To exhibit Falstaff as throughout the whole course of five
acts a credulous and baffled dupe, one "easier to be played on than a
pipe," was not really to reproduce him at all. The genuine Falstaff
could no more have played such a part than the genuine Petruchio could
have filled such an one as was assigned him by Fletcher in the luckless
hour when that misguided poet undertook to continue the subject and to
correct the moral of the next comedy in our catalogue of Shakespeare's.
_The Tamer Tamed_ is hardly less consistent or acceptable as a sequel to
the _Taming of the Shrew_ than the _Merry Wives of Windsor_ as a
supplement to _King Henry IV_.: and no conceivable comparison could more
forcibly convey, how broad and deep is the gulf of incongruity which
divides them.
The plea for once suggested by the author in the way of excuse or
extenuation for this incompatibility of Falstaff with Falstaff--for the
violation of character goes far beyond mere inconsistency or the natural
ebb and flow of even the brightest wits and most vigorous intellects--will
commend itself more readily to the moralist than to the humanist; in
other words, to the preacher rather than to the thinker, the sophist
rather than the artist.
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