Adding, “You have misled the youthful Prince” (1.2.143), “You follow the young Prince up and down, like his ill angel” (162–63), and “God send the Prince a better companion” (197–97), he announces, “the King hath severed you and Prince Harry” by assigning Falstaff to war with Lord John (1.2.200–3).Īt the tavern in 2.1, Hostess Quickly has called officers to arrest Falstaff for “eat me out of house and home. Instead of raillery with Prince Hal, the scene pits Falstaff against the Chief Justice, who reprimands him for “failure to appear,” but acknowledges that his “service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night’s exploit on Gad’s Hill” (1.2.100, 147–48). The scene also ends with images of disease-incurable, consumption, gout, pox. His page answers, “He said the water itself was a good healthy water, but for the party that owed it, he might have more diseases than he knew for” (1.2.1–5). “What says the doctor to my water?” are Falstaff’s first words. While the main plot of Henry IV Part Two, dispenses of the remaining rebels from Part One and reconciles King Henry and Prince Hal, the Falstaff plot begins with images of disease and ends with murder and mayhem. Most ingloriously, moreover, Falstaff “recovers,” stabs the body of Hotspur, and claims the kill as he dumps the corpse at Hal’s feet-and it’s downhill from here. The added italics suggest that the prince values his association with Falstaff (for instructional purposes, perhaps), though he by no means honors him. Death hath not struck so fat a deer today, / Though many dearer” (102–8). In act 5, scene 4, Falstaff “counterfeit” death, since “the better part of valor is discretion” (119), prompting Prince Hal’s interesting eulogy: “What, old acquaintance, could not all this flesh / Keep in a little life? Poor Jack farewell! / I could have better spared a better man. / Oh, I should have a heavy miss of thee / If I were much in love with vanity. Still, since he’s merely telling his tale with habitual exaggeration, his braggadocio provides humor but when in Part Two we actually witness his chicanery, meet a handful of unsavory conscripts with names like Moldy, Shadow, Wart, Feeble, and Bullcalf, and cringe that Falstaff uses Bardolph and Justices Shallow and Silence as aiders and abettors, it’s not so funny anymore. He has extorted, in other words, from able-bodied potential soldiers, funds to line his own pockets while procuring only meager support for his king and prince. In 4.2, Falstaff reveals that his “charge of foot” is puny, weak, and few in number because “I pressed me none but such toast-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins’ heads, and they have bought out their services” (4.2.20–22). How can we condemn him for thievery when he’s so incompetent? How can we fault him for lying when he’s only trying to save face?īut when Hal “procures a charge of foot” as well as “money to equip them” (3.3.186, 202), the old fat man rapidly declines to more serious lapses.
So far, Falstaff is fat and funny, guilty only of good humor and a little fudging here and there. We’ve seen Prince Hal perform his tasks as warrior prince against the triple-threat of Wales, Scotland, and rebellious English earls, while Falstaff proves himself a leech, a thief, a coward, and a liar by act 2, scene 4, when the Gadshill scheme is revealed and Hal pays off Falstaff’s tavern bills. banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.” Hal, as king, answers simply, “I do, I will” (2.4.469–76). old white-bearded Satan” (2.4.457–58), “Banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins but for sweet Jack Falstaff. During the deposition of the wayward prince by his father the king, Falstaff, portraying Prince Hal, responds after charges of being “a villainous, abominable misleader of youth. We’ve known since act 1, scene 2 of Henry IV Part One that Hal will one day break off his association with Falstaff to reveal his stunning goodness and competence as sunshine long hidden behind “foul and ugly mists / Of vapors that did seem to strangle him” (1.2.196–97). The subsequent play, Henry V, does kill Falstaff with a sweat (brought on, of course, by a broken heart), and he never appears onstage-suggesting, perhaps, that someone’s hard opinions have indeed killed him off. shall die of a sweat, unless already be killed with your hard opinions” (Epilogue 24–29, emphasis added all line references from Bevington’s Complete Works of Shakespeare, 5th ed. Start with Henry IV Part Two’s Epilogue: “If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it.
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