Shakespeare has been analyzed by thousands, read by millions, and occasionally enjoyed by a few. Careers have been built on Shakespeare in academia earning people an almost liveable wage as faculty in the humanities and arts. More lucrative careers have been built around online Shakespeare insult generators, thou ruttish boil-brained stench. What is left for any writer to say about any character in the Shakespeareverse?
In Falstaff: Give Me Life, renown Shakespeare scholar Harold Bloom picks out his favorite character, Sir John Falstaff, and paints a picture of a man shot through with life. A man whose very words infect others with the beauty of language.
Bloom takes us through the Henriad. From the opening banter between Hal and Falstaff, in which we can see shades of the Hal that will become King Henry V, son of the murderous Henry IV, and we are introduced to Falstaff’s wit:
SCENE II. London. An apartment of the Prince’s.
Enter the PRINCE OF WALES and FALSTAFF
FALSTAFF
Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?
PRINCE HENRY
Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack
and unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping upon
benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to
demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know.
What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the
day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes
capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the
signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself
a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no
reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand
the time of the day.
FALSTAFF
Indeed, you come near me now, Hal; for we that take
purses go by the moon and the seven stars, and not
by Phoebus, he,’that wandering knight so fair.’ And,
I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art king, as, God
save thy grace,–majesty I should say, for grace
thou wilt have none,–
PRINCE HENRY
What, none?
FALSTAFF
No, by my troth, not so much as will serve to
prologue to an egg and butter.
PRINCE HENRY
Well, how then? come, roundly, roundly.
FALSTAFF
Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not
us that are squires of the night’s body be called
thieves of the day’s beauty: let us be Diana’s
foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the
moon; and let men say we be men of good government,
being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and
chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.
Bloom doesn’t say this but I will, I love Shakespeare’s puns (“come roundly, roundly”). And in reading this book the one thing that strikes me is how often William S. punned. Not puny puns but grand puns. Royal puns. The next time someone rolls their eyes at one of your puns, remember that the greatest ever English writer used them liberally and his audiences delighted in them.
Bloom’s point here is that the speech of Hal is infected with Falstaff’s silver tongue. Henry V, once coronated and made King, slips into much more direct speech but here, in Falstaff’s presence, playing, bantering, Hal utters some of his most delicious lines, “if hours were cups of sack and minutes were capons” and describing the sun as a woman in a flaming taffeta dress.
Bloom asks us to imagine the Henriad without Falstaff. The plot would remain intact, the story would be communicated, but the plays would be grey and lifeless. We need Falstaff and Pistol, Doll Tearsheet and Mistress Quickly. Not just in these plays but in life. As William Blake said in his Proverbs of Hell “the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
Falstaff: Give me Life is a wonderful portrait of Sir John Falstaff, his life and his death. I found it delightful to have Falstaff’s words abstracted out of what is an otherwise boring series of plays and presented in this book. Every quote is wonderful and Bloom does a fantastic job explaining why they are important to the story, to the character, and to Shakespeare himself. Reading this book made me want to see an entire movie or play of the Henriad but solely from Falstaff’s perspective. Imagine it and you sort of see what Bloom has done with this book.
This book is also a portrait of Shakespeare and if I may, I think “give me life”, Falstaff’s credo, is a plea from Bloom himself. At 87 years old, Bloom explains that he has seen many friends pass and we feel the edge of Bloom’s own mortality in his writing. We see our own mortality and if there is anything that I would ask of the gods it would be “give me life.”
Is there any better way to live?
I’ve found Bloom to be a bit pompous and a bit too attached to “canon”.
On the other hand, the Hal/Falstaff relationship across plays is great.
Highly recommend Chimes at Midnight if you haven’t seen it.
Huh… I also have his collection titled “Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages” and I find it to be delightful. I’m not too concerned if someone likes canon too much. I read pretty widely and wouldn’t want to rule someone out just because they like dead white guys.
I’m curious why you think he’s pompous, though.
I guess I was not a fan of The Closing of the American Mind. I haven’t read the Western Canon, just reviews of it. And I wouldn’t dismiss him just because he likes dead white authors. I certainly do as well. And I’m generally of the sentiment that some of the recent trend towards worrying about “triggers “is not good.
But at least based on “Closing” he also seemed a little dismissive of alternative views as well.
You wouldn’t be the first to confuse Allan Bloom with Harold Bloom, given how the latter uses the former (and a shared last name, of course). Harold’s top 500 books in the Western canon (which he grudgingly added to the book at the urging of his publisher) actually contains a large number of books by non-white authors, including Ishmael Reed’s “Mumbo Jumbo,” which is about as antipathetic towards the Western canon as you can get!
Ack. You’re right…mixed up my Blooms.
All is True is good new movie about the life enhancing WS.
Thanks – great post. Will have a look at Bloom. Haven’t read Henry IV/V since college days. Daughter just read Romeo and Juliet for 8th grade lit and I went back to re-read it with her. Her peers and she had a novel take on the love story. They thought the love was BS! “Who meets someone one day, and gets married secretly the next, then commits suicide over them 2 days later?” Essentially, they didn’t buy that they were in love. It wasn’t real love. The wife and I found this very amusing. We also went back and watched Shakespeare in Love, which, although not historically y accurate, benefits from the witty repartee of Tom Stoppard, doing his best homage to Bill S.
BTW I remember liking Kenneth Branagh’s version of Henry V, so maybe I will ask my daugther to read the play and watch the movie of that one.
I encourage you to continue staking out areas of interest beyond Arsenal, as I always find them equally engaging, if not more, than discussing Mustafi’s latest blunders.
I think your daughter and her peers are on to something. Shakespeare is often meditating (comically and tragically) on the ill effects of immature love. Usually in comedies, superficial love is found problematic / the cause of the central conflict. In tragedies, it can end in death (though I suppose it’s debatable whether Antony and Cleopatra’s affair was ‘immature’, given their ages!).
Exactly, Bun. My daughter and I talked at great length about this. It really made me stop and think. It casts the tragedy as something entirely different – a cautionary tale about love, much more than a tragic love story. The parents become the victims, and the nurse and friar the villains. As a teen, she views it more about the power of teens than their downfall. Their unchecked affair creates misery that parents should have been able to recognize and nip in the bud.
Very good thoughts. Also love that you and your daughter talk about ideas and literature like this.
An appropriate post for Shrove Tuesday; Falstaff is the image of carnival! As Hal makes clear in the opening exchange, Falstaff counts time by the items of feasting (sack (wine), capons, bawds), not the time of the official, work-a-day world (mirrored in the playful prose of the tavern vs. the blank verse of the court). But, as Hal reminds us in the soliloquy that ends this scene, “If all the year were playing holidays, / To sport would be as tedious as to work.” The final line of that speech carries an implicit threat to Falstaff, when he promises to redeem “time,” and, indeed in 2 Henry IV, we learn that Falstaff, rejected by the now Henry V, dies of a broken heart.
I have a lot of time for Bloom’s take on Falstaff, and, I think personally, I’m more Falstaff than Henry, so I get the personal connection Bloom also makes with Falstaff. However, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Falstaff’s self-interestedness results in thievery (as someone who’s been robbed a few times in my life, I’d sooner live in a world in which there were no thieves) and the death of 350 soldiers, exploited by Falstaff because they are the poorest of society. I understand these matters are given comic treatment, and we don’t want to be too literal, but I think even symbolically, the image presents us with both the joy and problem of excess.
A few interesting tidbits about Falstaff: Shakespeare wrote the part for an actor named Will Kemp, famed in the period for his physical humor and dancing ability (the plays finished with a dance by the actors, not scripted). In 1599, with the building of The Globe, it seems Shakespeare wanted to take his plays in a different, more sophisticated, direction (he eliminated the dance), and, in that same year, we see that Will Kemp resigns / is fired from the company. The fool / clown figures who appear in the plays from this year on tend to be more cerebral in their humor (Touchstone, Lear’s fool, etc.).
Interesting and edifying post and comments today. Most enjoyable.
Son-of-1-Nil had “Othello” this year and he marveled at the machinations of Iago as did his Dad a generation earlier.
Thoughts and ideas so brilliantly expressed they will resonate forever:
“She loved me for the dangers that I had past. and I loved her that she did pity them.”
“Men in rage strike those that with them best…”
“Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit and lost with deserving”
And the one I savor when I think of Wife-of-1-Nil:
“For she had eyes, and she chose me”.
What? There is no better way to live than to enjoy and appreciate eloquence.
Ack. You’re right…mixed up my Blooms.
I should read Shakespeare.
I should read other than tech.