Falstaff: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Sir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare. Round and glorious, tradition holds that Shakespeare wrote the part for his second comedian, a fat man, John Heminge, who played a bold, bawdy humor of a John Candy sort. An alternative theory is that Falstaff was written for Will Kemp, the clown of Shakespeare's company. The original actor was later succeeded by John Lowin, another portly comic actor. Flush with flatulent humor, Falstaff still managed to embody a kind of depth common to Shakespeare's tricky comedy. In Act II, Scene III of Henry V, his death is described by the character "Hostess", possibly the bar-lady Mistress Quickly, who describes his body in terms that echo the death of Socrates.

Appearances

He appears in the following plays:

• Henry IV, part 1
• Henry IV, part 2
• The Merry Wives of Windsor

He is mentioned in Henry V but has no lines, nor is it directed that he appear on stage. However, many stage and film adaptations have seen it necessary to include Falstaff for the insight he provides into King Henry V's character. The most notable examples in cinema are Laurence Olivier's 1946 movie and Kenneth Branagh's 1989 movie, both of which draw additional material from the Henry IV plays.

Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight (1965) compiles the two Henry IV plays into a single, condensed storyline, while adding a handful of scenes from Henry V. The movie, also known as Falstaff, features Welles himself in the title role.

Shakespeare based Falstaff upon Sir John Oldcastle, historically known to be Prince Hal's companion. However, Oldcastle was unlike Falstaff in many ways; the cleverness and wit which characterize him are Shakespeare's invention. During the first performances of 1 Henry IV, Falstaff was in fact called Oldcastle, but protests from his descendants—the influential Cobham family—forced Shakespeare to change the name. In his earlier play, Henry VI, part 1, he had included a cowardly character named Fastolfe. Changing a few letters gave Shakespeare the name by which his invention is known today. Worried, perhaps, that this change would not placate his detractors, Shakespeare made a direct comment on the situation, in the concluding lines of 2 Henry IV:

If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man.

Giuseppe Verdi's last opera, Falstaff, with libretto by Arrigo Boito, is an opera buffa, based primarily on The Merry Wives of Windsor.