sword.
FAL.
Nay, before God, Hal, if Percy be alive, thou gett'st not my sword; but take my pistol, if thou wilt.
PRINCE.
Give it me: what, is it in the case?
FAL.
Ay, Hal. 'Tis hot, 'tis hot: there's that will sack a city.
[The Prince draws out a bottle of sack.]
What, is't a time to jest and dally now?
[Throws it at him, and exit.]
FAL.
Well, if Percy be alive, I'll pierce him. If he do come in my way, so; if he do not, if I come in his willingly, let him make a carbonado of me. I like not such grinning honour as Sir Walter hath: give me life; which if I can save, so; if not, honour comes unlooked for, and there's an end.
[I, Henry IV, Act V, Scene III, 41-64]

Now look at this stark contrast, taking place before the battle between Hotspur and Vernon:

HOT.
What may the King's whole battle reach unto?
VER.
To thirty thousand.
HOT.
Forty let it be:
My father and Glendower being both away,
The powers of us may serve so great a day.
Come, let us take a muster speedily:
Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily.
[I, Henry IV, Act IV, Scene II, 127-134]

Hotspur’s “die all, die merrily” seems so savage compared to Falstaff’s humanistic “give me life”; a declaration which would conventionally be seen as dishonorable in the middle of a battle, but due to Falstaff’s sublime intelligence and use of language, it becomes as powerful a statement for human life as any maxim in literature.
It is important that one compares Hotspur’s character to Falstaff’s, in order to truly understand Falstaff’s rejection of the chivalric world. Hotspur, standing as the most honorable and courageous of warriors in his day, who as his admirer Prince Hal describes him:

[T]he Hotspur of the North; he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife, ‘Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.’ ‘O my sweet Harry,’ says she, ‘how many hast thou kill'd to-day?’ ‘Give my roan horse a drench,’ says he; and answers, ‘Some fourteen, an hour after,—a trifle, a trifle.’
[I, Henry IV, Act II, Scene IV, 114-122]

Hotspur is not a unique character in Shakespeare or in Renaissance literature for that matter. He is the romantic hero who loves the rush of battle, who has no time for a quiet life. Hotspur can (rather unfairly) be compared to Richmond in Richard III who comes in Act V to rebel against the tyranny of King Richard and eventually dethrones him. But Richmond, like Hotspur, is inferior as a character against his rivalry, he is, as Hotspur admits of himself, has not “the gift of toungue”. So while King Richard has throughout the whole play, won us over despite his monstrosity, with his ability to deceive with language, Richmond lacks this gift, and thus lacks the audience’s interest and favor, for by the end of Richard III, after Richard’s defeat, Richmond is given the final speech. After a whole play filled with the private soliloquies of its cunning anti-hero, Richmond’s speech appears bland and clichéd, which is what Shakespeare intended, to reveal to the audience the trick he had played on them throughout the whole play, by forcing them to transcend morality (and at the same time, recognize Richard’s tyranny).
The point to be made here is that, Shakespeare has the ability to lead the audience to favor particular characters without outright favoring them. But thanks to the moral ambiguity of the author, readers and audiences are allowed to decide for themselves who they favor. Shakespeare just makes it a matter of language and dialectic.
But is Falstaff’s unconventional individuality merely a gimmick, a play on words, as Richards’ is? Falstaff, unlike Richard, is sincere in what he says and presents himself openly and scrupulously, while Richard possess a dichotomy of speech; private and public. Richard is rightly judged as immoral (despite his private vindications to his victims and the audience), and merely wins the favor of the audience due to the fact that he is the only interesting character upon the stage, everybody else, like Richmond seems meandering and one-dimensional, despite the fact that we should pity them; they fail to captivate the audience.
But this is not the case in Henry IV, a near perfect play, surprisingly well rounded. The first part plays like a comedy with historical backdrops, while the second part plays like a comedic-tragedy with slightly less significant historical backdrops. The big surprise of reading Henry IV for the first time, is that, despite categorization, it is not a mundane history play suffused with politics like Richard III is, in fact, it is just the opposite. The very nature of Henry IV, Part I is anti-political, it plays like a series of games among children, with Falstaff its center. The playful scenes in the Boar’s Head Tavern elegantly contrast with the serious beleaguering scenes with Henry IV, trying to control his country on the brink of rebellion.
These two worlds converge when Falstaff and Hal meet together on the battlefield, which serves as an interesting visualization of where Hal’s mind and attitude is at; for, paradoxically he kills Hotspur by the code of chivalry, but then fulfills Falstaff’s prophesy of the futility of such a life.
What image can be more simple, clear and sublime than Falstaff joyfully tossing Hal his pistol case at the breathe of a pun, for Hal to discover it to be a bottle of sack. This is Falstaff’s statement. Against war, against politics, against hate, against worrying, against death. This is his silent preamble to “give me life”.
What Falstaff is, is that he is life. He embodies the spirit of life more than any figure in world literature. More than Christ; for he was “not of this world”, more than Odysseus; by far the greatest of the Hotspurs, more than Hamlet; who went another way, but was no less human.
Falstaff’s sack and obesity are not so much normative attributes, as they are symbols of what Falstaff sees as living life to the fullest (as well as living to a full waist). Here the two subjects of this essay converge; both Falstaff and Hamlet, as literary critic Harold Bloom pointed out, both had at once “looked into the essence of things”, but both took different paths:

The veteran warrior saw through warfare and threw away its honor and glory as pernicious illusions, and gave himself to the order of the play. Unlike Hamlet, Falstaff gained knowledge without paying in nausea, and knowledge in Falstaff does not inhibit action but thrusts action aside as an irrelevancy to the timeless world of play.

This truth that Hamlet and Falstaff seem to have discovered through some kind of epiphany, is something that existentialist thinkers began pondering on, well over three-hundred years later. It is that, the world, or at least almost every form of normativity and convention, is meaningless. They saw through human ritual and behavior, and saw nothing but “words, words, words” (a phrase that would’ve made Wittgenstein smile, who, by the way, was not one of Shakespeare’s admirers). In the case of Falstaff, he saw the vanity in honor:

FAL.
I would it were bedtime, Hal, and all well.
PRINCE.
Why, thou owest God a death.
[Exit.]
FAL.
'Tis not due yet; I would be loth to pay Him before His day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? how then? Can honor set-to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery then? no. What is honour? a word. What is that word, honour? air. A trim reckoning!—Who hath it? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth be hear it? no. Is it 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: honour is a mere scutcheon:—and so ends my catechism.
[I, Henry IV, Act V, Scene I, 126-145]

[DanielBenoit]

By the way, the text for this website seems to have lost all indents, italics, and changes in text size in the process of posting. If you want to read a "correct" version, just go to my blog (the URL is in my signature).

[DanielBenoit]

In the case of Hamlet he saw through our evasions, and realized the futility of our existence:

I have of late—but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither[. . . . .]
[Hamlet, Act II, Scene II, 307-323]

What these two men saw, caused by whatever circumstance, was the writing on the wall; what Qoheleth of Ecclesiastes had declared two-thousand years earlier, that, due to the inevitability of death, “all is vanity.” Falstaff, as Bloom pointed out, paid the lesser price and chose to embrace life, and almost transcended all despair. Hamlet chose to embrace death (or at least contemplation of it), and its paradoxical implications to life.
Falstaff does not evade death, but rather, he transcended beyond all vanities, all time killers of life, all things that did not “tend to laughter.” As we can see at the beginning of the play, the figures of the political world barely have any time, as the King complains in the first lines of the play:

So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,
And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenced in strands afar remote.
[I, Henry IV, Act I, Scene I, 1-4]

By contrast, Falstaff does have time to pant, as here when Hal takes a jab at Falstaff when he has to catch his breath from breathing playful insults at the prince:

Well, breathe awhile, and then to it again: and, when thou hast tired thyself in base comparisons, hear me speak but this[. . . . .]
[I, Henry IV, Act II, Scene IV, 76-78]

Interestingly enough, the King does have time in the first scene to make base comparisons:

In envy that my Lord Northumberland
Should be the father to so blest a son,—
A son who is the theme of honour's tongue;
Amongst a grove, the very straightest plant;
Who is sweet Fortune's minion and her pride:
Whilst I, by looking on the praise of him,
See riot and dishonour stain the brow
Of my young Harry. O, that it could be proved
That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,
And call'd mine Percy, his Plantagenet!
Then would I have his Harry, and he mine.
[I, Henry IV, Act I, Scene I, 79-90]

This kind of open veracity seems quite a cruel wish coming from a father. It makes us hesitate to scoff when Hotspur later says of Hal, “I think his father loves him not.”
But Hal seems to be partly aware of his father’s disapproval and amends to both his hesitant father and himself to “be more myself”:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyok'd humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the Sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother-up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But, when they seldom come, they wish'd-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So, when this loose behaviour I throw off,
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I'll so offend, to make offence a skill;
Redeeming time, when men think least I will.
[I, Henry IV, Act I, Scene III, 220-241]

Again, the motif of time arises again and here the prince views time and what is important opposite to that of Falstaff, who would nod approvingly at Hal’s eulogy to Hotspur after killing him on the battlefield:

When that this body did contain a spirit,
A kingdom for it was too small a bound;
But now two paces of the vilest earth
Is room enough.
[I, Henry IV, Act V, Scene IV, 89-92]

Listen to Hotspur’s dying words just before Hal’s eulogy:

HOT.
O Harry, thou hast robb'd me of my youth!
I better brook the loss of brittle life
Than those proud titles thou hast won of me;
They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my flesh:
But thoughts the slave of life, and life Time's fool,
And Time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop. O, I could prophesy,
But that the earthy and cold hand of death
Lies on my tongue: no, Percy, thou art dust,
And food for—
[Dies.]
PRINCE.
For worms, brave Percy: fare thee well, great heart!
[I, Henry IV, Act V, Scene IV, 76-88]

Here Hotspur still sticks to his guns and declares his preference for honor and glory over life. But at the same time, he realizes the futility in these “proud titles” and even comes close to Hamlet in his declaration, cut off by death, that “thou art dust, and food for [worms].” Such language is used similarly by Hamlet:

Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.

[. . . . .]
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and cat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
[Hamlet, Act IV, Scene III, 20-26, 28-30]

In this very same scene, is Falstaff’s triumph: For while Hal was fighting Hotspur, Douglas attacks Falstaff (who was cheering on Hal), and Falstaff falls to the ground, pretending to be dead. After Hal has killed Hotspur and given his eulogy, he notices Falstaff lying on the ground, thinking him dead he gives him a relatively heartfelt eulogy and then leaves. Falstaff then rises from the ground and declares:

Embowell'd! if thou embowel me to-day, I'll give you leave to powder me and eat me too to-morrow. 'Sblood, 'twas time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me scot and lot too. Counterfeit! I lie; I am no counterfeit: to die, is to be a counterfeit; for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man: but to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life.
[I, Henry IV, Act V, Scene IV, 111-123]

He then spots Hotspur dead on the ground and stabs him so that he can take credit for Hotspur’s death. What then happens is brilliantly described by literary critic Harold C. Goddard:

[T]he Prince comes back with his brother John and discovers the “dead” Falstaff staggering along with the dead Hotspur on his back—a symbolic picture if there ever was one.
[. . . . .]
The Prince killed Hotspur in the battle, and Falstaff, with one of his most inspired lies, claimed the deed as his own. But Falstaff’s lies, scrutinized, often turn out to be the truth in disguise. So here, Falstaff, not Prince Henry [Hal], did kill Hotspur. He ended the outworn conception of honor for which Hotspur stood. The Prince killed his body, but Falstaff killed his soul—or rather what passed for his soul.

What Goddard means here, is that, Hotspur, despite all his nobility and honor, is dead, and as Falstaff brilliantly declares of honor; it cannot “live with the living.” Hotspurs death physically proves Falstaff’s presumption of honors vanity. So as the noble Hotspur lies dead, Falstaff rises back to life; his joyful “give me life” has outlived and the vain Hotspurs “die all, die merrily”, and this is his triumph.
But Falstaff is still a mortal, and he, like all, will too die, no matter what he does or achieves. By the beginning of Part 2, Falstaff begins to suffer the pains of human physicality and mortality: he is diagnosed with some type of sexual disease, his “means are very slender and, [his] waste is great” as the Lord Chief Justice points out. But Falstaff still possesses his own cheery wit and brags to the Justice how young he is:

You that are old consider not the capacities of us that are young; you do measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls: and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too.
[II, Henry IV, Act I, Scene II 195-200]

The Lord Chief Justice, unable to interpret Falstaff’s words answers back:

Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are writtendown old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!
[II, Henry IV, Act I, Scene II, 201-210]

Falstaff then answers back in usual Falstaffian wit:

My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly. For my voice, I have lost it with halloing and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgement and understanding[. . . . .]

Falstaff’s “youth” is not something in his appearance or age, as the Lord Chief Justice thinks, but rather in his heart. His witty comeback that he was “born about three of the clock in the afternoon” is probably a pun on the fact (as evidenced in the first scene of Part I) that was the time he probably awoke and is given connection here in his passionate description of the effects of intoxication:

A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble fiery and delectable shapes; which, delivered o'er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is, the warming of the blood; which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms it and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extremes[. . . . .]
[II, Henry IV, Act IV, Scene III, 103-117]

Here we can now see what Falstaff means by “you do measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls” to the Lord Chief Justice.
These “dull and cruddy vapours” which environ the brain, could be some of the characteristics of old age that the Lord Chief Justice refers to. But with the consumption of sack, they are able to give birth to “excellent wit.” Thus when Falstaff speaks of his youthful liveliness, he can accredit it to his consistent drinking of sack.

[DanielBenoit]

But this cheerful youth which Falstaff carries in his heart does not last forever, for the physicality of his old age begins to reach his mind with his senile declaration to his mistress “I am old, I am old” near the end of Act II.
We must notice that in contrast to Part I, Falstaff and Hal almost never share the stage and are always apart. Whatever paternal liking Falstaff takes to Hal, being around him and mentoring him makes him feel young more than anything, more than sack, more than sex. But the harsh fact remains, that Hal himself is an individual and is in ambivalent conflict between the world and expectations of his father, and the world and teachings of Falstaff. In a sense Hal, like many Shakespearean characters, is restrained to his fate, and his inheritance of the crown.
Then again it may have been the case that Hal, from the very start of the play, had already begun to stray away from Falstaff’s lifestyle. From the very start he is flinging insults at Falstaff, playful though they may be (for Falstaff does retaliate), there is a sense of competent towards the jolly rouge. Hal appears to hate the lifestyle he is living, even to the extent of comparing himself as the sun to his tavern companions as “base contagious clouds.” But still, Hal is not ready to break off this “loose behavior” and is unable to apply his very own thoughts to his actions. This is an epistemic of disconnect, of fragmentation, between behavior and reason.
The tale of Henry IV or more appropriately: Falstaff, is one of innocence and childhood, pitted against the cruelty and indifference of society; the so-called “real world.” But Falstaff, as some critics have mistaken, is not a child and though he embodies a spirit of innocence, he is “old in judgment and understanding” and probably has looked into abyss, and in looking into it, he became who he was and defined his life on that sight, that epiphany. Though no such epiphany ever occurs in the play, one can reasonably speculate that this is the reason why he gave up chivalry in favor for the life of the tavern.
There are two static figures in the plot; one is Falstaff, the other is the king. The decisive character is Hal, the fate of the story lies in his choice between two worlds. And yet at the same time it doesn’t, for in the end we realize that it was his blood and heredity that was the deciding force.
Hal rejects Falstaff. After the waning old man hears of the death of Henry IV and the crowning of the prince, “the old king is dead?” a devastating scene plays out for those who are reading or seeing the play for the second time, which was perfectly illustrated in Orson Welles masterful film version of the two plays Chimes at Midnight, all in one shot:
Welles being the master of low-angle shots and symbolic choreography: starts with Falstaff (played by Welles himself) sitting in the background; apathetic and weary (for the very first time) and for the first time appearing minute. Pistol then enters the tavern and declares that he has good news; Falstaff then walks up and sits down on another bench, now in the middle of the foreground, no longer appearing as small. Then, after he is told the news of Prince Hals crowning, Falstaff then immediately walks up, now looming over the camera.
This is a paradoxical shot, just as it is a paradoxical scene. For first time readers, it is an uplifting, relieving scene, for both the audience and Falstaff. “Thinking of nothing else, putting all affairs in oblivion, as if there were nothing else to be done but to see him,” says the revived Falstaff. But for the reader the second time around, it is a devastating scene, almost heartbreaking, for the reader knows what is to come.
Falstaff arrives at the castle and runs up to the king, overjoyed:

God save thy grace, King Hal; my royal Hal!
[. . . . .]
God save thee, my sweet boy!
[. . . . .]
My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
[II, Henry IV, Act V, Scene V, 44, 47, 49]

Then comes Hal’s, now Henry V, dreadful reply:

I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dream'd of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots:
Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evils:
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strengths and qualities,
Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,
To see perform'd the tenour of our word.
Set on.
[II, Henry IV, Act V, Scene V, 51-76]

Here is a scene, that with the use of any good actor, that thanks to the effect of Shakespeare’s words, has a guarantee to be extremely powerful. Here, Falstaff’s love, the very thing unto which his happiness depends, the very man whom Falstaff said of “thy love is worth a million [pounds],” has rejected him and his paternal love and care. He has, as Falstaff said in an early scene foreshadowing this one, “banish[ed] all the world.”
Falstaff, always being the optimist, wearily says:

I shall be sent for in private to him[. . . . .]
[II, Henry IV, Act V, Scene V, 82-83]

But this is not the language of optimism. It is the language of anguish and hopelessness. Falstaff knows just as well that the king meant what he said. It is a despairing line. For Falstaff, Immortal Falstaff, after two entire plays of always being five steps ahead of everyone else, always being the one laughing or in the middle of a joke, after defeating everyone with his rhetoric, is silenced, in his last words in the play:

CHIEF JUSTICE.
Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet:
Take all his company along with him.
FALSTAFF.
My lord, my lord,—
CHIEF JUSTICE.
I cannot now speak: I will hear you soon.
Take them away.

This is Falstaff’s defeat, his mistake. For as we learn in Henry V, Falstaff dies of a broken heart.
This is the most pessimistic thing Shakespeare has to say in this play, something that Falstaff cannot solve with laughter. It is the limited life and futility of human relationships. For not even Falstaff can save himself when he is rejected by the one he loves.

[DanielBenoit]

I suppose that will be it for now and I'll post the rest once I get some feedback on the first part.