RARE - The Falstaff Plays of William Shakespeare (1925)

The Falstaff Plays of William Shakespeare

Edited by Thomas Donovan

I have here a 248-page hardcover book edited by Thomas Donovan, titled, ‘The Falstaff Plays of William Shakespeare’. Published by Angus & Robertson Limited, Sydney a 1925 (First Edition).

PREFACE:

Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor presents to the student two distinct problems - that of the date of its composition and that of the period in Falstaff’s life, which it is supposed to depict; yet most critics in discussing the first problem manage to tangle themselves up almost imme­diately in the second. Even if Shakespeare did write the Merry Wives after the 2nd part of Henry IV that could not prevent his depicting in the former play the earlier life of Falstaff and others who appear in Henry IV. At any rate, I feel satisfied that he has done so; and therefore the story of Falstaff, as told here, begins in the Merry Wives, is continued in the two parts of Henry IV, and ends in Henry V.

In the first play he is younger, his wit less mature, and his body less portly. Although of middle age, he can on an emergency creep into a buck-­basket and be carried by two men to the river at Datchet. When we first meet him, he is lodging in Windsor at the Garter Inn with three rascally followers. All we learn of his previous career must be gathered from the senile gossip of Justice Shallow - who, it appears, was a fellow-student with Falstaff at Clement’s Inn, the latter being by far the younger man. Shallow had come up to Windsor from his home in Gloucestershire for two reasons. In the first place, he wanted to lay before the King’s officers a complaint that Falstaff’s gang had been stealing his deer and beating his men. The second reason was even stronger: he wanted to arrange a marriage between his cousin Slender and Anne Page, daughter of his friend George Page of Windsor, and to that end brought with him the young man himself. Fenton, a young friend of the wild Prince of Wales, however, also sought Anne, in marriage by Dr. Caius, a duelling French physician, and. While these three wooed Anne, Falstaff was making love simultaneously to the honest wives of George Page - who had full confi­dence in his spouse-and Francis Ford, whose jealousy was overmastering. Falstaff’s intention was to refill his moneybags with the husbands' gold, but he failed woefully in both attempts, was publicly shamed by the indignant yet laughter-loving wives, and was forced to quit Windsor. Meanwhile Dr. Caius vowed vengeance on his housekeeper, Mrs. Quickly, and on the host of the Garter Inn, both of whom had taken bribes from Fenton to help him outwit the two other suitors, and to secure his marriage to Anne Page. Quickly and the host were forced to leave Windsor for London; there they married, and opened the Boar’s Head tavern in Eastcheap, he becoming vintner and she hostess. Here we find them in Henry IV. At this tavern Falstaff lodged, and here the wild Prince of Wales revelled with his dis- reputable companions. When civil war broke out once more in England, the Prince of Wales was reconciled to his father, and abandoned his wild life so completely that, when he succeeded to the throne, he banished all his old companions, forbidding them on pain of death to come within ten miles of his person. The vintner of the Boar’s Head tavern being dead, Mrs. Quickly married Pistol, and retired to a Thames-side inn near Staines, where banished Falstaff died “at the turning o’ the tide,” heart-broken and repentant, while he “babbled of green fields.”

Something should be said as to the form in which these plays are here presented. Omitting the Latin-lesson scene and a few unimportant passages shortens The Merry Wives of Windsor. Two other scenes have been combined with advantage to stage production, and a few lines have been added from the Quarto edition-notably at the end of the last Act, thus avoiding the unreasonable and revolting invitation given in the Folio to Falstaff by the wives whose virtue he had assailed (and by their injured husbands!) to “come home and laugh the sport o’er by a country fire.”

In Henry IV the two parts have been shortened, chiefly by omitting some of the grosser passages.

Henry V has, in Act IV F, been restored to the form in which I believe it left the hand of Shakespeare. The First Folio’s numbering of the second, third and fourth acts was first changed by Pope, who ignored the division of the fourth act made in the Folio. I have chosen a compromise, adopting the modern (Pope’s) numbering of Acts I to IV, at the same time following the division of the fourth act given in the Folio. This leaves us with two fourth acts, the latter of which I have numbered Act IV F. At the same time I have reconstructed the first two scenes of this act from the four fragments into which they had been broken by some very early stage-hack, improving, as he thought, on Shakespeare. The reasons for my conviction of the truthfulness of my restoration of this act, and especially of its first two scenes, are given in my True Text of Shakespeare (Mac­millan, 1923). In that booklet, however, one point is omitted in my criticism of this play. After his coronation the King banished Falstaff and his fol­lowers; they were not to come within ten miles of the court. Yet every editor has forgotten this exile; and without excuse or delay we find Fal­staff and his crew back in London, where Quickly offers to walk with Pistol to Staines (thirty miles away!), leaving Falstaff dead in her house. How many critics have failed to see that the banished Falstaff spent his last days with his exiled friends near Staines, where the Thames is crossed by the road to Southampton!

- Thomas Donovan

This wonderful old hardcover book is in good condition for its age, very light browning on edges of the book, unfortunately it doesn’t have a dust jacket. The covers have hints of shelf wear being the odd ding and bump and rubbing, overall, a great book for any Shakespeare book lover.

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