The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [2695]
baser metal. But this is not the point: The arms were doubtless genuine; they were borne by his Grandfather, and are proofs of an antient gentility; a gentility doubtless, in former periods, connected with wealth and possessions, tho' the gold of the family might have been transmuting by degrees, and perhaps, in the hands of Falstaff, converted into little better than copper. This observation is made on the supposition of Falstaff's being considered as the head of the family, which I think however he ought not to be. It appears rather as if he ought to be taken in the light of a cadet or younger brother; which the familiar appellation of John, “the only one (as he says) given him by his brothers and sisters,” seems to indicate. Be this as it may, we find he is able, in spite of dissipation, to keep up a certain state and dignity of appearance; retaining no less than four, if not five, followers or men servants in his train. He appears also to have had apartments in town, and, by his invitations of Master Gower to dinner and to supper, a regular table: And one may infer farther from the Prince's question, on his return from Wales, to Bardolph, “Is your master here in London,” that he had likewise a house in the country. Slight proofs it must be confessed, yet the inferences are so probable, so buoyant, in their own nature, that they may well rest on them. That he did not lodge at the Tavern is clear from the circumstances of the arrest. These various occasions of expence,—servants, taverns, houses, and whores,—necessarily imply that Falstaff must have had some funds which are not brought immediately under our notice. That these funds were not however adequate to his style of living is plain: Perhaps his train may be considered only as incumbrances, which the pride of family and the habit of former opulence might have brought upon his present poverty: I do not mean absolute poverty, but call it so as relative to his expence. To have “but seven groats and two-pence in his purse” and a page to bear it, is truly ridiculous; and it is for that reason we become so familiar with its contents, “He can find,” he says, “no remedy for this consumption of the purse, borrowing does but linger and linger it out; but the disease is incurable.” It might well be deemed so in his course of dissipation: But I shall presently suggest one source at least of his supply much more constant and honourable than that of borrowing. But the condition of Falstaff as to opulence or poverty is not very material to my purpose: It is enough if his birth was distinguished, and his youth noted for gallantry and accomplishments. To the first I have spoken, and as for the latter we shall not be at a loss when we remember that “he was in his youth a page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk”; a situation at that time sought for by young men of the best families and first fortune. The house of every great noble was at that period a kind of Military school; and it is probable that Falstaff was singularly adroit at his exercises: “He broke Schoggan's head,” (some boisterous fencer I suppose) “when he was but a crack thus high.” Shallow remembers him as notedly skilful at backsword; and he was at that period, according to his own humourous account, “scarcely an eagle's talon in the waist, and could have crept thro' an alderman's thumb ring.” Even at the age at which he is exhibited to us, we find him foundering, as he calls it, nine score and odd miles, with wonderful expedition, to join the army of Prince John of Lancaster; and declaring, after the surrender of Coleville, that “had he but a belly of any indifferency, he were simply the most active fellow in Europe.” Nor ought we here to pass over his Knighthood without notice. It was, I grant, intended by the author as a dignity which, like his Courage and his wit, was to be debased; his knighthood by low situations, his Courage by circumstances and imputations of cowardice, and his wit by buffoonery. But how are we to suppose this honour was acquired? By that very Courage, it should seem, which we so obstinately deny