Falstaff: The Coward Who Makes Cowardice Magnificent
First appears: Act 1, Scene 2
Falstaff is the funniest character Shakespeare ever wrote, and also one of the most carefully constructed. He is enormously fat, enormously cowardly, and completely alive. He lies constantly, celebrates lying, and explains the logic of it all with a rhetorical brilliance that makes you want to agree with him.
His relationship with Prince Hal is the heart of Henry IV Part 1. Hal is the straight man; Falstaff is the performance. The tavern scenes at the Boar's Head (particularly the play-acting in Act 2, Scene 4, where they take turns playing king and prince) are Shakespeare at his most inventive. The scene is funny and unsettling simultaneously.
His battlefield philosophy, 'the better part of valour is discretion', is delivered after he has faked his own death to avoid Douglas. The argument is logically consistent and completely wrong by every standard the play otherwise holds. Hotspur dies for honour; Falstaff lies in a ditch and lives.
Key Scenes
Famous Quotes
“The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life.”
Sir John Falstaff — Act 5, Scene 4
“Give me life: which if I can save, so; if not, honour comes unlooked for, and there's an end.”
Sir John Falstaff — Act 5, Scene 3
“What is honour? A word. What is in that word honour? What is that honour? Air.”
Sir John Falstaff — Act 5, Scene 1