" Shakespeare would have done better to leave it out,
for Falstaff has far too good brains to imagine that all thieves could
ever have his licence and far too much conceit ever to desire so unholy
a consummation. And Shakespeare must have felt that the borrowed words
were too shallow-common, for he immediately falls back on his own brains
for the next phrase and gives us of his hoarded best. The second part of
the question, "resolution thus fobbed," and so forth, is only another
statement of the famous couplet in "Richard III.":
"Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe."
These faults show that Shakespeare is at first unsure of his personage;
he fumbles a little; yet the vivacity, the roaring life, is certainly a
quality of the original Falstaff, for it attends him as constantly as
his shadow; the pun, too, is his, and the phrase "sweet wag" is probably
taken from his mouth, for he repeats it again, "sweet wag," and again
"mad wag." The shamelessness, too, and the lechery are marks of him, and
the love of witty word-warfare, and, above all, the pretended
repentance:
"O, thou hast damnable iteration, and art, indeed,
able to corrupt a saint.
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