This
palpable and patent fact, as his only and worthy French translator has
well remarked, would of itself suffice to exonerate his memory from the
imputation of having perpetrated in its evil entirety _The First Part of
King Henry VI_.
There is, in my opinion, somewhat more of internal evidence than I have
ever seen adduced in support of the tradition current from an early date
as to the origin of the _Merry Wives of Windsor_; a tradition which
assigns to Queen Elizabeth the same office of midwife with regard to this
comedy as was discharged by Elwood with reference to _Paradise Regained_.
Nothing could so naturally or satisfactorily explain its existence as the
expression of a desire to see "Falstaff in love," which must have been
nothing less than the equivalent of a command to produce him under the
disguise of such a transfiguration on the boards. The task of presenting
him so shorn of his beams, so much less than archangel (of comedy)
ruined, and the excess of (humorous) glory obscured, would hardly, we
cannot but think and feel, have spontaneously suggested itself to
Shakespeare as a natural or eligible aim for the fresh exercise of his
comic genius.
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