Corporal Nym
Corporal Nym is a fictional character who appears in two Shakespeare plays, "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and "Henry V". He later appears in spin-off works by other writers. Nym is a soldier and criminal follower of Sir John Falstaff and a friend and rival of Ancient Pistol. In the plays. In "The Merry Wives of Windsor" Nym is one of Falstaff's servants along with Pistol. He and Pistol refuse to assist Falstaff's plan to seduce both Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, considering it beneath them. He informs Page and Ford that Falstaff "loves" their  wives. In "Henry V" we learn that Nym has been courting Mistress Quickly. He gets into an argument with Pistol when he learns that she has married Pistol. Pistol tells him to find prostitute Doll Tearsheet and marry her. Bardolph reconciles the two. The three of them join Henry's army, hoping to profit by looting in France. We later learn that Nym has been hanged for looting. Role. Nym's name is probably derived from the old English word "nim", meaning "to take", referring to his propensity for thieving. Nym's extremely curt and disconnected style of speech contrasts  with Pistol's expansive bombast, which is full of florid grandiosity and garbled intellectual references. In contrast, Nym explains everything by his "humour", meaning his mood or inclination, which suggests that his character was designed as a parody of Ben Jonson's "comedy of humours". According to Gail Paster, Nym uses his "humour" to justify his behaviour, as a rationale for unprovoked "impulsiveness and aggressiveness". Nym's laconic and sometime gnomic utterances are explained by the Boy in "Henry V" as a result of a confused idea that terse speech makes a man seem serious, A notable example of Nym 's speech patterns occurs when Nym informs Master Page of Falstaff's plan to seduce his wife; he manages to be both curt and pointlessly repetitive, with additional obscure assertions: In other literature. Nym plays a major role in William Kenrick's play "Falstaff's Wedding" (1766 version), in which he plots with Pistol to deceive Justice Shallow and Abraham Slender (from "Merry Wives") to marry the disguised Mistress Quickly and Doll Tearsheet respectively. Shallow discovers the plot. He and Slender switch places with Nym and Pistol, who end up married to Quickly and Doll, as is implied in "Henry  V". James White's book "Falstaff's Letters" (1796) purports to be a collection of letters written by Falstaff and his cronies, found in an archive owned by a descendant of Mistress Quickly's sister. A letter from Pistol to Falstaff says that "the Nym is a pauper vile - I do retort - hath not utterance to woo his dog to bite at badger". A letter jointly signed by Nym and Pistol is written in a conflation of their different styles. In Vaughan Williams' opera, "Sir John in Love" the role is sung by a baritone.