The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1893-01-22

bodily We are as well acquainted with
his person as his mind, and his jokes
come upon us with double force and relish
from the quantity of flesh through which
they make their way as he shakes his fat
sides with laughter, or 'lards the lean
earth as he walks along Other comic
characters seem, if we approach and handle
them, to resolve themselves into air,
into thin air. but this is embodied
and palpable to the grossest apprehen-
sion; it lies three fingers deep upon the
ribs, it plays about the lungs and dia-
phragm with all force of animal enjoy
ment. He would not be in
character If he were not so fat as he is;
for there is the greatest keeping in the
boundless luxury of his Imagination and
the pampered self-indulgence of his physi-
cal appetite. He manures and nourishes
his mind with jests as he does his body
with suet and sugar. He carVes out his
Jokes as he would a capon or haunch of
venison, where there is cut and cut again I:
and pours upon them the oil of gladness.
II Yet we are not to suppose that he
was mere sensualist. All this
is as much in his imagination as in reality.
y His imagination keeps up the
ball after his senses have done with it.
He seems to have even a greater enjoy
ment OF the freedom from restraint, of
good cheer, OF his care, of his vanity, in
the ideal exaggerated description which
he gives OF them, in fact. He
never fails to enrich his discourse
with illusions to eating and
drinking, but we never see him at table.
He carries his own Iarder about with him.
and he is himself "a tun of man.. 4
Such is his deliberate exaggeration of his
own vices, that it does not see quite Ger
tain whether the account OF his hostess
bill found in his pocket, with such an out
OF the way charge for caDonS and such,
with only one halfpenny worth OF bread i,
was not put there by himself as trick to
humor the jest upon his favorite propen-
sites and as a conscious caricature of
himself"
Furnivall says of him: ''Of Falstaff,
who can say enough? He is the incarna-
ton of humor and lies, of wit and self
indulgence, of shreWdEess and immoral
ity, of self-possession and vice, without a
spark of conscience or reverence, without
seli-respect, an adventurer preying upon
the weakness of other men. Yet all men
enjoy him-so did Shakespeare. Z
His effrontery is inimitable. He's neither
a coward nor courageous. He only asks
which'll pay Distributing or running
away-and acts accordingly. He evidently
had reputation as a soldier, and was a
protested one, was sought out and got a
commission on the outbreak of the war. -
have been thus generous in quoting
the views of others on my hero in order to
give hint as 1t were OF the unvarying
touch OF affection which creeps into the
estimate of his character set down by men
OF the most widely differing idiosyncra-
cies. They handle him as Isaac Walton
handles his frog 'sas though they loved
him. and more than any other parsonage
OF the Shakespearean drama as though he
was living entity of flesh and blood and
no mere Pigment of the poet S brain. This
leads me to touch briefly on the question
well nigh as holly debated as Hamlet's
real or feigned madness as to whether
Falstaff had living prototype. Though
on a matter like this my judgment, which
is that only of casual student who is
better posted on the practical affairs of the
stage is Of little worth, I may say that the
late j. G. Halliwel Phillips conclusions
seem almost self-evident. There, as set