Yet
Chettle was by way of being a poet, and Falstaff uses tags of
verse--still, as I say, it is all pure guesswork. The only reason I put
his name forward is that some have talked of Ben Jonson as Falstaff's
original merely because he was fat. I cannot believe that gentle
Shakespeare would ever have treated Jonson with such contempt; but
Chettle seems to have been a butt by nature.
That Falstaff was taken from one model is to me certain. Shakespeare
very seldom tells us what his characters look like; whenever he gives us
a photograph, so to speak, of a person, it is always taken from life and
extraordinarily significant. We have several portraits of Falstaff: the
Prince gives a picture of the "old fat man,..." that trunk of humours
"... that old white-bearded Satan"; the Chief Justice gives us another
of his "moist eye, white beard, increasing belly and double chin."
Falstaff himself has another: "a goodly portly man, i' faith and a
corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble
carriage.
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