Two Rogues of Classic Drama

This paper is a comparison of two of the more vividly drawn comic characters of classic drama, two rogues of varying color, both deceivers and pleasure seekers, each a strikingly theatrical creation. Sir John Falstaff, companion of the youthful Prince Hal in both parts of William Shakespeare's histories of Henry IV, proved so popular that the playwright revived him for the comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor (though arguably in name only). His riotous, casual approach to life provides an interesting comparison with the duplicity of William Wycherley's Mr. Horner in The Country Wife, created more than 75 years later. Horner feigns his own castration in order to have the opportunity to disprove the ruse to every woman he can; he is a prototypical figure of Restoration comedy.

At first glance, Falstaff and Horner seem to offer two distinctly different examples of broadly comic characters who continue to amuse and entertain audiences with their hedonistic antics. On closer inspection, however, they have a great deal more in common, and not simply in the size of their appetites and the immensity of their immorality. They also serve to clarify the deeper messages of their authors. Both Shakespeare and Wycherley use their larger than life creations for more substantial purposes. Falstaff humanizes a monarch and tempers a history lesson, while Horner offers a cautionary tale against the hazards of self-deceit. The fact that both also provide rousingly good company turns them

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who created him another opportunity to amuse and entertain audiences. Indeed, unencumbered by his princely companion, he provides a somewhat different figure. Moved to center stage, he is no longer a balance and contrast to make the future king look good by comparison, and, while still a thoroughly entertaining fellow, the Falstaff of Merry Wives is not as relevant to this discussion. Campbell observes the following about Falstaff: [He] mocks the office of king and of the representative of justice. He makes a mockery of duty and courage. He mocks death on the battlefield by the thrust in the thigh given to the dead Hotspur and the claim which he makes to have conquered him, as well as by his own feigning of death until danger has passed (244). Falstaff is a reprobate and a rogue so that Prince Hal looks more kingly by comparison, despite his whole-hearted participation in many of the licentious schemes Falstaff proposes. Yet, because Falstaff is such an endearing old rake at that, the audience sees Hal in a more human light. Falstaff's antics also offer much-needed comic relief from the accounts of historical events that make up the main body of the play. Falstaff is, after all, a secondary character and incidental to

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