Falstaff Give me life

Review by New York Times Review

Harold bloom fell in love with Shakespeare's Sir John Lalstaff when, as a boy of 12, "I turned to him out of need, because I was lonely." That was 75 years ago; Bloom has been faithful ever since, and "Lalstaff: Give Me Life" may be his last love letter to the shaping spirit of his imagination. Not that there is anything ethereal about Lat Jack. This whiskery swag-bellied omnivorous cornucopia of appetites, red-eyed, unbuttoned, sherry-soaked. This nightwalker and whoremonger, a "muddy conger," swinging at his old mistress Doll Tearsheet, a life- affirming liar whose truth is never to be a counterfeit. Falstaff is ancient energy thumping at volume through a temporary poundage of flesh. He is part pagan - the Lord of Misrule on the loose in Eastcheap, and as such his time is short. We meet him first in "Henry IV, Part 1," already old, lusting at life, drinking pal of the young Prince Hal, who is calculatedly slumming it in London's East End, like any rich kid running away from the family firm. This book is an explanation and a reiteration of why Falstaff matters to Bloom, and why Falstaff is one of literature's vital forces. These two strands of argument cannot be separated. Bloom is not a thinker who tries to take himself out of the equation. As a teacher and a writer he has always wanted to make us feel something, as well as to understand something. Profoundly learned himself, his learning is a call to life - that we are, or can be, altered and enriched by what we know. Bloom calls Falstaff "the true and perfect image of life" ; this is the center of his argument. To follow his meaning the reader needs to be prepared to follow Shakespeare. This brief book is dense with quotation - but necessarily so. Falstaff: "Dost thou hear, Hal? Never call a true piece of gold a counterfeit: Thou art essentially mad without seeming so." "Essentially mad without seeming so" - Shakespeare anticipated Freud by 300 years in recognizing how madness can be hidden behind ambition, success, money and especially the cold calculations of power. Shakespeare's message of madness is to be found in those characters who are antilife - whether Angelo in "Measure for Measure," or Lady Macbeth, or Leontes in "The Winter's Tale." In the late plays there is a cure for madness: Lear dies sane, Leontes repents. But the dangerous, subversive question of the history plays - and in Bloom's book, we're reading both parts of "Henry IV" as well as "Henry V" - is, what is power worth? Falstaff, excessive, loving, outrageous, overblown, but true, stands against Hal's counterfeit. Prince Hal, morphing into Henry V, may be a great leader, but he dumps his friends, rewrites his past, and in carnage is a self-aggrandizing commander of the Death Star. Falstaff is on the side of life; messy, silly, unplanned, all for love, life. Shakespeare was a showman, and his Henry plays played to English jingoism and mythmaking. They look as if they're about nation building, kingship and pride in warfare. But Falstaff is the comic counterpoint to all that posturing. In a wonderfully comic scene, cited at length by Bloom, Falstaff will play dead like a circus dog in order to avoid being killed in Hal's war. Falstaff: "To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man. But to counterfeit dying when a man thereby liveth is to be no counterfeit but the true and perfect image of life indeed." In other words - what exactly is worth dying for? Bloom frankly accepts that he is an old man losing his friends to death. He knows he doesn't have much time left himself. His interest is in how we expand the time we have - old or not. Falstaff, himself cartoonishly expanded on the outside, is also a human Tardis, much bigger inside than out, a kingdom got not by usurpation or bloodshed, but by pressing his being so close to life that he becomes the imprint of it. I went back to read Bloom's "Book of J," his commentary on those portions of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible written by "J" - a woman, Bloom proposes, and like Shakespeare, a serious creator. The Blessing, the sought-after, fought-over Blessing of Yahweh to his chosen ones, is the blessing of More Life. Or as Bloom glosses it: More Life Into a Time Without Boundaries. Bloom is passionate in his choices. This new manifesto will not appeal to the "gray legions of routine Shakespeare scholars." The ones, as Bloom puts it, who prefer Hal/ Henry to Falstaff, the ones on the side of authority, possibly the ones on the side of death (less messy than life), who drain the energy out of a text and offer it back as a pale imitation of itself - a counterfeit. Bloom is always a pleasure to read - the language simple and direct, yet easily conveying complexity of thought. He doesn't write like an academic. Of course, Bloom adores Falstaffs language. He quotes it to make us read it and rejoice in it. Now that the United States has a president who prefers tweets to sentences, language needs champions. Writers, dead and alive, can be recruited here, and Bloom's book is a timely reminder of the power and possibility of words. Falstaff, because he is More Life, is also More Language. He is a waterfall of words, a thundering torrent of bawdiness and beauty. His Falstaffery is made out of language: "If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked! If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned : If to be fat be to be hated, then... banish plump Jack, and banish all the world." It doesn't matter that Harold Bloom revisits some of his earlier work (notably "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human"). As Samuel Johnson - one of Bloom's favorite critics on Falstaff - said, "People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed." Hal the pedant prince is always instructing his audiences, real and imagined. Falstaffs outrageously embodied language reminds us that life is all there is. ? Fat Jack, that whiskery swag-bellied omnivorous cornucopia of appetites, red-eyed, sherry-soaked. JEANETTE winterson'S novels include "The Gap of Time: 'The Winter's Tale' Retold."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 16, 2017]

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Famed literary critic and Yale professor Bloom (The Daemon Knows) showcases his favorite Shakespearian character in this poignant work. Falstaff, one of Shakespeare's most complex tragicomic characters, appears in Henry IV Part One and Part Two and The Merry Wives of Windsor, and is referred to in Henry V. Bloom covers the many facets of a "disreputable and joyous" character, a knight, highwayman, jovial wit, and enthusiastic imbiber of sack (fortified wine) at the Boar's Head Tavern in London. The book also attends to Falstaff's motley crew, including Doll Tearsheet, a prostitute; Ancient Pistol, "a street hoodlum"; and Mistress Quickly, the tavern's malapropism-prone proprietor. Notably, Falstaff is also a nonjudgmental companion to Prince Hal, the son of Henry IV, and Bloom traces their relationship up to Prince Hal's ultimate rejection and betrayal of Falstaff upon being crowned King Henry V. The author notes that the Henry plays' historical aspects interest him less than the changing characters of Falstaff and, to a lesser extent, Hal. Bloom, who says he fell in love with Falstaff because "he exposes what is counterfeit in me and in all others," has created a larger-than-life portrait of a flawed character who is "at his best a giant image of human freedom." Agent: Glen Hartley, Writers' Representatives. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Review by Library Journal Review

Shakespearean scholar Bloom (Sterling Professor of Humanities, Yale Univ.; Berg Professor of English, NYU; Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human) fits many treasures into a scant number of pages in what is first and foremost a moving personal appreciation of what Bloom considers Shakespeare's most complete and effective character, Sir John Falstaff. The errant knight gets his due in Bloom's moving description of how Shakespeare's invention touched his life from adolescence on. In addition, the reader is treated to a close reading of Falstaff in the histories (his appearance in The Merry Wives of Windsor is mercifully glossed over). Part of this analysis is devoted to the characters in the Henriad (newly dubbed "the Falstaffiad" in this study) who echo Sir John. Hotspur, Hal, and Henry IV are all viewed through the prism of the corpulent crusader and the insights are solid, if not revolutionary. Bloom also devotes his attention to Falstaff in performance. Using Ralph Richardson's legendary enactment at the Old Vic and Orson Welles in his neglected masterpiece Chimes at Midnight, Bloom demonstrates how the plays work not just on the page but in the theater. VERDICT An enchanting and appreciative celebration of Shakespeare's greatest comic creation.-John Frank, Los Angeles P.L. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

An ardent admirer of Shakespeare analyzes an incomparably robust character.For esteemed literary critic Bloom (Humanities/Yale Univ.; The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime, 2015, etc.), MacArthur Fellow and winner of multiple awards and honorary degrees, Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff has enduring appeal, a character who "springs to life" anew each time he is read or seen on stage. Falstaff, Bloom asserts, "is as bewildering as Hamlet, as infinitely varied as Cleopatra." Unlike the beleaguered, grieving prince or the Egyptian queen, however, Falstaff appears in plays not as frequently performed: Shakespeare's trilogy of Henry plays. Bloom, though, assumes his readerslike students who have done their assignmentsare as cognizant of these plays as he is. In 21 chapters, he analyzes excerpts from the plays to support his argument that the ribald Falstaff is life-affirming, "everliving," and "the greatest wit in literature." Bloom, now 86, feeling some diminishment with age, is buoyed by Falstaff, who "resolutely remains a child" and "finds fresh delight in play." Bloom gained some insight into the character when he performed the role with the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2000 and at Yale, and he has seen a host of notable actors take it on. He especially admires the interpretations of Ralph Richardson, who played Falstaff with "a wounded dignity," and Orson Welles, who "relished the goodness of every phrase" that Falstaff spoke, "tasting it as if it were bread and wine." Of all Shakespeare's characters, Falstaff and Hamlet seem to Bloom "as being creations nearest" to the "concealed inwardness" of the playwright. Indeed, he writes, "it is difficult for me to withstand the temptation of identifying the Fat Knight with Shakespeare himself." In this first of five books about Shakespearean personalities, Bloom brings erudition and boundless enthusiasm. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Falstaff CHAPTER 1 Prelude I fell in love with Sir John Falstaff when I was a boy of twelve, almost seventy-five years ago. A rather plump and melancholy youth, I turned to him out of need, because I was lonely. Finding myself in him liberated me from a debilitating self-consciousness. He has never abandoned me for three-quarters of a century and I trust will be with me until the end. The true and perfect image of life abides with him: robustly, unforgettably, forever. He exposes what is counterfeit in me and in all others. If Socrates had been born in Geoffrey Chaucer's England and had gone to Eastcheap, a London street, to purchase meat, he might have stopped for ale or sack at the Boar's Head Tavern. There he would have encountered Falstaff and traded wit and wisdom with him. I have not the skill to portray that imaginary meeting. Only a fusion of Aristophanes and Samuel Beckett could manage it. Decades ago, sharing Fundador with Anthony Burgess on a Manhattan evening in 1972, I suggested he would be able to venture on the task but he demurred. A lifelong Falstaffian at eighty-six, I have come to believe that if we are to represent Shakespeare by only one play, it ought to be the complete Henry IV, to which I would add Mistress Quickly's description of the death of Falstaff in act 2, scene 3 of Henry V. I think of this as the Falstaffiad rather than the Henriad, as scholars tend to call it. Shakespeare never surpassed the alternation between the royal court, the rebels, and Eastcheap in these three plays. The transitions between high and low are so deft they seem invisible. Is there in all Western literature a portrayal of ambivalence to match Hal/Henry V? In regard to both the King, his father, and to Hotspur, his rival, the Prince is a whirligig of contraries. Toward Falstaff his long gathering ambivalence has turned murderous. Hal's imagination is haunted by the wishful image of Sir John Falstaff on the gallows. The wretched Bardolph is hanged by his new King and former companion, in Henry V, without regret. Had Falstaff not departed for Arthur's bosom, Mistress Quickly's poignant mistake for Abraham's bosom, he would have dangled by Bardolph's side. More than a few scholars of Shakespeare share Hal's ambivalence toward Falstaff. This no longer surprises me. They are the undead and Falstaff is the everliving. I wonder that the greatest wit in literature should be chastised for his vices since all of them are perfectly open and cheerfully self-acknowledged. Supreme wit is one of the highest cognitive powers. Falstaff is as intelligent as Hamlet. But Hamlet is death's ambassador while Falstaff is the embassy of life. The heroic vitalists in literature include Rabelais' Panurge, Chaucer's Wife of Bath, and Cervantes' Sancho Panza. Falstaff reigns over them. John Ruskin taught that the only wealth is life. Sir John Falstaff, the Socrates of Eastcheap, embodies that truth. What is the essence of Falstaffianism? My late friend and drinking companion Anthony Burgess told me it was freedom from the state. Anthony and I never quite agreed on that though indeed no societal standards ever could abide Falstaff. I recall telling Burgess that for me the essence of Falstaffianism was: do not moralize. Computing Falstaff's flaws is trivial: he bulges with them. Hal, like his father Bolingbroke, is the essence of hypocrisy. They are Machiavels. Bolingbroke, who becomes Henry IV, is a usurper and a regicide. His nonsensical obsession is that he will expiate the murder of Richard II by leading yet another crusade to capture Jerusalem. He dies indeed in the chamber of his palace called Jerusalem. Hal, when he becomes Henry V, leads a land grab to capture France. A crusade is what one might expect of Prince Hal, who hungers like Hotspur for what both call honor. Falstaff destroys the validity of that appetite in a reply to Hal in act 5, scene 1 in the first part of Henry IV: Hal: Why, thou owest God a death. [Exit.] Falstaff: 'Tis not due yet; I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? No: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no. 'Tis insensible, then. Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so ends my catechism. act 5, scene 1, lines 126-40 If there could be a religion of vitalism this would do very well for its catechism. Falstaff mocks faith, killing the insane notion that we owe God our death. Knowingly he also mocks both Hal and himself. Disreputable and joyous, he speaks to a world that goes from violence to violence. Falstaff immediately became the most popular of all Shakespearean personalities, and remains so. The audiences at the Globe and the readers who purchased quartos found little to moralize against in Sir John. His being overflows and that excess brings new meanings to our minds. Exuberance in itself is a shadowy virtue and can be dangerous to the self and to others, but in Falstaff it generates more life. I am weary of being accused of sentimentalizing Falstaff. I once told a benign interviewer: Remember, there are three great poets whom neither you nor I would want to have lunch or dinner with, or even a drink--François Villon, Christopher Marlowe, and Arthur Rimbaud. At the least they would rob us, at the most they might kill us. Sir John Falstaff wouldn't kill us, but he would certainly gull us one way or another, and perhaps pick our pockets very adeptly. In that sense the sublime Falstaff is bad news. Against myself I cite Orson Welles, whose Chimes at Midnight remains a neglected masterpiece. Welles made the film, an adaptation of the Henriad, and played it as tragedy. The film had a supporting cast of brilliant stars including Keith Baxter as Hal, John Gielgud as Henry IV, Jeanne Moreau as Doll Tearsheet, Margaret Rutherford as Mistress Quickly, and Ralph Richardson as the Narrator. Welles called Falstaff a "gloriously life-affirming good man . . . defending a force--the old England--which is going down. What is difficult about Falstaff . . . is that he is the greatest conception of a good man, the most completely good man, in all drama. His faults are so small and he makes tremendous jokes out of little faults. But his goodness is like bread, like wine." I may be unique in my total agreement with Orson Welles. Is there anyone else in Henry IV whose goodness is like bread, like wine? They are scurvy politicians like the King and the brilliant Prince Hal and most of the rebels. They are smug thugs like Prince John and high-spirited killing machines like the captivating Hotspur and Douglas. Falstaff's followers--Bardolph, Nym, the outrageous Pistol--are entertaining rogues, and Mistress Quickly and Doll Tearsheet are better company than the Lord Chief Justice. Justice Shallow is charmingly absurd and his crony Silence augments the irreality. Falstaff is as bewildering as Hamlet, as infinitely varied as Cleopatra. He can be apprehended but never fully comprehended. There is no end to Falstaff. His matrix is freedom but he dies for love. Oliver Goldsmith in his "A Reverie at the Boar's Head Tavern, Eastcheap" is a beacon: The character of old Falstaff, even with all his faults, gives me more consolation than the most studied efforts of wisdom. I here behold an agreeable old fellow, forgetting age, and showing me the way to be young at sixty-five. Sure I am well able to be as merry, though not so comical as he. Is it not in my power to have, though not so much wit, at least as much vivacity? Age, care, wisdom, reflection, begone! I give you to the winds. Let's have t'other bottle; here's to the memory of Shakespeare, Falstaff, and all the merry men of Eastcheap! Falstaff is possibly closer to seventy-five than sixty-five. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who discovered and fostered Goldsmith, similarly celebrated Falstaff while expressing moral disapproval. Maurice Morgann is the true ancestor of all Falstaffians. His An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff, published in 1777, was criticized by Johnson, who facetiously suggested Morgann should next try to prove Iago a good man. The issue was the supposed cowardice of the Fat Knight. It is an accusation first made by Prince Hal, who fiercely needs to persuade Falstaff to confess his cowardice. Why? Crossing the threshold to the sinuous consciousness of Hal/Henry V, second King of the Lancaster line, we confront the wavering presence of ontology itself, the immanence of Sir John Falstaff. Why did Shakespeare invent Falstaff? Literary character is always an invention and indebted to prior inventions. Shakespeare invented literary character as we know it. He reformed our expectations for the verbal imitation of personality and the reformation appears to be permanent and uncannily inevitable. The Bible and Homer powerfully render personages yet their characters are mostly unchanging. They age and die within their stories but their modes of being do not develop. Shakespeare's personalities do. The representation of character in his plays now seems normative and indeed became the accepted mode almost immediately. Shakespeare's personalities have little in common with those of Ben Jonson or Christopher Marlowe. Shakespeare's originality in portraying women and men founds itself upon The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer. Throughout Shakespeare, vitality transmutes into doom-eagerness. Richard II, the protagonist of the history that begins the Henriad, is a moral masochist whose luxurious self-indulgence in despair augments his overthrow by the usurper Bolingbroke, who thus becomes Henry IV. In the personality of Richard II, Shakespeare prefigures that element in all of us by which we render bad situations even worse through our own hyperbolic language. Falstaff is different. His zest for life pervades his torrent of language and laughter. Hotspur is the incarnation of doom-eagerness. His mode though is opposite to that of Richard II. His vaunting language assaults the frontiers of what is possible. Hal, his father's son, distrusts his own vitalism, and yet goes to Falstaff to be confirmed in it. The royal pupil proves unforgiving toward his teacher. Kings have no friends, only followers, and Sir John Falstaff is no man's follower. Directors, actors, playgoers, readers need to understand that Falstaff, most magnificent of wits, is tragicomic. Unlike Hotspur and Hal, he is not one of the fools of time. Dr. Johnson said that love was the wisdom of fools, and the folly of the wise. I cannot think of a better description of my hero Sir John Falstaff. Excerpted from Falstaff: Give Me Life by Harold Bloom All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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