In any case I may be allowed one last argument. The Falstaff of "The
Merry Wives of Windsor" is not the Falstaff of the two parts of "King
Henry IV."; it is but a shadow of the great knight that we see, an echo
of him that we hear in the later comedy. Falstaff would never have
written the same letter to Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page; there was too much
fancy in him, too much fertility, too much delight in his own mind- and
word-wealth ever to show himself so painfully stinted and barren. Nor is
it credible that Falstaff would ever have fallen three times running
into the same trap; Falstaff made traps; he did not fall into them. We
know, too, that Falstaff would not fight "longer than he saw reason";
his instinct of self-preservation was largely developed; but he could
face a sword; he drew on Pistol and chased him from the room; he was not
such a pitiful coward as to take Ford's cudgelling. Finally, the
Falstaff whom we all know could never have been befooled by the Welshman
and his child-fairies. And this objection Shakespeare himself felt, for
he meets it by making Falstaff explain how near he came to discovering
the fraud, and how wit is made "a Jack-a-Lent when 'tis upon ill
employment.
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