; in the histories there are
comic scenes drawn from English life; but only here does Shakespeare
desert the city and the country for the small town and draw the larger
number of his characters from the great middle class. {164} A
tradition has come down to us, one which is supported by the nature of
the play, that Queen Elizabeth was so fascinated by the character of
Falstaff as he appeared in _Henry IV_ that she requested Shakespeare to
show Falstaff in love, and that Shakespeare, in obedience to this
command, wrote the play within a fortnight. Unless this tradition be
true, it is difficult to explain why Shakespeare should have written a
comedy which is, in comparison with his other work of this period, at
once conventional and mediocre. The subject--the intrigues of Falstaff
with two married women, and the wooing of a commonplace girl by two
foolish suitors and another as commonplace as herself--gave Shakespeare
little opportunity for poetry and none for the portrayal of the types
of character most congenial to his temperament. The greatest blemish
on the play, however, from the standpoint of a student of Shakespeare,
is that the man called Falstaff is not Falstaff at all, that this
Falstaff bears only an outward resemblance to the Falstaff of the
historical plays. If we may misquote the poet, Falstaff died a martyr,
and this is not the man. The real Falstaff would never have stooped to
the weak devices adopted by the man who bears his name, would never
have been three times the dupe of transparent tricks. The task
demanded of Shakespeare was one impossible of performance. Falstaff
could not have fallen in love in the way which the queen desired. Nor
is there much to compensate for this degradation of the greatest comic
figure in literature. Falstaff's companions share, although to a
lesser degree, in their leader's fall, while the two comic figures
which are original with this play are {165} comparatively unsuccessful
studies in French and Welsh dialect. Judged by Shakespeare's own
standard, this work is as middle-class as its characters; judged by any
other, it is an amusing comedy of intrigue, realistic in type and
abounding in comic situations which approach the borderland of farce.

+Date+.--This play was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company
January 18, 1602. It was certainly written after the two parts of
_Henry IV_, and if, as is most probable, the character of Nym is a
revival and no