Pistol: The Soldier Who Is Mostly Noise

Pistol speaks in a roaring, borrowed style lifted from bad theatrical romances: swords, honour, vague threats. He is not actually brave, and the play takes pains to establish this. His new wife, the Hostess, tells us she married him after Falstaff died. She will die of a sexually transmitted disease while he is supposedly fighting for England.

He is there for plunder. In Act 4 Scene 4 he captures a French soldier called Monsieur Le Fer at knifepoint, has the Boy translate his demands for ransom, and accepts money without fighting at all. To a French soldier who cannot understand English, he looks every inch a conqueror. The Boy, watching, calls all three of the Hostess's soldiers cowards in a frank soliloquy and turns out to be right.

Fluellen forces him to eat a leek at the point of a cudgel in Act 5 Scene 1. Pistol threatens revenge, then immediately admits in the same speech that he will just go back to England and steal. The self-knowledge lands harder than the humiliation.