320 Years of History
Gold Member
Introduction:
William Shakespeare had a genius for forging memorable characters. From the tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Romeo and Juliet. From the comedies: Shylock, Portia, and Robin Goodfellow. From the romances: Prospero and Leontes. From the histories, names which were famous (or infamous) in life: Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, and Henry V.
Each of these names carries with it the brilliance of Shakespeare's characterization, and beauty of his poetry, the eloquence of his prose, and the splendor of his plots. However, there is one character that stands entirely alone in this star-studded sphere of Shakespearean celebrity. His name is Sir John Falstaff. This stroke of genius became arguably the most beloved personage on the Elizabethan stage - so much so that he figured prominently in two plays (Henry IV, Part I and Henry IV, Part II), partially in a third (Henry V), and starred in another (The Merry Wives of Windsor). This very fact renders Falstaff the only Shakespearean character that transcends a particular sphere of action.
He starts out life in the histories, as Prince Hal's comedic cohort in Henry IV, Part I, but he moves, with remarkable ease, beyond this sphere into the realms of comedy, romance, and tragedy. In truth, Falstaff is perhaps the most "well-rounded" of Shakespeare's characters - in more ways than one. He cannot be placed into a single dramatic category because he is not merely comedy, vice, or tragedy, but he is in part all of these - amazingly dynamic and human. These aspects of Falstaff's character may best be seen through a look at his overt comedic antics - analyzing the subtle personality traits buried beneath.
On Falstaff: (for readers who are not familiar with him)
Falstaff is most often categorized as merely a comic character - introduced as the traditional humorous relief to the otherwise weighty plot of succession and familial strife in Henry IV, Part I. This is most certainly true. The Fat Knight does indeed spend "...most of his time in the Boar's Head Tavern carousing and drinking sack...wanting simply to enjoy life without the burden of formality, pageantry or protocol" ("The World According to John Falstaff" par. 1). However, this generalization is far too small an idea to contain him. In truth, Falstaff is much more than a mere carousing, comedic fool.
In The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde's character Jack Worthing details the common distinction between a clever man ad a fool, saying: "I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left." Ironically, Shakespeare's plays are absolutely littered with paradoxically clever fools -- from Feste in Twelfth Night, to Lancelot in The Merchant of Venice, to Prince Hamlet himself who plays the fool for his own purposes. Falstaff belongs to this category of clever fools. David Ellis makes this point about Falstaff, saying: "He is quite definitely at times the Elizabethan clown, and Shakespeare leaves lots of space in the writing for comic business of a clown-like variety; but he is also a courtly wit." It is this self-same intelligent wit that distinguishes Falstaff from the generic revelers in his posse -- Bardolph, Peto, Pistol, and Poins. It is true that he turns every situation and almost every statement made to him into a joke, but these jokes are not brainless. There is method to his madness.
In one sense, Falstaff's jests are used to gloze over and sugar-coat his misdeeds -- for Old Jack is as much a representation of vice and temptation as he is the embodiment of comedy. He is a thief, a drunkard, a frequenter of "bawdy houses," and a compulsive liar. Prince Hal refers to him as "That villainous, abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff; that old white-bearded Satan" (Shakespeare "I Henry IV" 2.5.421-2). Of course, Prince Hal makes it obvious from his first soliloquy that he is merely using his Eastcheap tavern friends -- like the sun hiding behind a rack of clouds -- to make himself seem more illustrious when he casts them aside and ascends to the throne. Yet for all this, Falstaff remains a consort of the heir-apparent throughout Henry IV, Part I, and Henry IV, Part II.
Why, then, if Old Jack is such a personification of sin, is he also so endearing - to audiences and princes alike? It is a question posed by men down the centuries, and it even plagued the esteemed Samuel Johnson, who could hardly reconcile his own liking of Falstaff with his hatred of the knight's vice. Of Old Jack, he writes:
In the same vein, William Richardson goes so far as to term Falstaff: "the glutton...the epicure...the sot...the coward, the liar, the selfish and assenting parasite." However, neither Johnson nor Richardson can escape Falstaff's magnetism. They cannot bring themselves to pardon his glaring vices, but they equally cannot cast the Fat Knight aside as a boorish and unpleasant Satan-figure leading mankind down the paths of temptation. Falstaff is lovable, in spite of his faults, because he has the power to please. He is lively and jovial and witty and amusing. He is a pleasurable diversion from the storms of life, and, because of this, he is endearing.
Falstaff's comedic antics also serve as a shroud for his remarkable wisdom, intellect, and brutal honesty. In his book, Encounters with a Radical Erasmus, Peter Bietenholz states that Falstaff's "...life is folly carefully hedged with wisdom." He, in much the same way as Hamlet and Prince Hal, chooses to play the fool. This aspect of Falstaff's personality is perhaps best evidenced in two distinct scenes: his "catechism" on honor and his recruitment of troops for the wars, both in Henry IV, Part I. On honor, Falstaff says:
This "catechism" is quite the opposite of man's usual view of honor and valor. According to Arthur F. Kinney, Falstaff's speech reduces "[t]he scutcheon or heraldic shield of honour...from its aristocratic and military significance to an empty word...just as the word honor is reduced...into insignificance." This is arguably the only instance in which Falstaff "reduces" anything, because his life is built around such excess -- excess of pleasure, drink, food, and women. Nevertheless, this speech -- as unorthodox as it is -- illustrates the vast intellect and wise forethought that exists within the jest-sodden brain of Sir John Falstaff. He rushes into nothing -- not even into vice -- without a concerted study of the pros and cons it entails. Again, Falstaff says to Prince Hal's criticism of his ragamuffin troops: "Tut, tut, good enough to toss, food for powder, food for powder. They'll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men" (Shakespeare, I Henry IV 4.3.58-60). At first glance, this seems to be a dreadfully morbid and unfeeling statement. However, it is, in reality, Falstaff's brutally honest definition of the "art of war." In his view, this blood-thirsty art makes all men "food for powder." It is better, then, he says, to lose a herd of cowardly, probably law-breaking, ragamuffins than to lose the valiant heads of state that hold the nation together.
In Henry IV, Part II, Falstaff says of himself: "Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me: the brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent any thing that ends to laughter, more than I invent or is invented on me: I am not only witty myself, but the cause of with in other men" (Shakespeare, II Henry IV 1.2.6-11). This speech, it seems, has a double meaning. On the one hand, Falstaff appears to feel a twinge of self-pity over the fact that men from all ranks and social strata take the opportunity to jest about him or at him. On the other hand, he seems almost proud that he is the source of marvelous wit and the cause of such wit in other men. Through this twofold meaning, Shakespeare leaves his audiences with several questions.
Why should Falstaff be proud of this accomplishment? Why, after all, does he turn everything into jokes and witty puns? Why is he so doggedly funny? Perhaps Falstaff is funny because Falstaff cannot bear sadness, rejection, or loss. He does everything in his power to hold these tragedies at bay - to keep himself and all those around him happy in a world where little happiness is to be found. The jovial and seemingly eternal knight dies abruptly in Henry V -- never appearing again before the admiring audience -- after being rejected by his once boon companion Prince Hal, now King Henry. Mistress Quickly lays Falstaff's death directly at the palace door, saying: "The King has killed his heart" (Shakespeare, Henry V 2.1.79). It is here that Falstaff morphs from the comedic character he is known as into a portrait of abject tragedy -- left only with stale jests and "...with his lies and his debts." It is, for Falstaff's fans, a most disheartening end to his pleasing presence.
P. H. Davison, an editor of Shakespeare's works, has been quoted as saying: "No character in all drama has seemed so much a creature of real flesh and blood as this figment of a man's imagination." In this, he is entirely correct. Falstaff steps onto the stage as a man -- a jolly man given to indulging his pleasures; an intelligent man whose wisdom flames out with potent suddenness; a man prone to vices which are, in some sense, forgivable because of his pleasantness; and a man tragically unable to cope with rejection, sadness, and loss. However, in spite of all these connections to reality, Falstaff is larger than life, and it is this persona and undeniable charisma that have bound audience members to him for centuries. When he dies in ignominy, it is well to quote Prince Hal's epitaph: "Poor Jack, fare well. / I could have better spared a better man" (Shakespeare, I Henry IV 5.4.102-3). However, it is equally well to say that Falstaff can never die -- evidenced by Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18": "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee" (1674; line 14). Sir John Falstaff, for all his faults, has made an indelible impression upon the world, and, so long as Shakespeare's works live, so long lives he within the enchanted timelessness of the stage.
Trump as Falstaff:
American politics is always interesting, even as it is hard to understand or predict. The emergence of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for President was predicted by none of the pollsters, and they continue to forecast -- incorrectly -- his imminent demise. That’s because analysts extrapolate lessons from the past. But when a unique character comes along, statistics and past performance are no guide to the future. To understand the leadership issues at stake, we need to understand the political narrative that has enabled Trump to emerge.
Who exactly is Donald Trump? A brilliant businessman, yet associated with four bankruptcies? A self-made man or the son of money? An advocate of marriage with two divorces? A showman? An entertainer? A comedian? A buffoon? A blusterer? A huckster? A racist? All of the above? How can such a contradictory character be taken seriously as a leader by those at the bottom of the economic system? The press often seems at a loss as to how such a person can have such an appeal.
An illuminating parallel is the character of Sir John Falstaff who appeared in several Shakespeare plays. The court jester or fool is a recurring type in Shakespeare. Theater-goers who were too poor to pay for seats and thus stood on the ground in the front by the stage were drawn to these characters, and none was more popular than Falstaff.
Some critics have suggested that fools provided “an emotional vacation from the more serious business of the main action.” A better view is that characters like Falstaff enabled Shakespeare to shed deeper light on the main action and provide commentary on the other characters. Characters like Falstaff or Trump have a subversive potential, because they present a radically different worldview than those held by the other characters. They trample on appearances, political correctness and speak their mind, regardless of the consequences. They change their opinions with impunity when the wind shifts. The appearance of speaking what others dare not say gives them a seeming authenticity. They present no soothing illusions about the process in which they find themselves. They make fun of the other characters, for their fake seriousness, their pettiness, their fawning before the rich, and the fact that they are the all the more ridiculous because they do not see how ridiculous they are. Characters like Falstaff or Trump make outrageous statements and then when they are “misunderstood”, they blame the audience.
Because they have no ideology, they are hard to pin down. Hints of positions slip and twist and disappear like quicksilver. Feeling no necessity to say the right thing, fools often respond to substantive criticism with personal insults. If those insulted respond in kind, they reduce themselves to the level of the fool. “The great secret of the successful fool,” as Isaac Asimov pointed out, “is that he is no fool at all.” So the fool can at times appear intelligent, as when Trump points out that American has lost much of its economic greatness.
The problem for normal Presidential candidates is that the reverse is not true. So while Trump can get away with outrageous comments, and sudden reversals without apparent backlash at least in the short term, when normal candidates start doing outrageous things, like burning the tax code (Ron Paul) or smashing a cell-phone (Lindsay Graham), they appear to lose their intelligence and look ridiculous.
Successful fools are appreciated because they expose the vain, mock the pompous and deliver home truths—however uncomfortable they might be for those on the receiving end. “Being a fool gives you a license to say almost anything,” says Dr Oliver Double, who teaches drama at the University of Kent. “It is an exalted position.” Falstaff is a tantalizing mix of opposites, at once enterprising and lazy, gullible and witty, harmless and wicked, weak and resolute, duplicitous without malice, a liar without deceit, a gentleman without dignity, decency, or honor, and beloved despite enormous flaws.
Falstaff like Trump is a man of enormous energy and humor, a relish for life, with a continuing hint that he is aware of his own ridiculousness. There is a sense of animal enjoyment in everything he does. Trump makes Mrs. Clinton seem like a programmed automaton.
Falstaff is a liar, a braggart, a coward, and a glutton, and yet we are delighted, not offended. He acts to entertain others as much as to gratify himself. On stage, we do not object to the character of Falstaff from a moral point of view any more than we expect Mission Impossible to be a realistic depiction of law enforcement. Characters like Falstaff or Trump are not mere mouthpieces of ideas. They are vivid personalities, with a kind of childlike innocence of any mental or moral conflict, an intriguing convergence of conflicting traits.
Falstaff is saved by his humor; he lies, steals, boasts, with dazzling inconsistency and in such continuing good spirits that we are captivated by his vitality, even as we recognize his ridiculousness. It would be absurd to apply ethical standards to him. He is a creature of the elemental forces; a personification of energy, moving buoyantly and joyfully in a fundamentally corrupt world.
Though primarily a comic figure, Falstaff still embodies a kind of depth common to Shakespeare’s major characters. Vain and boastful, he spends most of his time associating with low society living on borrowed money. He leads others into trouble, and they eventually tire of him. Thus the problem for Trump as a Falstaff-like Presidential candidate is whether the appeal endure.
At first encounter with his jokes, Falstaff is funny. But with time and repetition, abrasive thrusts and insults don’t wear well. Humor can broaden into coarseness and buoyant animalism can come to be seen as greed. Moreover as a personal model of leadership, Trump epitomizes the obsolete 20th Century archetype of a swashbuckling tyrant who goes around firing people who don’t measure up to his standards or kowtow to him enough. (This too is among the flaws Trump ascribes to Mrs. Clinton, yet it is very much more his than hers.) We can admire his ability to point out the deficiencies of others without necessarily desiring his kind of leadership.
Yet just as Falstaff justifies the extraordinary role he plays in Shakespeare’s plays by covering with immortal ridicule the ideals of heroic manhood, could Trump succeed in covering with immortal ridicule the money-chasing charade that is the Presidential nomination process? Thus even Jon Stewart can admire Trump for calling out a visit of five presidential hopefuls -- Bush, Fiorina, Cruz, Rubio and Walker—to the Koch brothers, cap in hand, begging for money. Trump labeled them as puppets. Even if not elected or even electable, Trump may be serving, at least temporarily, an important leadership function.
Works Referenced
Bietenholz, Peter G. “The Taste of Erasmian Spice in Some Classics of Early Modern Literature.” Encounters with a Radical Erasmus: Erasmus’ Work as a Source of Radical
Thought in Early Modern Europe. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2009
Ellis, David. “Falstaff and the Problems of Comedy.” The Cambridge Quarterly. 34.2 (2005):95-108.
Johnson, Samuel. Johnson on Shakespeare. London: Henry Frowde, 1908..
Kinney, Arthur F. “Shakespeare’s Falstaff as Parody.” Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate. 12.2-3 (2002-2003): 105-125.
Richardson, William. “Essays on Shakespeare’s Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff, and on His Imitation of Female Characters, to which are added, Some General Observations on the Study of Shakespeare.” London: J. Murray, 1788.
Shakespeare, William. I Henry IV. The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition. 2nd ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009. 766-832. Print.
---. II Henry IV. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1994. 485-519.
---. Henry V. The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition. 2nd ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009. 843-909.
William Shakespeare had a genius for forging memorable characters. From the tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Romeo and Juliet. From the comedies: Shylock, Portia, and Robin Goodfellow. From the romances: Prospero and Leontes. From the histories, names which were famous (or infamous) in life: Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, and Henry V.
Each of these names carries with it the brilliance of Shakespeare's characterization, and beauty of his poetry, the eloquence of his prose, and the splendor of his plots. However, there is one character that stands entirely alone in this star-studded sphere of Shakespearean celebrity. His name is Sir John Falstaff. This stroke of genius became arguably the most beloved personage on the Elizabethan stage - so much so that he figured prominently in two plays (Henry IV, Part I and Henry IV, Part II), partially in a third (Henry V), and starred in another (The Merry Wives of Windsor). This very fact renders Falstaff the only Shakespearean character that transcends a particular sphere of action.
He starts out life in the histories, as Prince Hal's comedic cohort in Henry IV, Part I, but he moves, with remarkable ease, beyond this sphere into the realms of comedy, romance, and tragedy. In truth, Falstaff is perhaps the most "well-rounded" of Shakespeare's characters - in more ways than one. He cannot be placed into a single dramatic category because he is not merely comedy, vice, or tragedy, but he is in part all of these - amazingly dynamic and human. These aspects of Falstaff's character may best be seen through a look at his overt comedic antics - analyzing the subtle personality traits buried beneath.
On Falstaff: (for readers who are not familiar with him)
Falstaff is most often categorized as merely a comic character - introduced as the traditional humorous relief to the otherwise weighty plot of succession and familial strife in Henry IV, Part I. This is most certainly true. The Fat Knight does indeed spend "...most of his time in the Boar's Head Tavern carousing and drinking sack...wanting simply to enjoy life without the burden of formality, pageantry or protocol" ("The World According to John Falstaff" par. 1). However, this generalization is far too small an idea to contain him. In truth, Falstaff is much more than a mere carousing, comedic fool.
In The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde's character Jack Worthing details the common distinction between a clever man ad a fool, saying: "I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left." Ironically, Shakespeare's plays are absolutely littered with paradoxically clever fools -- from Feste in Twelfth Night, to Lancelot in The Merchant of Venice, to Prince Hamlet himself who plays the fool for his own purposes. Falstaff belongs to this category of clever fools. David Ellis makes this point about Falstaff, saying: "He is quite definitely at times the Elizabethan clown, and Shakespeare leaves lots of space in the writing for comic business of a clown-like variety; but he is also a courtly wit." It is this self-same intelligent wit that distinguishes Falstaff from the generic revelers in his posse -- Bardolph, Peto, Pistol, and Poins. It is true that he turns every situation and almost every statement made to him into a joke, but these jokes are not brainless. There is method to his madness.
In one sense, Falstaff's jests are used to gloze over and sugar-coat his misdeeds -- for Old Jack is as much a representation of vice and temptation as he is the embodiment of comedy. He is a thief, a drunkard, a frequenter of "bawdy houses," and a compulsive liar. Prince Hal refers to him as "That villainous, abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff; that old white-bearded Satan" (Shakespeare "I Henry IV" 2.5.421-2). Of course, Prince Hal makes it obvious from his first soliloquy that he is merely using his Eastcheap tavern friends -- like the sun hiding behind a rack of clouds -- to make himself seem more illustrious when he casts them aside and ascends to the throne. Yet for all this, Falstaff remains a consort of the heir-apparent throughout Henry IV, Part I, and Henry IV, Part II.
Why, then, if Old Jack is such a personification of sin, is he also so endearing - to audiences and princes alike? It is a question posed by men down the centuries, and it even plagued the esteemed Samuel Johnson, who could hardly reconcile his own liking of Falstaff with his hatred of the knight's vice. Of Old Jack, he writes:
"But Falstaff unimitated, unimitable Falstaff, how shall I describe thee? Thou compound of sense and vice; of sense which may be admired but not esteemed, of vice which may be despised, but hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with those faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief, and a glutton, a coward, and a boaster, always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous and insult the defenceless. At once obsequious and malignant, he satirises in their absence those whom he lives by flattering....Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despicable, makes himself necessary to the prince that despises him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, perpetual gaiety, by an unfailing power of exciting laughter...It must be observed that he is stained with no enormous or sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be borne for his mirth"
In the same vein, William Richardson goes so far as to term Falstaff: "the glutton...the epicure...the sot...the coward, the liar, the selfish and assenting parasite." However, neither Johnson nor Richardson can escape Falstaff's magnetism. They cannot bring themselves to pardon his glaring vices, but they equally cannot cast the Fat Knight aside as a boorish and unpleasant Satan-figure leading mankind down the paths of temptation. Falstaff is lovable, in spite of his faults, because he has the power to please. He is lively and jovial and witty and amusing. He is a pleasurable diversion from the storms of life, and, because of this, he is endearing.
Falstaff's comedic antics also serve as a shroud for his remarkable wisdom, intellect, and brutal honesty. In his book, Encounters with a Radical Erasmus, Peter Bietenholz states that Falstaff's "...life is folly carefully hedged with wisdom." He, in much the same way as Hamlet and Prince Hal, chooses to play the fool. This aspect of Falstaff's personality is perhaps best evidenced in two distinct scenes: his "catechism" on honor and his recruitment of troops for the wars, both in Henry IV, Part I. On honor, Falstaff says:
"What is honour? A word. What is in that word 'honour'? What is that 'honour'? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o'Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. 'Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism." (Shakespeare, I Henry IV 5.1.133-9)
This "catechism" is quite the opposite of man's usual view of honor and valor. According to Arthur F. Kinney, Falstaff's speech reduces "[t]he scutcheon or heraldic shield of honour...from its aristocratic and military significance to an empty word...just as the word honor is reduced...into insignificance." This is arguably the only instance in which Falstaff "reduces" anything, because his life is built around such excess -- excess of pleasure, drink, food, and women. Nevertheless, this speech -- as unorthodox as it is -- illustrates the vast intellect and wise forethought that exists within the jest-sodden brain of Sir John Falstaff. He rushes into nothing -- not even into vice -- without a concerted study of the pros and cons it entails. Again, Falstaff says to Prince Hal's criticism of his ragamuffin troops: "Tut, tut, good enough to toss, food for powder, food for powder. They'll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men" (Shakespeare, I Henry IV 4.3.58-60). At first glance, this seems to be a dreadfully morbid and unfeeling statement. However, it is, in reality, Falstaff's brutally honest definition of the "art of war." In his view, this blood-thirsty art makes all men "food for powder." It is better, then, he says, to lose a herd of cowardly, probably law-breaking, ragamuffins than to lose the valiant heads of state that hold the nation together.
In Henry IV, Part II, Falstaff says of himself: "Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me: the brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent any thing that ends to laughter, more than I invent or is invented on me: I am not only witty myself, but the cause of with in other men" (Shakespeare, II Henry IV 1.2.6-11). This speech, it seems, has a double meaning. On the one hand, Falstaff appears to feel a twinge of self-pity over the fact that men from all ranks and social strata take the opportunity to jest about him or at him. On the other hand, he seems almost proud that he is the source of marvelous wit and the cause of such wit in other men. Through this twofold meaning, Shakespeare leaves his audiences with several questions.
Why should Falstaff be proud of this accomplishment? Why, after all, does he turn everything into jokes and witty puns? Why is he so doggedly funny? Perhaps Falstaff is funny because Falstaff cannot bear sadness, rejection, or loss. He does everything in his power to hold these tragedies at bay - to keep himself and all those around him happy in a world where little happiness is to be found. The jovial and seemingly eternal knight dies abruptly in Henry V -- never appearing again before the admiring audience -- after being rejected by his once boon companion Prince Hal, now King Henry. Mistress Quickly lays Falstaff's death directly at the palace door, saying: "The King has killed his heart" (Shakespeare, Henry V 2.1.79). It is here that Falstaff morphs from the comedic character he is known as into a portrait of abject tragedy -- left only with stale jests and "...with his lies and his debts." It is, for Falstaff's fans, a most disheartening end to his pleasing presence.
P. H. Davison, an editor of Shakespeare's works, has been quoted as saying: "No character in all drama has seemed so much a creature of real flesh and blood as this figment of a man's imagination." In this, he is entirely correct. Falstaff steps onto the stage as a man -- a jolly man given to indulging his pleasures; an intelligent man whose wisdom flames out with potent suddenness; a man prone to vices which are, in some sense, forgivable because of his pleasantness; and a man tragically unable to cope with rejection, sadness, and loss. However, in spite of all these connections to reality, Falstaff is larger than life, and it is this persona and undeniable charisma that have bound audience members to him for centuries. When he dies in ignominy, it is well to quote Prince Hal's epitaph: "Poor Jack, fare well. / I could have better spared a better man" (Shakespeare, I Henry IV 5.4.102-3). However, it is equally well to say that Falstaff can never die -- evidenced by Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18": "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee" (1674; line 14). Sir John Falstaff, for all his faults, has made an indelible impression upon the world, and, so long as Shakespeare's works live, so long lives he within the enchanted timelessness of the stage.
Trump as Falstaff:
American politics is always interesting, even as it is hard to understand or predict. The emergence of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for President was predicted by none of the pollsters, and they continue to forecast -- incorrectly -- his imminent demise. That’s because analysts extrapolate lessons from the past. But when a unique character comes along, statistics and past performance are no guide to the future. To understand the leadership issues at stake, we need to understand the political narrative that has enabled Trump to emerge.
Who exactly is Donald Trump? A brilliant businessman, yet associated with four bankruptcies? A self-made man or the son of money? An advocate of marriage with two divorces? A showman? An entertainer? A comedian? A buffoon? A blusterer? A huckster? A racist? All of the above? How can such a contradictory character be taken seriously as a leader by those at the bottom of the economic system? The press often seems at a loss as to how such a person can have such an appeal.
An illuminating parallel is the character of Sir John Falstaff who appeared in several Shakespeare plays. The court jester or fool is a recurring type in Shakespeare. Theater-goers who were too poor to pay for seats and thus stood on the ground in the front by the stage were drawn to these characters, and none was more popular than Falstaff.
Some critics have suggested that fools provided “an emotional vacation from the more serious business of the main action.” A better view is that characters like Falstaff enabled Shakespeare to shed deeper light on the main action and provide commentary on the other characters. Characters like Falstaff or Trump have a subversive potential, because they present a radically different worldview than those held by the other characters. They trample on appearances, political correctness and speak their mind, regardless of the consequences. They change their opinions with impunity when the wind shifts. The appearance of speaking what others dare not say gives them a seeming authenticity. They present no soothing illusions about the process in which they find themselves. They make fun of the other characters, for their fake seriousness, their pettiness, their fawning before the rich, and the fact that they are the all the more ridiculous because they do not see how ridiculous they are. Characters like Falstaff or Trump make outrageous statements and then when they are “misunderstood”, they blame the audience.
Because they have no ideology, they are hard to pin down. Hints of positions slip and twist and disappear like quicksilver. Feeling no necessity to say the right thing, fools often respond to substantive criticism with personal insults. If those insulted respond in kind, they reduce themselves to the level of the fool. “The great secret of the successful fool,” as Isaac Asimov pointed out, “is that he is no fool at all.” So the fool can at times appear intelligent, as when Trump points out that American has lost much of its economic greatness.
The problem for normal Presidential candidates is that the reverse is not true. So while Trump can get away with outrageous comments, and sudden reversals without apparent backlash at least in the short term, when normal candidates start doing outrageous things, like burning the tax code (Ron Paul) or smashing a cell-phone (Lindsay Graham), they appear to lose their intelligence and look ridiculous.
Successful fools are appreciated because they expose the vain, mock the pompous and deliver home truths—however uncomfortable they might be for those on the receiving end. “Being a fool gives you a license to say almost anything,” says Dr Oliver Double, who teaches drama at the University of Kent. “It is an exalted position.” Falstaff is a tantalizing mix of opposites, at once enterprising and lazy, gullible and witty, harmless and wicked, weak and resolute, duplicitous without malice, a liar without deceit, a gentleman without dignity, decency, or honor, and beloved despite enormous flaws.
Falstaff like Trump is a man of enormous energy and humor, a relish for life, with a continuing hint that he is aware of his own ridiculousness. There is a sense of animal enjoyment in everything he does. Trump makes Mrs. Clinton seem like a programmed automaton.
Falstaff is a liar, a braggart, a coward, and a glutton, and yet we are delighted, not offended. He acts to entertain others as much as to gratify himself. On stage, we do not object to the character of Falstaff from a moral point of view any more than we expect Mission Impossible to be a realistic depiction of law enforcement. Characters like Falstaff or Trump are not mere mouthpieces of ideas. They are vivid personalities, with a kind of childlike innocence of any mental or moral conflict, an intriguing convergence of conflicting traits.
Falstaff is saved by his humor; he lies, steals, boasts, with dazzling inconsistency and in such continuing good spirits that we are captivated by his vitality, even as we recognize his ridiculousness. It would be absurd to apply ethical standards to him. He is a creature of the elemental forces; a personification of energy, moving buoyantly and joyfully in a fundamentally corrupt world.
Though primarily a comic figure, Falstaff still embodies a kind of depth common to Shakespeare’s major characters. Vain and boastful, he spends most of his time associating with low society living on borrowed money. He leads others into trouble, and they eventually tire of him. Thus the problem for Trump as a Falstaff-like Presidential candidate is whether the appeal endure.
At first encounter with his jokes, Falstaff is funny. But with time and repetition, abrasive thrusts and insults don’t wear well. Humor can broaden into coarseness and buoyant animalism can come to be seen as greed. Moreover as a personal model of leadership, Trump epitomizes the obsolete 20th Century archetype of a swashbuckling tyrant who goes around firing people who don’t measure up to his standards or kowtow to him enough. (This too is among the flaws Trump ascribes to Mrs. Clinton, yet it is very much more his than hers.) We can admire his ability to point out the deficiencies of others without necessarily desiring his kind of leadership.
Yet just as Falstaff justifies the extraordinary role he plays in Shakespeare’s plays by covering with immortal ridicule the ideals of heroic manhood, could Trump succeed in covering with immortal ridicule the money-chasing charade that is the Presidential nomination process? Thus even Jon Stewart can admire Trump for calling out a visit of five presidential hopefuls -- Bush, Fiorina, Cruz, Rubio and Walker—to the Koch brothers, cap in hand, begging for money. Trump labeled them as puppets. Even if not elected or even electable, Trump may be serving, at least temporarily, an important leadership function.
Works Referenced
Bietenholz, Peter G. “The Taste of Erasmian Spice in Some Classics of Early Modern Literature.” Encounters with a Radical Erasmus: Erasmus’ Work as a Source of Radical
Thought in Early Modern Europe. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2009
Ellis, David. “Falstaff and the Problems of Comedy.” The Cambridge Quarterly. 34.2 (2005):95-108.
Johnson, Samuel. Johnson on Shakespeare. London: Henry Frowde, 1908..
Kinney, Arthur F. “Shakespeare’s Falstaff as Parody.” Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate. 12.2-3 (2002-2003): 105-125.
Richardson, William. “Essays on Shakespeare’s Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff, and on His Imitation of Female Characters, to which are added, Some General Observations on the Study of Shakespeare.” London: J. Murray, 1788.
Shakespeare, William. I Henry IV. The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition. 2nd ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009. 766-832. Print.
---. II Henry IV. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1994. 485-519.
---. Henry V. The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition. 2nd ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009. 843-909.
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