" Such physical portraiture, as I have said, is very
rare and very significant in Shakespeare. This photograph is slightly
malevolent, too, as of one whose malice is protected by a Queen's
commission. Those who do not believe traditions when thus
circumstantially supported would not believe though one rose from the
dead to witness to them. "The Merry Wives" is worthful to me as the only
piece of Shakespeare's journalism that we possess; here we find him
doing task-work, and doing it at utmost speed. Those who wish to measure
the difference between the conscious, deliberate work of the artist and
the hurried slap-dash performance of the journalist, have only to
compare the Falstaff of "The Merry Wives" with the Falstaff of the two
parts of "Henry IV." But if we take it for granted that "The Merry
Wives" was done in haste and to order, can any inference be fairly drawn
from the feebleness of Falstaff and the unreality of his love-making? I
think so; it seems to me that, if Falstaff had been a creation,
Shakespeare must have reproduced him more effectively.
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