In this nutshell lies the
whole kernel of the matter; the sweet, sound, ripe, toothsome, wholesome
kernel of Falstaff's character and humour. He will fight as well as his
princely patron, and, like the prince, as long as he sees reason; but
neither Hal nor Jack has ever felt any touch of desire to pluck that
"mere scutcheon" honour "from the pale-faced moon." Harry Percy is as it
were the true Sir Bedivere, the last of all Arthurian knights; Henry V.
is the first as certainly as he is the noblest of those equally daring
and calculating statesmen-warriors whose two most terrible, most perfect,
and most famous types are Louis XI. and Caesar Borgia. Gain,
"commodity," the principle of self-interest which never but in word and
in jest could become the principle of action with Faulconbridge,--himself
already far more "a man of this world" than a Launcelot or a Hotspur,--is
as evidently the mainspring of Henry's enterprise and life as of the
contract between King Philip and King John. The supple and shameless
egotism of the churchmen on whose political sophistries he relies for
external support is needed rather to varnish his project than to reassure
his conscience.
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