Who is Falstaff?

Falstaff is a character of contradiction. He is both dishonest yet insightful, intelligent yet cowardly. In the real world, we would be disgusted by such a man but in Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2 we are amused by him. We return to him because he is an honest reflection of us as a people, because we all have flaws, we are all contradictions of ourselves, and yet we carry on somehow. And in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, Shakespeare makes him the comic relief in these politically charged plays. An aging knight and father figure to Prince Hal, Falstaff is featured in three of Shakespeare’s plays and remains one of the most enduring and much beloved characters of all time. But is the character of Falstaff based on a real person?

What’s in a Name?

Adolf Schrödter’s Falstaff und sein Page

Sir John Oldcastle was originally the name of the character in earlier drafts of the plays, based on a real person by the same name. In real life, Oldcastle was a friend to Henry V, a soldier and a member of the Lollards, a religious group who was promoting reform within the Church at the time. He was hanged and burned for heresy and treason, which made him a martyr to the Protestant Reformation. Oldcastle’s descendant, William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham took offense to the use of his ancestor’s name and when he became patron of Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, in 1596, he used his status to promptly change the name to another friend of Henry V’s—Sir John Fastolf.

Sir John Fastolf

Unlike Shakespeare’s cowardly Falstaff, Sir John Fastolf was a revered soldier who fought in the Hundred Years’ War. He served with distinction at Agincourt and used barrels of herrings to shield his troops in the Battle of Herrings. He also fought in the famous Battle of Patay in which the English lost to Joan of Arc and her army. Because of the defeat, he was stripped of his knighthood and accused of cowardice for escaping capture and death. But he was later cleared of the charge before he retired from military service to become a successful businessman.

A Writerly Rivalry

There is another theory that Falstaff was based on another playwright of Shakespeare’s time, Robert Greene. It is said that he resented Shakespeare more than any other playwright for his success, although Greene was one of the few writers to support himself solely on his work. He is most well known among scholars and bardolators alike for his pamphlet, “Greene’s Groats-Worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance” for his criticism against Shakespeare. In the pamphlet he references the Bard as “Shake-scene” as well as calling him an “upstart crow” seeking attention and thinking of himself as being the best playwright in England. With the addition to characterizing Falstaff after Greene, it has been suggested that Shakespeare drew other inspiration from Greene’s work, such as the use of fairies from The Scottish History of James the Fourth, Slain at Flodden for his own A Midsummer Night’s Dream and that Greene’s play Pandasto has a similar plot to The Winter’s Tale.

Join us for the 12th Annual John R. Hamilton Mock Trial as the drunken Falstaff is put on trial for corruption!