Shakespeare studies: a new interpretation of Falstaff's dying words

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Richardson, Locke

Shakespeare studies

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2809

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Shakespeare Studies

LOCKE Ri

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A. New Interpret;

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FalstafPs Dying Words

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DR. WILLIAM J. ROLFE writes : —

I have serious doubts whether this ex
planation of Falstaff s habit of quoting
Scripture, though very ingenious and
plausible, is correct. The interpretation
of the old sinner's death-bed utterances,
however, seems to me by far the best that
has ever been suggested, and I shall be
surprised if it is not generally approved
by Shakespeare scholars and critics.

THE LOTUS PRESS, N. Y.

'HAKESPEARE'S characters have
a vital and perennial interest, in
that they are idealized images of
our common human nature.
Hence, like the real people of the world, they
have the trick of unconsciously revealing glimpses
of their past history : they bear the stamp of
other days.

Sir John Falstaff is a shining illustration of this
truth. What, for example, is to be gathered as
to his past life from his remarkable knowledge
of the Bible, of which he makes a more copious
use — in literal quotation, in metaphor, and in
subtle allusion — than any other of Shakespeare's
characters ?

One point is established beyond question,
namely, that his youth was passed in a religious
atmosphere, probably austerely religious; against
which, by the way, the reaction of later years
was not altogether unnatural.

To be more specific : —

As a boy, Jack Falstaff was, according to his
own unconscious testimony, accustomed to the
religious observances of a well-ordered home, —
grace before meat, and family prayers, — being there
taught the nobility of truth-telling and honesty.
He was, no doubt, taken regularly to church,
probably " creeping like snail, unwillingly"; he
was a choir-boy, versed in the Creed and the
Catechism ; he was well instructed in Christian
doctrines and virtues, — the need of repentance ;
the scheme of salvation ; the duty of fasting and
prayer ; and the certainty of future rewards and
punishments, — his prseternaturally sensitive and
lively imagination being deeply and lastingly im
pressed by an ever-present vision of the King of
Terrors and the fires of Hell.

Although this impression of his character is
largely due to unconscious revelation, yet it is
amply authorized by the subjoined passages,
which are maimed, of course, by being torn from
their context. Familiar as we are with the Bible
there will be no difficulty in supplying the texts
which inspired FalstafFs wit.

4

Henry the Fourth —
Part L

" I'll follow, as they say, for reward. He that
rewards me, God reward him ! If I do grow
great, I'll grow less ; for I'll purge, and leave
sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should do."

"No, I'll be sworn, I make as good use of thy
face, as many a man doth of a death's-head or a
memento mori. I never see thy face but I think
upon hell-fire, and Dives that lived in purple ; for
there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If
thou wert any way given to virtue, I would
swear by thy face ; my oath should be, ' By this
fire, that's God's angel.' But thou art altogether
given over, and wert indeed, but for the light in
thy face, the son of utter darkness."

"Thou art an everlasting bon- fire -light."
[Cf. * ' The primrose path to the everlasting bon
fire."]

"Well, I doubt not but to die a fair death for
all this."

"Dost thou hear, Hal? thou knowest, in the
state of innocency Adam fell ; and what should
poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villainy ?
Thou seest I have more flesh than another man ;
and therefore more frailty."

"Grace thou wilt have none, not so much as
will serve to be prologue to an egg and butter."

"Well, God give thee the spirit of persuasion,
and him the ears of profiting, that what thou
speakest may move, and what he hears may be
believed."

"If they speak more or less than truth, they
are villains, and the sons of darkness."

"A bad world I say. I would I were a weaver;
I could sing psalms or anything."

P. Hen. " Why Thou owest God a death."

Pal. "What need I be so forward with him
that calls not on me. Can honour set to a leg ?
No : or take away the grief of a wound ? No.
Honour hath no skill in surgery then ? No.
What is honour ? A word. What is that word
honour ? Air. A trim reckoning ! Who hath
it ? He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel
it ? No. Doth he hear it ? No. Is it insensible
then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live
with the living ? No. Why ? Detraction will
not suffer it. — Therefore, I'll none of it : honour is
a mere scutcheon ; and so ends my catechism."

"And now my whole charge consists of slaves
as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where
the glutton's dogs licked his sores ; that you
would think that I had a hundred and fifty tattered
prodigals lately come from swine-keeping, from
eating draff and husks."

"If to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh's
lean kine are to be loved."

"If then the tree may be known by the fruit,
as the fruit by the tree, then, peremptorily I speak
it, there is virtue in that Falstaff."

"This pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth
defile."

"Hostess, clap to the doors : watch to-night,
pray to-morrow."

6

P. Hen. "Now, my masters, for a true face,
and good conscience."

FaL "Both which I have had ; but their date
is out."

Henry the Fourth —
Part IL

"For my voice, I have lost it with hallooing,
and singing of anthems."

"His face is Lucifer's privy-kitchen, where
he doth nothing but roast malt-worms. For the
boy, — there is a good angel about him, but the
devil outbids him too."

"Let him be damned, like the glutton ! pray
God his tongue be hotter."

"Thy mother's son! like enough; and thy
father's shadow : so the son of the female is the
shadow of the male : it is often so, indeed ; but
not of the father's substance."

"Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to
this vice of lying ! "

"I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so
patient"

The Merry Wives of Windsor.

"I never prospered since I foreswore myself
at primero. Well, if my wind were but long
enough to say my prayers, I would repent."

* * * "think'st thou I'll endanger my soul
gratis? * * * I myself sometimes, leaving
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the fear of Heaven on the left hand, and hiding
mine honour in my necessity, am fain to shuffle,
to hedge."

"Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience ;
he makes restitution.

"I fear not Goliath with a weaver's beam;
because I know also, life is a shuttle."

"I think the devil will not have me damned,
lest the oil that's in me should set hell on fire ; he
would never else cross me thus."

A man, who habitually jokes about hell-fire,
does so either as a shallow scoffer, or in a nervous
effort to appear indifferent to a haunting dread,
the latter being the case with Falstaff, who never
scoffs. Throughout his brilliant and audacious
treatment of the tragedy of life and death, Sir John
continually betrays a shuddering anxiety as to his:
exit from this world and the safety of his soul,
thereafter.

He can flout at Goliath with a weaver's beam,
but quails before the terrors of the unseen world.
This is really the only vulnerable point in all his
moral and intellectual equipment — the Achilles
heel at which alone his boon companions can aim
their shafts of ridicule with any hope of wounding
to the quick. This is the only kind of banter,

8

moreover, be it observed, to which Sir John makes
no repartee, witness the following scene, viz. :

Henry the Fourth —
Part L Act J, Scene 2,

Fal. "But, Hal, I pr'ythee, trouble me no more
with vanity. I would to God thou and I knew
where a commodity of good names were to be
bought. An old lord of the council rated me the
other day in the street about you, sir, — but I
marked him not ; and yet he talked wisely, and
in the street too."

P. Hen. "Thou didst well ; for wisdom cries
out in the streets, and no man regards it."

Fal. "O, thou hast damnable iteration,* and
art, indeed, able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast
done much harm upon me, Hal, — God forgive
thee for it. Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew
nothing ; and now am I, if a man should speak,
truly, little better than one of the wicked. I
must give over this life, and I will give it over ;
I'll be damned for never a king's son in Christen
dom."

P. Hen. "Where shall we take a purse to
morrow, Jack?"

Fal. " 'Zounds, where thou wilt, lad, I'll make
one."

P. Hen. " I see a good amendment of life in
thee, — from praying to purse-taking."

* A wicked trick of repeating and applying holy texts (Johnson).

9

Enter PCINS, at a distance.

Fal. "Why, Hal, 'tis my vocation, Hal ; 'tis no
sin for a man to labour in his vocation. — Poins ! —
O, if men were to be saved by merit, what hole
in hell were hot enough for him ? This is the
most omnipotent villain, that ever cried, 'Stand! '
to a true man."

P. Hen. "Good morrow, Ned."

Poins. "Good morrow, sweet Hal. — What
says Monsieur Remorse ? What says Sir John Sack-
and-Sugar ? Jack, how agrees the devil and thee
about thy soul that thou soldest him on Good
Friday last for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon's
leg?"

P. Hen. "Sir John stands to his word, — the
devil shall have his bargain ; for he was never yet
a breaker of proverbs, — he will give the devil his
due."

Poins. " Then art thou damned for keeping thy
word with the devil."

P. Hen. "Else he had been damned for cozen-
ing the devil."

The cause of Sir John's failure to make response
to this pitiless attack has been hinted at above,
as well as his serio-comic effort to ward off
and to postpone all harrowing and depressing
thoughts, as in the extracts which follow, viz. :

10

Henry the Fourth —
Part L Act 3* Scene 3*

Fal. " Bardolph, am I not fallen away vilely
since this last action ? do I not bate ? do I not
dwindle ? Why, my skin hangs about me like
an old lady's loose gown : I am withered like an
old apple-john. Well, I'll repent, and that sud
denly, while I am in some liking ; I shall be out
of heart shortly, and then I shall have no strength
to repent. An I have not forgotten what the
inside of a church is made of, I am a peppercorn,
a brewer's horse : the inside of a church ! *
Company, villainous company, hath been the
spoil of me."

Bard. "Sir John, you are so fretful, you
cannot live long."

Fal. ' ' Why, there is it : — come sing me a song;
make me merry. I was as virtuously given as a
gentleman need to be ; virtuous enough : swore
little; diced not above seven times a week; paid
money that I borrowed — three or four times ;
lived well, and in good compass : and now I live
out of all order, out of all compass."

Henry the Fourth —
Part II. Act 2. Scene 4,

Doll. "When wilt thou leave fighting o' days
and foining o' nights, and begin to patch up thine
old body for heaven ? "

* The actor who should give appropriate utterance to this phrase would
produce an effect of moving pathos.

11

Fal. " Peace, good Doll ! do not speak like a
death's head ; do not bid me remember mine
end."

It is at the same vulnerable spot that, later on,
the king delivers, with cruel directness, the blow
which " kills Falstaffs heart"— and ends his life.

K. Hen. "\ know thee not, old man. Fall to
thy prayers ; how ill white hairs become a fool
and jester ! "

To the superficial observer, Falstaffsees ' 'nothing

' :

serious in mortality " — life is a roaring farce,
and, when he comes to make his exit from the
world, it will doubtless be with a monumental
jest upon his lips, like Mercutio, whose ruling
passion is strong in death.

The master-mind of Shakespeare, however,
which sees the end from the beginning, reveals
to the closer student, as I have hinted, that there
will be no dazzling flashes of wit at .Falstaffs
death-bed ; but that his end will be a consistent
termination of his life, profoundly tragic : nor is
this revelation in anywise falsified by the humour
of Sir John's remark, during his last illness, about

12

the flea upon Bardolph's nose— an utterance made
half involuntarily, from old habit of the mind —
a grim and hollow reverberation of an old time
jest, fuller of anguish than of mirth, and showing
Shakespeare's masterhand in that, like the Porter's
speech in Macbeth, it serves but to deepen the
impending gloom.

His early training in orthodox belief, which
haunts him through life; the prickings of con
science, traceable throughout his futile and vicious
career; his keen and poetic imagination; the
shrinking of his adipose bulk from the idea cf
literal contact with flame; his evident intention
some day to turn over a new leaf and " patch up
his old body for Heaven," — all are intimations
to the thoughtful mind that, with his latest
breath, — if not before, — Falstaff will endeavor to
make his peace with God. This, indeed, is found
to be the fact from Mistress Quickly's descrip
tion of his death.

Henry the Fifth-
Act 2. Scene 3*

Pist. "Falstaff he is dead. And we must
yearn therefore."

13

Bard. "Would I were with him, where-
some'er he is, either in heaven or in hell ! "

Host. "Nay, sure, he's not in hell : he's in
Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's
bosom. 'A made a finer end, and went away an
it had been any christom child ; 'a parted even
just between twelve and one, even at the turning
o' the tide : for after I saw him fumble with the
sheets, and play with flowers,* and smile upon
his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way ;
for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled
of green fields, f 'How now, Sir John ! ' quoth
I : 'what man ! be o' good cheer.' So 'a cried
out 'God, God, God ! three or four times. Now
I, to comfort him, bid him 'a should not think of
God ; I hoped there was no need to trouble him
self with any such thoughts yet. So 'a bade me
lay more clothes on his feet : I put my hand into
the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as
any stone ; then I felt to his knees, and they were
as cold as any stone."

Nym. "They say he cried out of sack."

Host. "Ay, that 'a did."

Bard. "And of women."

Host. "Nay, that 'a did not."

* " It is not impossible that there is here an absorption of the definite article
in the final sound of th in ' wi*A,' whereof we have so many instances in
Shakespeare. This absorption is in one instance indicated in the folio by an
apostrophe : with'. Thus here the full phrase may have been ' play with [the]
flowers,' and these flowers may have been either some real flowers which
Falstaff had near him, or they may have been the figured flowers on the
counterpane." — H. H. FURNESS.

t The folio has " a Table of green fields," emended by Theobald to " 'a
babbled," which White calls "the most felicitous conjectural emendation ever
made of Shakespeare's text.'

14

Boy. " Yes, that 'a did." '"A said once, the
devil would have him about women. Do you
not remember, 'a saw a flea stick upon Bardolph's
nose, and 'a said it was a black soul burning in
hell-fire ? "

"And 'a babbled of green fields."

I now venture to make known an original
interpretation, which, I trust, all lovers of
Shakespeare in general, and of dear old Jack
FalstarT in particular, will find to be a consistent
and poetic explanation of the belaboured passage,
" 'A babbled of green fields."

Starting with the premises outlined above,
no prediction can be more safe and natural
than that FalstarT, when he comes to die, of all
men in or out of books, will follow the cus
tom, — honored from time immemorial by " miser
able sinners," on finding themselves face to face
with their last enemy, — of either repeating or
of hearing repeated some favorite passage of
Scripture.

With this conviction, like an astronomer who

eagerly scans the heavens for a star whose existence

is necessary to account for apparent vagaries in

a visible system, I read and re-read Mistress

15

Quickly's quaint, pathetic description of Falstaff's
death, in search of a hint that would answer
my expectation.

When, at last, I bethought me of the XXIIId
Psalm, and of the countless death-beds comforted
by its sweet, uplifting eloquence, it flashed upon
me that in the phrase, "and 'a babbled of green
fields," lurked the very fulfilment of my convic
tion, that the dear old sinner, who never "had
strength to repent," was now, in his mortal
extremity, mustering his waning powers in an
effort "to die a fair death" by repeating, in
broken and half audible accents, verses learned in
childhood :

"The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures : he
leadeth me beside the still waters. Yea, though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil."

Here at last we discover the true explanation of
Mistress Quickly's words. In her "green fields"
we recognize the "green pastures" of David,
and with the recognition comes a strain of pathos
in Falstaffs dying hour which no hand but
Shakespeare's could have infused. Moreover,

16

may we not here detect another Shakespearian
touch, in thus making Mistress Quickly mis
understand and misquote Falstaff s words ? Even
at the last moment there is an intimation of the
social difference in rank and intelligence between
Sir John and the low-born hostess of a tavern.

If my interpretation be accepted, many an
emendation is brushed aside. The last Cam
bridge edition records the following substitutes
which have been proposed for "'a babbled of
green fields ;"— ''upon a table of green fells ;"
"on a table of green frieze;" "as stubble on
shorn fields;" "on a table of greasy fell;"
"and the bill of a green finch."

I take pride in announcing that my inter
pretation has been heartily endorsed by my
friend, Horace Howard Furness, whose letter to
me upon the subject, though not written for
publication, I have the writer's kind permission

to print.

LOCKE RICHARDSON.

"The Players," Gramercy Park,
New York, Nov., 1896.

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WALLINGFORD,
DELAWARE COUNTY, PENN.

MY DEAR LOCKE RICHARDSON :

I am off to-morrow, and am pressed for time, but I cannot go
without telling you how very good I think your "discovery" is
about Falstaffs "green fields." It is admirable. The poor old
fellow's attempt in the valley of the shadow of death to repeat
the psalm which he must have been familiar with when he lost
his voice singing of anthems, is very pathetic and is exactly
needed to complete the picture of him.

I now discover that I never liked the idea of his mind wan
dering to the innocency of childhood, and it does not in the
least harmonize with his invocation of "God!"

You must remember that the conversion of "Table" into
babbled is Theobald's work, and not Shakespeare's, as far as
mere text goes.

But hang texts, Theobald's is an emendatio certissima, and
no less certain is your interpretation of it, the which, if I had
lit on, I should be as proud as forty peacocks. I congratulate
you most heartily. I have adopted it from this hour, and shall
always blow a vigorous blast in your honor when I refer to it.

Believe me, yours faithfully,

HORACE HOWARD FURNESS.

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