Thou hast done much harm
upon me, Hal,--God forgive thee for it. Before I knew
thee, Hal, I knew nothing; and now am I, if a man
should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked.
I must give over this life, and I will give it over; by the
Lord, an I do not, I am a villain; I'll be damned for
never a king's son in Christendom."
In this first scene between Falstaff and Prince Henry, Shakespeare is
feeling his way, so to speak, blindfold to Falstaff, with gropings of
memory and dashes of poetry that lead him past the mark. In this first
scene, as we noticed, he puts fine lyric phrases in Falstaff's mouth;
but he never repeats the experiment; Falstaff and high poetry are
anti-podes--all of which merely proves that at first Shakespeare had not
got into the skin of his personage. But the real Falstaff had probably
tags of verse in memory and lilts of song, for Shakespeare repeats this
trait. Here we reach the test: Whenever a feature is accentuated by
repetition, we may guess that it belongs to the living model.
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