Sir John Falstaff: Wisdom is Found in Strange Places

Nor is it the description we’d expect of the character whom novelist Oliver Goldsmith claims, “gives me more consolation than the most studied efforts of wisdom,” nor that the 20th century’s most prominent Shakespeare critic, Harold Bloom, would call, “the perfect image of life indeed.”

So what’s going on with Sir John?

Perhaps Shakespeare’s artistic sensibility caused him to counterbalance Falstaff’s positive qualities with negative ones. That all of these descriptions of Falstaff can co-exist is a testament to Shakespeare’s genius.

Whatever the case, let’s go to know Sir John Falstaff.

Falstaff: Prince Hal’s teacher of wisdom

Falstaff appears in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2, which portray a dramatized account of the life of England’s Prince Hal/Henry V from his wayward early adulthood to his coronation as King of England.

When we meet Prince Hal at the beginning of Henry IV Part 1, he has abandoned royal life and taken up with a group of tavern-dwelling highway robbers, led by Falstaff, who hang out at the Boar’s Head Inn in Eastcheap, London. We sense from the beginning that while Prince Hal and Falstaff have a deep relationship, for Prince Hal the relationship has begun to sour.

Shakespeare leaves us to imagine how Prince Hal befriended Falstaff in the first place, though if we jump ahead to Falstaff’s death scene in Henry V, scholars have noted a clear allusion:

The death of Sir John Falstaff, as described by the hostess of the Boar’s Head Inn:
. . . I put my hand into the bed and felt [his feet], and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and they were as cold as any stone, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold as any stone.

Henry V, Act 2, Scene 3, lines 22-27

The death of Socrates, as reported by Plato:
. . . and after a little while [the poison administrator] examined his feet and legs, then pinched his foot hard and asked if he felt it.  Socrates said no.  Then he did the same to his legs, and moving gradually upward in this way let us see that he was getting cold and numb.  Presently he felt him again and said that when it reached the heart, Socrates would be gone(Plato, the Phaedo)

The Phaedo,115a-118a

Shakespeare’s Falstaff is Elizabethan England’s ‘dangerous’ teacher of wisdom, as Plato’s Socrates was for Ancient Greece. Bloom contends that Prince Hal would have found Falstaff in the same way a young seeker of wisdom in Ancient Greece may have happened upon Socrates — by loafing about where alcohol is served.

Look past Sir John Falstaff’s many and glaring flaws, and we find a deep well of wisdom from which we can draw to improve mental health.

Falstaff on dialectics

Falstaff is a teacher of dialectics, or the reconciliation of two ideas that seem opposite or contradictory, by finding a relationship between the two.

When we first meet Falstaff in the Boar’s Head Inn, he has just awoken — midday — and asked Prince Hal for the time. Prince Hal chides him for sleeping the day away, and Falstaff responds:

[W]hen thou art king, let not us that are squires of the night’s body be called thieves of the day’s beauty. Let us be Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon, and let men say we be men of good government, being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.

Henry IV Part 1, Act 1, Scene 2, lines 23-29

Falstaff ask Hal not to condemn night owls like himself (“squires of the night”), and instead asks to be thought of as a friend of the moon, rather than an enemy of the sun.

Day and night are not opposites — one good and one bad, Falstaff insists, but interconnected pieces of a whole. He insists that when choosing a preference for one thing (night), he is not hostile toward another (day). The use of dialectics in this way is the foundation of modern dialectical-behavioral therapy.

Falstaff on dignity and worth

Early in Henry IV Part 1, Prince Hal plays an elaborate prank on Falstaff, with the intention of inciting Falstaff into cowardice and shame. On revealing the prank, Hal says: “[C]anst thou now find out to hide thee from this open and apparent shame?”

Falstaff responds with the ultimate example of dignity and self-worth:

 I shall think the better of myself, and thee, during my life—I for a valiant lion, and thou for a true Prince.

Henry IV, Part 1, Act 2, Scene 4, lines 1259-1260

Falstaff resists any sort of malice — toward himself, or Prince Hal — and instead wills himself to think the better of both of them. He will not internalize the negative self-image Hal would like to impart on him, and he will not loathe Hal for his attempt to shame him, either.

Dignity and self-worth are a cornerstone of psychological well-being, social connectedness, and humanity. In over 10 years of practice in the field of mental health, I cannot think of a more eloquent expression than Falstaff’s to demonstrate the drive for dignity and self-worth.

Falstaff on acceptance, empathy, and interconnectedness

Falstaff also instructs us on acceptance, empathy, and connectedness. Late in Henry IV, Part 1, Prince Hal, play-acting as his father the king, throws every insult at Falstaff he can muster, attacking his body image(“Why dost thou converse with . . . the stuffed cloak-bag of guts”), his age (“. . .that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years?”) his vice (“Wherein is he good, but to taste sack [wine] and drink it? ) and his self-worth (Wherein worthy, but in nothing?”).

Falstaff, being the model of self-acceptance, does not dispute any of Prince Hal’s charges. He does not become defensive, nor launch a counter-offensive. Instead, he answers:

If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked. If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned. If to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh’s lean kine [skinny cows that foreshadowed famine] are to be loved . . . Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.

Henry IV Part 1, Act 2, Scene 4, lines 1453-1463

Falstaff does not view his shortcomings as sources of shame or embarrassment, but sources of empathy and connection with others. He understands that his faults are not his alone but faults shared by many. He explains to Hal that the more Hal condemns Falstaff for his faults, the more Hal condemns not just Falstaff but all of humankind.

To illustrate this idea, we can look at contemporary trends in the United States for the same faults Hal finds in Falstaff: 71.6% of adults are overweight; 16.5% of Americans are over the age of 65; and 16% of adults report binge drinking (5+ drinks) once a month.

Most US adults can identify with at least one of these three issues. If one were to banish anyone who fits one of these categories, one would indeed banish most of America, if not the world.

Falstaff’s faults, just like our own, are an opportunity to empathize and connect. The whole of the humanity resides in all of us.

Falstaff on honor

The climax of Henry IV, Part 1 occurs during the Battle of Shrewsbury. At this point, the 100 Years War between England and France has been raging on for about 70 years — Falstaff’s entire lifetime. The aged Falstaff we meet in the play has become exhausted of war and disillusioned of its rhetoric.

When Prince Hal conscripts Falstaff into battle, he tells Hal viciously tells him, “Thou owest God a death.”

Falstaff, employing his own version of the Socratic Method, responds.

‘Tis not due yet. I would be loath to pay Him before His day. What need I be so forward with Him that calls not on me? Well, ’tis no matter. Honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honor set to a leg? no. Or an arm? no. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honor hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honor? A word. What is in that word “honor”? What is that “honor”? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ‘Tis 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. Honor is a mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism.

Henry IV, Part 1, Act 5, Scene 1, 2753-2767

Falstaff explores the social motivation of honor in Elizabethan England that draws people to battle. Like Socrates, he uses a process of hypothesis elimination to arrive at a definition of honor. He concludes that honor has no functional purpose — it cannot heal a broken limb, or reduce physical pain; it has no skill in surgery.

From there, he determines therefore that honor is intangible — it’s merely “a word.” He then moves to the question of who can benefit from honor, and determines that a dead person cannot feel it, hear it, or in any way sense it. He then determines that a living person cannot fully experience it, either, because it is based on social reputation which is out of one’s control and can be tarnished by the slightest slander. Finally, he arrives at his definition: it is “a mere scutcheon [a coat of arms].” Honor is an eulogy – something to bestow on the dead.

Based on this conclusion, he describes his approach for the upcoming battle:

If he [the enemy] do come in my way, so; if he do not, if I come in his willingly, let him make a carbonado of me. . . Give me life, which if I can save, so: if not, honor comes unlooked for, and there’s an end.

Henry IV, Part 1, Act 5, Scene 3. lines 58-61

Falstaff accepts that the enemy may “come in his way” and kill him. If that happens, he will take no consolation in honor exchanged for life. But he won’t go looking for a fight.

Bloom notes that as the enemy commander sets to the field, crying, “Doomsday is near, die all, die merrily,” Falstaff says, “Give me life.”

Falstaff on power differential

Much has been written on the concept of the monopoly on violence — that a State has an exclusive right to use physical force against it’s residents. But the concept of a monopoly on virtue — that a State has the de facto authority to define virtue for its residents — has been given considerably less attention. Falstaff, speaking with the English chief justice, observes that the chief justice has defined virtue in a self-serving manner.

My lord, I will not undergo this sneap without reply. You call honorable boldness “impudent sauciness.” If a man will make curtsy and say nothing, he is virtuous. No, my lord, my humble duty remembered, I will not be your suitor.

Henry IV, Part 2, Act 2, Scene 1, 861-864

According to Falstaff, the State has self-servingly defined virtue as obedience to the State. He challenges the State’s monopoly on virtue by remembering his “humble duty” to another guiding force — presumably, his own desire for self-preservation.

Falstaff recognizes that the State has the ability to exploit its vast power differential over its subjects by setting unfavorable terms which its subjects must meet in order to gain State-sanctioned “grinning honor.” These terms, Falstaff argues, include a willingness throw one’s life away in subservience to the King’s imperialist ambitions.

Numerous times throughout the play, Prince Hal — the future king and, therefore, embodiment of the State — defines Falstaff’s unwillingness to “make curtsy and say nothing” as cowardice. The fact that Falstaff continues to be viewed as a cowardly by critics speaks to the power of the State’s monopoly on virtue, even when portrayed in fiction.

In renouncing the concept of honor, Falstaff is not acting with cowardice as Prince Hal charges several times throughout the plays. Rather, Falstaff has rejected the State’s self-serving definition of virtue.

Falstaff’s prescription for happiness: song and dance

Later, he tells the Lord Chief Justice:

For my voice—I have lost it with hallooing and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further, I will not. The truth is, I am only in judgment and understanding; and he that will caper with me a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him.

Henry IV, Part 2, Act 1, Scene 2, 1597-98

In these lines, Falstaff reveals his prescription for the good life: song and dance with friends. Philosopher Michel De Montaigne, a major influence on Shakespeare, observed: “There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.”

Research confirms that our disreputable sages were onto something — both singing and dancing promote well-being.

Song and dance is a stark contrast to Henry IV’s prescription for idleness, which he expresses to Prince Hal: “Be it thy course to busy giddy minds / With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out.” Translation: Keep people busy by sending them to war. As we see in Henry V, Hal does just that. Falstaff and Socrates, however, have no such trouble occupying their “giddy minds” joyfully and harmlessly.

This is Sir John Falstaff’s greatest teaching: set aside socially constructed measures of self-worth to play in the company of friends.

References:

• Bloom, Harold (1998). Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Riverhead Books.
• Bloom, Harold (2017). Falstaff: Give Me Life. Scribner.