Who but Falstaff would have found his self-justification in his
youth?--
splendide mendax! and yet the excuse is as true to his
sack-heated blood when he uses it on Gadshill as it was true also to
fact when he first used it forty years before. And who but Falstaff
would have had the words of repentance always on his lips and never in
his heart? I ascribe these illuminating flashes to Falstaff, and not to
Shakespeare, for no imagination in the world has yet accomplished such a
miracle; as a miracle of representment Falstaff is astonishing enough,
as a miracle of creation he is simply unthinkable. I would almost as
soon believe that Falstaff made Shakespeare as that Shakespeare made
Falstaff without a living model. All hail to thee, inimitable,
incomparable Jack! Never before or since has poet been blessed with such
a teacher, as rich and laughterful, as mendacious and corrupting as life
itself.
I must not be taken to mean that the living original of Falstaff was as
richly humorous, as inexhaustibly diverting as the dramatic counterfeit
who is now a citizen and chief personage in that world of literature
which outlasts all the fleeting shows of the so-called real world.
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