The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [2702]
furious Knight and valorous enemy.—Let us look to the fact. If this incident should be found to contain any striking proof of Falstaff's Courage and Military fame, his defence against Lancaster will be stronger than the reader has even a right to demand. Falstaff encounters Coleville in the field, and, having demanded his name, is ready to assail him; but Coleville asks him if he is not Sir John Falstaff; thereby implying a purpose of surrender. Falstaff will not so much as furnish him with a pretence, and answers only, that he is as good a man. “Do you yield Sir, or shall I sweat for you?” “I think,” says Coleville, “you are Sir John Falstaff, and in that thought yield me.” This fact, and the incidents with which it is accompanied, speak loudly; it seems to have been contrived by the author on purpose to take off a rebuke so authoritatively made by Lancaster. The fact is set before our eyes to confute the censure: Lancaster himself seems to give up his charge, tho' not his ill will; for upon Falstaff's asking leave to pass through Gloucestershire, and artfully desiring that, upon Lancaster's return to Court, he might stand well in his report, Lancaster seems in his answer to mingle malice and acquittal. “Fare ye well, Falstaff, I in my condition shall better speak of you than you deserve.” “I would,” says Falstaff, who is left behind in the scene, “You had but the wit; 'twere better than your Dukedom.” He continues on the stage some time chewing the cud of dishonour, which, with all his facility, he cannot well swallow. “Good faith” says he, accounting to himself as well as he could for the injurious conduct of Lancaster, “this sober-blooded boy does not love me.” This he might well believe. “A man,” says he, “cannot make him laugh; there's none of these demure boys come to any proof; but that's no marvel, they drink no sack.”—Falstaff then it seems knew no drinker of sack who was a Coward; at least the instance was not home and familiar to him.—“They all,” says he, “fall into a kind of Male green sickness, and are generally fools and Cowards.” Anger has a privilege, and I think Falstaff has a right to turn the tables upon Lancaster if he can; but Lancaster was certainly no fool, and I think upon the whole no Coward; yet the Male green sickness which Falstaff talks of seems to have infected his manners and aspect, and taken from him all external indication of gallantry and courage. He behaves in the battle of Shrewsbury beyond the promise of his complexion and deportment: “By heaven thou hast deceived me Lancaster,” says Harry, “I did not think thee Lord of such a spirit!” Nor was his father less surprized “at his holding Lord Percy at the point with lustier maintenance than he did look for from such an unripe warrior.” But how well and unexpectedly soever he might have behaved upon that occasion, he does not seem to have been of a temper to trust fortune too much or too often with his safety; therefore it is that, in order to keep the event in his own hands, he loads the Die, in the present case, with villainy and deceit: The event however he piously ascribes, like a wise and prudent youth as he is, without paying that worship to himself which he so justly merits, to the special favour and interposition of Heaven.
“Strike up your drums, pursue the scattered stray.
Heaven, and not we, have safely fought to-day.”
But the profane Falstaff, on the contrary, less informed and less studious of supernatural things, imputes the whole of this conduct to thin potations, and the not drinking largely of good and excellent sherris; and so little doubt does he seem to entertain of the Cowardice and ill disposition of this youth, that he stands devising causes, and casting about for an hypothesis on which the whole may be physically explained and accounted for;—but I shall leave him and Doctor Cadogan to settle that point as they may.
The only serious charge against Falstaff's Courage, we have now at large examined; it came from great authority, from the Commander in chief, and was meant as chastisement and rebuke; but it appears