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remainder of the scene has the same object of entangling the Prince in delight at the buffoonery with which, while pretending a defence of his life, he in reality girds at himself and so ministers opportunities for the exercise of that wit in others of which he later on boasts himself to be the cause. Scarcely less humorous is his fantastic contrition when alone with Bardolph, a contrition in which he so often indulges that the Prince gives him the soubriquet of "Monsieur Remorse." Well aware that he is a hopelessly dissolute old scoundrel, and that he has done his best to make others as bad as himself, he yet sets up, even to one who knows him so well, the excuse of having been led astray by evil company, and while boasting that naturally he "was as virtuously given as a gentleman need be," defines his virtuous propensities by every vice that a gentleman need be ashamed of. With the Hostess, whose entry he suspects to be with the object of demanding the repayment of money lent to him, he has his shift ready, and to anticipate her complaints tries to take away the credit of her house by the insinuation that she harbours thieves who have picked his pocket. of valuable belongings. When the Prince, appealed to, supports her cause, Falstaff so contrives to divert the subject by an amusing altercation with her champion that she is quite thrust aside, and he in the end, assuming the air of one who has been wronged, out of the plenitude of his generosity forgives her whose forgiveness he himself stood in need of. His dexterity of evasion is equally conspicuous in the action at Shrewsbury, not merely in the stratagem by which he saves his life, but in the use he makes of Hotspur's death,

audaciously trying to make out that the victory was his and that the Prince had been as much mistaken in supposing that he himself had killed Percy as in the belief that he had seen his old boon companion. lying dead on the field. "I grant you," he says, "I was down and out of breath; and so was he: but we rose both at an instant and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. If I may be believed, so; if not, let them that should reward valour bear the sin upon. their own heads. I'll take it upon my death, I gave him this wound in the thigh: if the man were alive and would deny it, 'zounds, I would make him eat a piece of my sword"-a rhapsody of truth and falsehood in keeping with his "one pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack" which, prefaced as it is by his exclamation "Lord, Lord, how this world is given. to lying!", so tickles the Prince's humour that he is ready to countenance the claim set up by the old rogue, and says,

"if a lie may do thee grace,

I'll gild it with the happiest terms I have."

A further and eminent example of the nimbleness with which Falstaff disarms hostility and shakes reproof off his feathers is seen in his interviews with the ChiefJustice which I have already noticed; as again in the second stormy scene with the Hostess whose demands. he not only does not satisfy, but whose facility he actually cajoles into further lendings; and in the device whereby he eludes the Prince's anger after vilifying him behind his back, thus verifying Poins's words, My lord, he will drive you out of your revenge and turn all to a merriment if you take not the heat."

With Shallow and Silence he has no need for any great exertion of his subtler legerdemain. Rightly gauging their readiness to be duped and knowing of old what manner of man the former was, he easily amuses them with puns and quibbles, playing upon Shallow's eagerness to show himself before Silence as having in his salad days been a roystering blade who had shared in the debaucheries of high life, and exciting Silence's respectful admiration by hints of what he could tell if he chose, while in one of his delicious soliloquies he chuckles with Rabelaisian laughter as he sums up the despicable lies of a creature who had ever been the scoff of his companions for want of all manliness and now in his old age complacently rallies himself upon vices which the heat of youth might in a measure have excused if he had had the courage to indulge in them. Such a bubble of pretension Falstaff cannot resist pricking. Out of his follies he "will devise matter enough to keep Prince Harry in continued laughter the wearing out of six fashions"-a piece of witty malice harmless enough, but he will also take. care that those follies shall be turned to profitable account in supplying his own wants, and this "Vice's dagger" who has "land and beefs" is without difficulty tempered" into lending a thousand pounds of which he is never again to see a penny. It must of course be borne in mind that when Falstaff triumphs over the Prince or the Chief-Justice it is to a large extent because they are willing that he should triumph, their enjoyment lying in an encouragement of his shifts and doublings that they may see the full measure of his elasticity; while in the case of the Hostess and still.

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more of Shallow the gullery of which they are the subject is an experience altogether unpleasant and one that their weak natures would gladly resist if it were possible. But the skill with which Falstaff adapts his fly to his fish is none the less great because the one prey feels the hook which only tickles the other. His deception of Shallow is indeed not only painful to its subject but of a kind that prevents all sympathy with its perpetrator, and, as Maurice Morgann remarks,* "after this we ought not to complain if we see poetic justice duly executed upon him, and that he is finally given up to shame and dishonour." Falstaff's pet vices are sensuality and dishonesty. He is besides profane, profligate, insolent; without principle, honour or truth. How is it, then, that a character compounded of such ingredients occasions in us no disgust, but rather compels our enjoyment and takes captive our affection? Morgann finds a partial solution of the difficulty in the fact that Shakespeare has been careful to guard Falstaff's vices on the one hand "from all appearance of malicious motive, and indeed from the manifestation of any ill principle whatever, which must have produced disgust,—a sensation no less opposite to laughter than is respect; and, on the other, from the notice, or even apprehension, in the spectators, of pernicious effect; which produces grief and terror, and is the proper province of tragedy alone." This, if it does not account for our positive liking, does so for the absence of dislike. His sensuality, though sufficiently gross, is accompanied by no obtrusive exhibition of selfishness, while it is accompanied by unfailing humour and good fellowship. Essay on the Character of Sir John Falstaff, p. 183.

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His dishonesty, except in the case of Shallow, wears the aspect of a joke, and when he wheedles “mine Hostess out of her money and cheats her of promised marriage, she is made to appear almost an accomplice. in her own loss and disappointment. He tries to borrow money which he knows he can never repay, but this also is an enormous jest, for how but in jest could he offer such security as Bardolph Even when he defrauds Shallow of his thousand pounds he no doubt quiets his conscience in the belief that his intimacy with the Prince will enable him to gild the pill of that vain braggart's mortification by some favour of which he may boast on returning to the congenial society of Silence and his hinds. His profanity and insolence. are masked by his wit; his profligacy seems only in keeping with his surroundings; while as for his lies, they are rather exhalations of rodomontade wanting in the worst essence of lies in that they are employed with no malicious intent and cannot be expected to deceive. Still we should have little but contempt and disgust for such a character if it were not balanced by some positive make-weights. Among these are hist unfailing good-humour, his presence of mind in all exigencies, his fertility of resource, the consciousness. of his own depravity which he does not seek to gloze by hypocrisy, the feeling with which he possesses us that his associates cannot resist an affection for him, and even his physical drawbacks, his corpulence and grey hairs, in rebellion against his ever youthful desires and that buoyancy of spirits which nothing can keep down.

The question whether Falstaff was, as at first sight

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