Falstaff

Play

Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, The Merry Wives of Windsor

Summary

Sir John Falstaff is Shakespeare's supreme comic creation: a fat, cowardly, endlessly witty knight who serves as Prince Hal's disreputable tavern companion in Eastcheap. He embodies carnivalesque life — appetite, pleasure, and self-preservation — against the world of honour, duty, and war; in 2 Henry IV his rogueries deepen into pathos, and his public rejection by the newly crowned Henry V is one of the most dramatically charged moments in the histories. He reappears, diminished and domestically humiliated, in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Notable Quotations

"The better part of valour is discretion." *(1H4, 5.4)*

"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." *(1H4, 5.1)*

"I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men." *(2H4, 1.2)*

"Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world." *(1H4, 2.4)*

"I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers." *(Henry V's rejection of Falstaff, 2H4, 5.5)*

Cross-references

• Henry IV, Part 1 — the play
• Henry IV, Part 2 — the play
• The Merry Wives of Windsor — the play
• Histories — the genre
• character_prince_hal — Hal, his tavern companion and later rejector
• character_shallow — Justice Shallow, whom Falstaff exploits in 2H4
• character_hostess_quickly — Mistress Quickly, whom Falstaff exploits at the Boar's Head
• character_pistol_henry5 — Pistol, one of Falstaff's followers