This study will provide a character analysis of the character of Falstaff from Shakespeare's Henry IV. Falstaff is a thoroughgoing comic character meant to play off his friend Prince Hal primarily and to set off Halls higher aspirations as future King, but Falstaff's humor, sometimes vicious, sometimes self-effacing, always irreverent, is so strong that it lets him stand on his own as one of Shakespeare's truly unique and memorable creations.
So appealing is Falstaff's irreverence to audiences that traits which would be despicable in others are seen as delightful in him. For example, in Giorgio Melchiorils "Dying of a Sweat: Falstaff and Oldcastle," we read scholarly work a6ou-e the phrase "dying of a sweat" as it is applied to Falstaff. There is much speculation about the phrase with respect to possible diseases that Falstaff might have had which would lead to such a condition (the plague? venereal disease from his carousing?), but the most simple and relevant one has to do with his cowardice:
Very few have heeded (one critic's] shrewd question: 'But isn't this the man who "sweats to death, And lards the lean earth as he walks along"? The Epilogue is merely promising that Falstaff will exhibit further evidence of his cowardice in the French campaign, to the audience's delight (Melchiori 211).
The author goes on to speculate on a connection between A
Falstaff and Oldcastle, the name of the character which Shakespeare used before "Falstaff," but the important point for our purposes is that Shakespeare provided a comic character of such liveliness and all-embracing irreverence that the audience forgave him such despicable traits as cowardice and even relished such traits. There is much heroism and courage in the play, and Shakespeare clearly meant to set off that heroism, and ease its lofty tension, by using Falstaff and his blatant self-centered honesty, including the trait of cowardice. The audience can experience on...