Justice Shallow: Old Men Who Remember Everything Wrong

Robert Shallow is a country justice living in Gloucestershire who knew Falstaff at the Inns of Court fifty years ago and has been trading on the memory ever since. He talks about it constantly: Falstaff the great man, the famous brawler, the old friend. Falstaff, privately, considers Shallow a fool.

The scenes with him are Shakespeare's most sustained comic study of old age: the way memory smooths everything, the way minor men make themselves central to famous men's stories, the way time passes and not much changes. Shallow and his cousin Silence sit in an orchard, eat apples, and talk about people who have died.

Falstaff plans to exploit Shallow once Hal is king: to extract money and trade on his connections. When Hal rejects Falstaff entirely in Act 5, Shallow's last line is 'I am undone by his going.' He lent Falstaff a thousand pounds.