Banish Falstaff?
No, my good lord; banish Peto,
banish Bardolph, banish Poins: but for
sweet Jack
Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack
Falstaff,
valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more
valiant,
being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff,
banish not him
thy Harry's company, banish not him thy
Harry's
company: banish plump Jack, and banish
all the world.
Falstaff to Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part 1, II.4
The Henry IV plays are not
really about King Henry IV. They are about his son, Prince Hal, aka the young “Harry,”
who will grow up to be King Henry V. More specifically, these plays are about Hal’s
transformation from a reprobate who is a consummate disappointment to his
long-suffering father into a man who will be king—and a really inspiring one at
that. Falstaff and a band of degenerate
comrades play a pivotal role in this transformation.
Hal’s transformation is triggered through a series of fun and games,
during which Hal is prompted to take a hard look at a charismatic elder whom he
clearly adores.
Falstaff and several members of his coterie plan to rob a pair of
travelers and invite Hal to join in the “madcap” adventure. Prince Hal agrees,
but, meanwhile, he and another of their pals, Ned Poins, secretly plan a
counterplot, such that they will show up late in disguise and rob their own
comrades and see how they react. The Prince has a good laugh watching his
rotund friend swing in short order from one pole to another. In one instant, Falstaff—the man known for
his capacious belly—terrorizes the poor travelers in grandiose fashion by, of
all things, insulting their girth:
Hang ye, gorbellied knaves, are ye undone? No, ye
fat chuffs: I
would your store were here! On,
bacons, on!
What, ye knaves! young men must live.
You are
Grand-jurors, are ye? we'll jure ye, 'faith.
Then, the moment the tables are turned on him by his friends (disguised
as rival thieves), Falstaff squeals in terror, abandons his booty, and flees.
As Hal puts it: how “Falstaff sweats to death,/ And lards the lean earth as he
walks along:/ Were 't not for laughing,
I should pity him.”
Having witnessed this spectacular pendulum swing, Hal and Poins then
meet up with Falstaff and the others at
The Boar's-Head Tavern in Eastcheap for what happens to be the longest scene in
the play and among the longest scenes in all of Shakespeare. In this scene that
unfolds in the wee hours at a bar, Hal and Falstaff take an emotional journey
together during which Hal lures Falstaff into describing a great feat that
never happened and then Hal exposes Falstaff as a liar and a coward; then
Falstaff induces Hal to do a little role-playing, with Falstaff taking the role
of Hal’s father, the King, so that Hal can practice what he is going to say the
next day when he will be called before his father for a thorough scolding about
his unseemly ways.
While playing the role of Hal’s father, Falstaff warns the Prince about
all of the unsavory characters with whom he has been seen cavorting—but one:
“[a] goodly portly man, i' faith.” Falstaff-as-the-King swears he sees "virtue
in his looks.” Then Hal declares that he wants to play the King’s part and
insists that Falstaff stand in for him. Hal-as-the-King chides Falstaff-as-the-Prince
for hanging about with that “villanous abominable misleader of youth,/
Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan.” And in response to this assault,
Falstaff-as-the-Prince urges Hal-as-the-King to banish everyone else—just not
sweet, kind, valiant, old plump Jack Falstaff. And during this speech, one sees
the mask slipping, the game shifting into a more desperate, authentic exchange in the
hours after midnight. In response to this speech, Hal—who may no longer be
merely playing the King but starting to see himself as a
king—says in response to the insistence that he not banish Jack Falstaff:
“I do, I will.”
In an instant, the spell is broken—both the spell created by the game
they have been playing in the bar and the spell that has permitted Falstaff to
bind Hal to him.
Immediately thereafter, the sheriff and his men come bursting in,
looking for “the fat man” who is “as fat as butter,” for he is wanted in
conjunction with a robbery. Hal covers for the fat man as he hides behind an arras.
And when the coast is clear, Falstaff is found passed out, “fast asleep behind
the arras, and snorting like a horse.” Hal takes the opportunity to go through
the old man’s pockets and finds no more than papers, which he vows to read
later at his leisure. He also pledges to return the money that he and Poins had
stolen from the thieves to the rightful owners. Hal seems to be laughing off the
whole incident, but he isn’t. He knows his days of “uphold[ing] the unyoked humour of [their] idleness” are
numbered.
This scene has got to be one of the greatest in all of literature. We,
like Hal, see Falstaff revealed in all his comic glory and unbearable,
embarrassing humanity. He is unethical, arrogant, conceited, desperate,
self-serving—but also hilarious, eloquent, brazen, exciting. He is transcendent;
he is a joke. He is bizarrely lovable and profoundly dangerous.
I think of Falstaff when I see headlines about “ex-Big Firm lawyer
charged with tax fraud involving beach homes” or “prison recommended for lawyer
involved in Ponzi scheme.” And I think of the Hal-Falstaff relationship when I hear
stories about a client who ceased doing business with a firm after a golf
outing in which in-house counsel noticed how a charming partner kept taking
mulligans or about a young associate who lost faith in a dazzling mentor after
seeing mysterious round-trip, 1st-class tickets to and from New York
on the expense report for a small personal injury case where all the parties
and witnesses were located in Texas.
Let Falstaff be an object lesson: just because people in power find you
fun to carouse with, that doesn’t mean they are giving you permission to lie,
cheat, and steal with impunity. Eventually,
they may assume that, no matter how passionately attached to them you seem and
how much fun you are to drink with, you are not someone to be trusted and,
therefore, must be banished for the sake of some larger good.
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