Heaven
be my witness you do, if you suspect me in any dishonesty.
-Mistress Ford
The Merry Wives Of Windsor Act IV scene ii line 123
I’ve been trying to do some reading in my Shakespeare
criticism books in the past few days to
see if I can figure out what is so great about this Falstaff character. So
it's fortuitous that I randomly picked a line from Merry Wives today
because, after all, this is a play that was specifically written as a vehicle
for Falstaff. But I believe I managed to pick a scene without Sir John in it.
Oh well, I think I’ll talk about my search anyway.
Since it is Harold Bloom more than any of them who seems to
think that Sir John Falstaff is such an incredibly important character, I
started with his book and I’ve got to tell you that Professor Bloom is either
on a higher level of thought processing, or just bad at explicating ideas (I’ve
got to believe it’s the former), because I have a very hard time following his
train of thought. So I didn’t read his whole chapter on Henry IV. Instead I
switched over to the other Harold, Harold Goddard. And he’s a little easier to
read. Not funny papers easy, mind you, but definitely easier than Harold number
one. But I don’t have any conclusions yet. I haven’t gotten all of the way
through Goddard yet, so I’ve got more reading to do. And of course I still have
Marjorie Garber left, and there might be some stuff in the Asimov book. And I
have some other books that have Henry IV analysis. So we’re not done yet. Bottom
line, I’ll have to get back to you on this Falstaff question, but sooner or
later I should be able to tell you what makes Falstaff such a great character.
And I’m going to tell you in language you can understand, not Bloomese.
So, in the meantime should we spend a few minutes on Mistress Ford’s line?
Nah.
These are the four books that I rely on for a lot of my info. Each one of them has a chapter for each of the plays, and each one of them has a slightly different approach to talking about the plays. I have a lot of other books, but none that are as comprehensive as these four.
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