Falstaff as the Hero of Henry IV

Who brings laughter to the stage and audience? Who changes a frat boy’s way of life? Who brings merriment to everyone he annoys? Why, none other than Sir John Falstaff of course! Falstaff, in Henry IV, is a cleverly written simpleton who cares not for the courtly rules but those of the tavern and his own. He is his own creator, always unpredictable yet foreseeable by everyone but himself. To many, Prince Hal is the hero of the play; Falstaff on the other hand is perceived as the trickster, a

William Shakespeare based the infamous characher Falstaff on a Sir John Oldcastle (1378-1417) a martyred leader of the lollards, a Medieval English sect based off the teachings of John Wycliffe. Oldcastle fought for the English during the Scottish campaign in 14700 and in the Welsh wars where he met Henry, son of Henry IV. In 1413, he was indicted by a convocation officiated by the Archbishop Thomas of Canterbury, for supporting Lollard preachers and their opinions. A year later he was imprisoned at the Tower of London by the king for forty days for being convicted of being a heretic.

Oldcastle decided to cut short his stay at the tower and stay with a Lollard bookseller William Fisher at Smithfield. While at Smithfield, he began to devise a plan to kidnap the king of Kent while the Lollards were summoned to meet at St. Giles’s Fields, near London. But as fate would have it, the king was made aware of the plan and sent a small group to arrest the fleeing Lollards. Once again Oldcastle sidestepped the law and escaped until he was caught on November 1417, and Parliament ruled him guilty and he was hung over a fire on December 14, 1417.

Falstaff is considered more boisterous than Oldcastle had been. Shakespeare originally had the name of Sir ...

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...ng to Hal. Although he doesn’t know the end result of his actions, he is no fool as Hal perceives him to be. When looking at both men, Falstaff is more humane when compared to Hal’s wit.

Inspecting at the Francis scene, he is quite the opposite of both Hal and Francis. Falstaff’s jokes are at the expense of himself, whereas Hal’s are generally making fun of others. Unlike Francis, he is a man of many words and one who will not be fixed by the Prince’s schemes. Falstaff’s wit is one of articulate exercise of a remarkable verbal inventiveness and social intelligence. He may be a liar, coward and thief but he’s far from a hypocrite and a fool. He sees the world as clear as day and knows his role on the global stage at that.

He laughs at himself just as much and as easily as he laughs at others around him, but his wit lives for its own sake or for his own sake rather.