The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [2705]
Whilst in the battle of Shrewsbury he is exhorting and encouraging the Prince who is engaged with the Spirit Percy—“Well said Hal, to him Hal,”—he is himself attacked by the Fiend Douglas. There was no match; nothing remained but death or stratagem; grinning honour, or laughing life. But an expedient offers, a mirthful one,—Take your choice Falstaff, a point of honour, or a point of drollery.—It could not be a question;—Falstaff falls, Douglas is cheated, and the world laughs. But does he fall like a Coward? No, like a buffoon only; the superior principle prevails, and Falstaff lives by a stratagem growing out of his character, to prove himself no counterfeit, to jest, to be employed, and to fight again. That Falstaff valued himself, and expected to be valued by others, upon this piece of saving wit, is plain. It was a stratagem, it is true; it argued presence of mind; but it was moreover, what he most liked, a very laughable joke; and as such he considers it; for he continues to counterfeit after the danger is over, that he may also deceive the Prince, and improve the event into more laughter. He might, for ought that appears, have concealed the transaction; the Prince was too earnestly engaged for observation; he might have formed a thousand excuses for his fall; but he lies still and listens to the pronouncing of his epitaph by the Prince with all the waggish glee and levity of his character. The circumstance of his wounding Percy in the thigh, and carrying the dead body on his back like luggage, is indecent but not cowardly. The declaring, though in jest, that he killed Percy, seems to me idle, but it is not meant or calculated for imposition; it is spoken to the Prince himself, the man in the world who could not be, or be supposed to be, imposed on. But we must hear, whether to the purpose or not, what it is that Harry has to say over the remains of his old friend.
P. Hen. What, old acquaintance! could not all this flesh
Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell!
I could have better spared a better man.
Oh! I shou'd have a heavy miss of thee,
If I were much in love with vanity.
Death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day,
Tho' many a dearer in this bloody fray;
Imbowelled will I see thee by and by;
Till then, in blood by noble Percy lye.
This is wonderfully proper for the occasion; it is affectionate, it is pathetic, yet it remembers his vanities, and, with a faint gleam of recollected mirth, even his plumpness and corpulency; but it is a pleasantry softned and rendered even vapid by tenderness, and it goes off in the sickly effort of a miserable pun.—But to our immediate purpose,—why is not his Cowardice remembered too? what, no surprize that Falstaff should lye by the side of the noble Percy in the bed of honour! No reflection that flight, though unfettered by disease, could not avail; that fear could not find a subterfuge from death? Shall his corpulency and his vanities be recorded, and his more characteristic quality of Cowardice, even in the moment that it particularly demanded notice and reflection, be forgotten? If by sparing a better man be here meant a better soldier, there is no doubt but there were better Soldiers in the army, more active, more young, more principled, more knowing; but none, it seems, taken for all in all, more acceptable. The comparative better used here leaves to Falstaff the praise at least of good; and to be a good soldier, is to be a great way from Coward. But Falstaff's goodness, in this sort, appears to have been not only enough to redeem him from disgrace, but to mark him with reputation; if I was to add with eminence and distinction, the funeral honours which are intended his obsequies, and his being bid,