The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [2713]
What then can we say, but that it is clearly the lyes only, not the Cowardice, of Falstaff which are here detected: Lyes, to which what there may be of Cowardice is incidental only, improving indeed the Jest, but by no means the real Business of the scene.—And now also we may more clearly discern the true force and meaning of Poin's prediction. “The Jest will be,” says he, “the incomprehensible Lyes that this fat rogue will tell us: How thirty at least he fought with:—and in the reproof of this lyes the jest”; That is, in the detection of these lyes simply; for as to Courage, he had never ventured to insinuate more than that Falstaff would not fight longer than he saw cause: Poins was in expectation indeed that Falstaff would fall into some dishonour on this occasion; an event highly probable: But this was not, it seems, to be the principal ground of their mirth, but the detection of those incomprehensible lyes, which he boldly predicts, upon his knowledge of Falstaff's character, this fat rogue, not Coward, would tell them. This prediction therefore, and the completion of it, go only to the impeachment of Falstaff's veracity, and not of his Courage. “These lyes,” says the Prince, “are like the father of them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable.—Why, thou clay-brained gutts, thou knotty-pated fool; how couldst thou know these men in Kendal Green, when it was so dark thou couldst not see thy hand? Come, tell us your reason.”
“Poins. Come, your reason, Jack, your reason.”
Again, says the Prince, “Hear how a plain Tale shall put you down—What trick, what device, what starting hole canst thou now find out to hide thee from this open and apparent shame?”
“Poins. Come, let's hear, Jack, what trick hast thou now?”
All this clearly refers to Falstaff's lyes only as such; and the objection seems to be, that he had not told them well, and with sufficient skill and probability. Indeed nothing seems to have been required of Falstaff at any period of time but a good evasion. The truth is, that there is so much mirth, and so little of malice or imposition in his fictions, that they may for the most part be considered as mere strains of humour and exercises of wit, impeachable only for defect, when that happens, of the quality from which they are principally derived. Upon this occasion Falstaff's evasions fail him; he is at the end of his invention; and it seems fair that, in defect of wit, the law should pass upon him, and that he should undergo the temporary censure of that Cowardice which he could not pass off by any evasion whatever. The best he could think of, was instinct: He was indeed a Coward upon instinct; in that respect like a valiant lion, who would not touch the true Prince. It would have been a vain attempt, the reader will easily perceive, in Falstaff, to have gone upon other ground, and to have aimed at justifying his Courage by a serious vindication: This would have been to have mistaken the true point of argument: It was his lyes, not his Courage, which was really in question. There was besides no getting out of the toils in which he had entangled himself: If he was not, he ought at least, by his own shewing, to have been at half-sword with a dozen of them two hours together; whereas, it unfortunately appears, and that too evidently to be evaded, that he had run with singular celerity from two, after the exchange of a few blows only. This precluded Falstaff from all rational defence in his own person;—but it has not precluded me, who am not the advocate of his lyes, but of his Courage.
But there are other singularities in