"Falstaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... real authority, was Mr. Winterblossom; a civil sort of person, who was nicely precise in his address, wore his hair cued, and dressed with powder, had knee-buckles set with Bristol stones, and a seal-ring as large as Sir John Falstaff's. In his heyday he had a small estate, which he had spent like a gentleman, by mixing with the gay world. He was, in short, one of those respectable links that connect the coxcombs of the present day with those ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... place enough. It had been built in the days of Queen Bess; and was just such a house as that in which Justice Shallow might have entertained Falstaff—a long grey building with a porch in the centre and a huge gable at either end—a house with deep-mullioned windows ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... say this letter is like Falstaff's reckoning, with but a pennyworth of thanks to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... Duke read this passage, and marvelled how Lever knew certain things that he tells. He learned this, and much more, the humours of war, from the original of Major Monsoon. Falstaff is alone in the literature of the world, but if ever there came a later Falstaff, Monsoon was the man. And where have you such an Irish Sancho Panza as Micky Free, that independent minstrel, or such an Irish Di Vernon ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... the White Horse had been a poem about English legends and origins. The History too was called a poem by the reviewers. And it was. It was a poem about Falstaff and Sam Weller and even the Artful Dodger who in so many British colonies had turned into Robinson Crusoe. His rulers had tried to educate him, they had tried to Germanize him and to teach him "to embrace ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... conditions could have been eliminated from the problem, if measures had been seasonably taken; but they now became critical elements in the decision to be made. And Hooker, despite his well-earned reputation as a fighting man, was unable to arrive at any other than the conclusion which Falstaff so cautiously enunciated, from beneath his shield, at the battle of Shrewsbury, that "the better part of ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... cheer would be incomplete without mention being made of Snap-dragon. It is an old sport, and is alluded to by Shakespeare in Henry IV., part ii. Act ii. sc. 4, where Falstaff says— ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... into the woods in the condition of Falstaff, "heinously unprovided." Coming from the unbounded luxury of the plantations, he found himself entering "the most horrid and impenetrable forests, where no kind of refreshment was to be had,"—he being provisioned only ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... General, is working in the minds of the people, and the democrats, having got you where Tommy had the wedge, intend to hold you there. Again you say that Mrs. Cady Stanton was three days in advance of you in the border towns, calling you the Sir John Falstaff of the campaign. I am under the impression, General, that these strong minded woman's rights women are more than three days in advance of you. (Loud cheers.) Falstaff was a jolly old brick, chivalrous and full of gallantry, and were he stumping Kansas with ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... eating his supper now, at what hour can he possibly have dined! A second solid mass of rump-steak has disappeared, and he eat the first in four minutes and three quarters, by the clock over the window. Was there ever such a personification of Falstaff! Mark the air with which he gloats over that Stilton, as he removes the napkin which has been placed beneath his chin to catch the superfluous gravy of the steak, and with what gusto he imbibes the porter which has been fetched, expressly for him, in the pewter pot. Listen ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the wild and whirling statement of one of the opponents of the Bill, and then coolly—as though it were a pure matter of business—he put in juxtaposition the enactments of the Bill, and the contrast was as laughter provoking with all its deadly seriousness, as the conflict between the story of Falstaff and the contemptuously quiet rejoinder of Prince Hal. Lord Randolph was taken in hand; he was soon disposed of. Then Mr. Dunbar Barton was crumpled up and flung away. Sir Edward Clarke ventured an interruption; he ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... start of the majestic world so far as that, however myriad-minded we may consider him. An instinct which would have rendered him aware of each and every individual of five thousand that he had employed once only would be as inconceivable as that of Falstaff, which made him discern the heir-apparent in Prince Hal when disguised as a highwayman. In short, Shakespeare could not be conscious of all the words he had once used, more than Brigham Young could recognize all the wives he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... imagined that all his folly was pretence, and looked upon him as a very clever fellow. There never was, perhaps, such a lachrymose countenance as this poor lad's, and this added still more to the mirth of others, being also considered as put on for the occasion. Stephen Kemble played Falstaff without stuffing—Num played the fool without any effort or preparation. Jumbo was also "picked up;" this was not done by Melchior, who stated, that any body might have him who claimed him; he tumbled with the fool upon the stage, and he also ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... might break into some lady's heart with a crowbar of his impudence. Nor would she like him to be a 'Eugene Aram,' for fear he should make a mistake and hang her some night instead of himself. He seemed fitter for a 'Jack Falstaff' than anything else. But Falstaff was too witty for a hero, and she thought, perhaps, that if he laughed any more he would be only so ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... momentary humour, when he put it into Falstaff's mouth to ask what honour is "to him that died o' Wednesday." It is a humour that won't last—'tis against nature—man is more than half belligerent, and has a "murder" in him (to give it a bad name) "that will out." Even the peaceable Ephraim took ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... tales; Spenser, soft as summer gales, With a mild and gracious mien Leading on his "Faery Queene." Shakspeare, child of fancy, stood Smiling in a mirthful mood, As tho' he that moment spied The fairy folk by Bottom's side, Or beheld by Herne's old oak, Falstaff with his antler yoke. Dryden, laurel-crown'd and hoary, Proudly stood in all his glory; Pope, as if his claims to speak Rested on the ancient Greek; And that prince of merry-men, Laughing, quaffing, "rare old Ben," Whose quaint conceits, so gay, so wild, Have oft my heart from woe beguil'd, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... Could shape our talents to exhibit plays? Your patience, sirs: some observations made, You'll grant us equal to the scenic trade. He who to midnight ladders is no stranger You'll own will make an admirable Ranger, And sure in Filch I shall be quite at home: Some true-bred Falstaff we may hope to start. The scene to vary, we shall try in time To treat you with a little pantomime. Here light and easy Columbines are found, And well-tried Harlequins with us abound. From durance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... Bilboa in Spain was once famous for well-tempered blades: these are quoted by Falstaff, where he describes the manner in which he lay in the buck-basket. Bilboes, the stock; ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Phoebe," which being interpreted by his countrymen, in their vernacular idiom, ran thus—"We'll hae moonlight again." Now, the young laird was one who considered it his chief honour to give effect to both the spirit and the letter of his family motto. Permitting us again to refer to honest Falstaff, it implied that they were "gentlemen of the night;" and he was not one who would loll upon his pillow when his "avocation" ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... as I was shoving off and bowed and waved my hat, and I parted on the most amiable terms from those heroes, so like the ragged regiment headed by the redoubtable Sir John Falstaff. ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... yere above wrytten." [Footnote: Toulmin Smith, The Parish, 473.] One may easily imagine the nature and value of such accoutrements, and of the villagers who were occasionally pressed into the service to wear them. Mouldy and Bullcalf, Wart, Shadow, and Feeble, and Falstaff's whole company of "cankers of a calm world and a long peace" may readily enough have been drawn ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... to send the telegram which brought this very helpful answer by seeing on the mantel-shelf in Marlowe's bedroom a photograph of himself and two others in the costume of Falstaff's three followers, with an inscription from The Merry Wives, and by noting that it bore the imprint of an Oxford firm ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... circumstances in the Tartuffe are calculated to shew the treachery of an accomplished hypocrite. I am sorry that no English writer of comedy can be produced as a rival to Moliere: although it must be confessed, that Falstaff and Morose are two admirable characters, excellently, supported and displayed; for Shakespear has contrived all the incidents to illustrate the gluttony, lewdness, cowardice, and boastfulness of the fat old knight: and Jonson, has, with equal art, displayed the oddity of a ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... minds so many and so various, in so many vital respects utterly unsympathetic and even incapable of sympathy with his own, is one of the most noteworthy phenomena in the history of literature. That he has had the most inadequate of editors, that, as his own Falstaff was the cause of the wit, so he has been the cause of the foolishness that was in other men, (as where Malone ventured to discourse upon his metres, and Dr. Johnson on his imagination,) must be apparent to every one,—and also that his genius and its manifestations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... captain sir John Falstaff, in 1 and 2 Henry IV. and in The Merry Wives of Windsor. In Henry V. he is promoted to lieutenant, and Nym is corporal. Both are hanged. Bardolph is a bravo, but great humorist; he is a lowbred, drunken swaggerer, wholly without principle, and always poor. His red, pimply ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... had sworn to single him out in battle. The plot was divulged, and it is said that thirteen knights arrayed themselves in armor resembling the King's in order to mislead the assailants. The whole thirteen perished on that bloody field, where fat Sir John Falstaff vowed he fought on Henry's behalf "a long ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... reference from the public or normal standard of proportion to one that is private and personal. The humorist refuses to part with any atom of his own personality, he stamps it on whatever comes from him. "If reasons were as plenty as blackberries," says Falstaff, achieving individuality by the same kind of odd picturesque comparison as every witty Irish peasant uses in talk, to the delight of himself and his hearers. But the individuality lies deeper than phrases: Falstaff takes ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... delight, an abbey whose rule has but a single clause (since goodness has no rule save freedom), "Do what you will." Of such a fraternity, love and marriage are the happiest outcome. Panurge, for whom the suggestion was derived from the macaronic poet Folengo, is the fellow of Shakespeare's Falstaff, in his lack of morals, his egoism, his inexhaustible wit; he is the worst and best of company. We would dispense with such a disreputable associate if we could, but save that he is a "very wicked lewd rogue," he is "the most virtuous man in the world," and we cannot part with him. Panurge would ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... birthday. This is my appearance as I see it in the glass before me: tall, spare (I don't weigh more than a hundred and forty pounds—the desert has any superfluous flesh that I ever owned, my lot having been, like Falstaff, to lard the lean earth, but in a hot climate); my eyes are brown, my face is long, and I wear a pointed white beard, which ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... characters necessary to the plot an interest and a destiny separate from that of the chief characters—is, of course, recognized and productive of fine results. But, even in the five-act play, the use of double-action is dangerous. For instance: Shakespere developed Falstaff so humorously that today we sometimes carelessly think of "Henry IV" as a delightful comedy, when in reality it was designed as a serious drama—and is most serious, when Falstaff's lines are cut from ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... only a jumble of happenings in the life they look upon, and group them, if at all, by propinquity in time, rather than by any deeper law of relation. Such a mind had Dame Quickly, the loquacious Hostess in Shakespeare's "Henry IV." Consider the famous speech in which she accuses Falstaff of breach of promise ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... poacher's creation of Mr. Justice Shallow of Gloucestershire, whose foolishness, suggested in "Henry IV." (Part II., Act iii. sc. 2), is still further emphasised in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," where he figures as one who has come to make a Star Chamber matter out of Sir John Falstaff's poaching. His complaint will be remembered. "Knight, you have beaten my men, killed my deer, and broken open my lodge ... the council ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... right. Life is of inestimable value, and nothing can compensate a corpse for the loss of it. Falstaff knew that, and, like the Magpie Moth, wisely counterfeited death to avoid the irretrievable step of dying. Our prudent livers display an equal wisdom, not exactly counterfeiting death, but living gingerly—living, as it were, at half-cock, lest life should go off suddenly with a flash and ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... Highly bred and cultured people have attained a certain unity of type, and are interested in the same sort of conversation. "Talk depends so wholly on our company," says Stevenson. "We should like to introduce Falstaff and Mercutio, or Falstaff and Sir Toby; but Falstaff in talk with Cordelia seems even painful. Most of us, by the Protean quality of man, can talk to some degree with all; but the true talk that strikes out all the slumbering best of us comes only with the peculiar brethren of our spirits.... ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... of Mynheer in a burgomaster suit borrowed from a friend, and the four painters—Marny as a Dutch Falstaff, Pudfut as a Spanish Cavalier, Stebbins got up as a Night Watch, and Malone in the costume of a Man-at-Arms—all costumes loaned for the occasion by the antiquary in the next street—were to await Joplin's ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "Longus;" Horne, author of some well-known productions in controversial divinity; Surr, the novelist (not in the Grammar school); James White, the friend of Charles Lamb, and not unworthy of him, author of "Falstaff's Letters" (this was he who used to give an anniversary dinner to the chimney-sweepers, merrier than, though not so magnificent as Mrs. Montague's); Pitman, a celebrated preacher, editor of some school-books, and religious ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... as a humorist or song-writer or publisher that I wish to portray him, but as an odd, lovable personality, possessed of so many interesting and peculiar and almost indescribable traits. Of all characters in fiction he perhaps most suggests Jack Falstaff, with his love of women, his bravado and bluster and his innate good nature and sympathy. Sympathy was really his outstanding characteristic, even more than humor, although the latter was always present. One might recite a thousand incidents ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... somewhat reminded me of Falstaff's "ragged regiment." The three varied wonderfully in height. The tallest was not only tall, but thin in the extreme, his ankles protruding below his trousers, and his wrists beyond the sleeves of his jacket; he had lost his military hat, and had substituted for ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... for a flexible kind of cutlass, from Bilbao, where the best Spanish sword-blades were made. Shakspeare humorously describes Falstaff in the buck-basket, like a good ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... laughed when I surveyed with my inexperienced eye these grisly, skeleton, phantom troops, and thought of the splendid invincible guard which the Pasha promised me. And yet amongst these wretched beings was riding sublime an Arab Falstaff. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... scepticism, just what the Antinomian is in relation to Christianity or as true a sceptic as he was a true Churchman who showed his good principles, according to Dr. Johnston, by never passing a church without taking off his hat, though he never went into it; or even as Falstaff, who had forgotten 'what the inside of a church was made of.' I shall be contented indeed to see you as little attached to your no-truth, as the generality of Christians ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... filled with tobacco smoke, sitting in an easy chair, an enormous pipe in his mouth, surrounded by large and small bottles of all sorts [entoure de chopes et bouteilles de toutes provenances]. His rather large head, his highly- coloured cheeks, his heavy features gave a Falstaff-like appearance to his physiognomy. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Falstaff, that the shirts she bought him were Holland at eight shillings a yard; a high price at this day, even supposing, what is not probable, that the best Holland at that time was equal in goodness to the best that can now be purchased. In like manner, a yard of velvet, about ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... the subjects he selected, but in his treatment of their themes he shook boldly off the yoke of the past. A larger and deeper conception of human character than any of the old dramatists had reached displayed itself in Richard the Third, in Falstaff, or in Hotspur; while in Constance and Richard the Second the pathos of human suffering was painted as even Marlowe had ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... never reckon of them; but these pale visaged and carrion lean people, I fear them most; meaning Brutus and Cassius."—Plutarch, Julius Caesar. There are similar passages in Plutarch's Life of Brutus and in the Life of Marcus Antonius. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, III, xi, 37. Falstaff's famous cry was for 'spare men.' See 2 Henry IV, III, ii, 288. 'Sleek-headed' recalls Lamb's wish that the baby son of the tempestuous Hazlitt should be "like his father, with something of a better temper and a ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... melodrama, whom I understand to be the professional ruffian of the neighboring theatre, alluded, with a certain lifting of the brow, drawing down of the corners of the mouth, and somewhat rasping voce di petto, to Falstaff's nine men in buckram. Everybody looked up. I believe the old gentleman opposite was afraid I should seize the carving-knife; at any rate, he slid it to one side, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... and fewer who are disposed to comply. Many consultations have been holden, many plans proposed; but as the result of all these consultations and plans is to send a certain number to the frontiers, the suffrages have never been unanimous except in giving their negative.— Like Falstaff's troops, every one has some good cause of exemption; and if you were to attend a meeting where this affair is discussed, you would conclude the French to be more physically miserable than any people on the glove. Youths, in apparent good health, have internal disorders, or concealed ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... neighborhood—of a woodcutter's axe. Sturdy were the blows, and steady the succession in which they followed: some even fancied they could hear that sort of groaning respiration which is made by men who use an axe, or by those who in towns ply the "three-man beetle" of Falstaff, as paviers; echoes they certainly heard of every blow, from the profound woods and the sylvan precipices on the margin of the shores; which, however, should rather indicate that the sounds were not supernatural, since, if a visual object, falling under hyper-physical or cata-physical ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... feigns its existence, and all Europe is delighted when it rises with Astolfo in the air. We never pause to ask the poet whether such an animal exists. He has seen it, and we see it with his eyes. Talking trees do not startle us in Virgil and Tennyson. Puck and Titania, Hamlet and Falstaff, are as true for us as Luther and Napoleon so long as we are in the realm of Art. We grant the poet a free privilege because he will use it only for our pleasure. In Science pleasure is not an object, ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... of doubtful quality, like Falstaff's of old, but they were family heirlooms, and had been worn by her mother ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... me, and, as my wet hair hung in smooth, flat folds down my cheeks, and my limp shirt-collar fell over my linsey coat, I looked for all the world like a cross between a theatrical Aminadab Sleek and Sir John Falstaff, with the stuffing omitted. When our hostess caught sight of me in this new garb, she rubbed her hands together in great glee, and, springing to her feet, gave vent to a perfect storm of laughter—jerking out ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... which the ancient republics broke down—the slavery system which will lead to the most terrible collisions in the southern states of republican North America, the slavery system may exclaim with Jack Falstaff: and if reasons were ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... was a London street, named Bucklersbury (near the present Mansion House), noted for its number of druggists who sold Simples and sweet-smelling herbs. We read, in [ix] The Merry Wives of Windsor, that Sir John Falstaff flouted the effeminate fops of his day as "Lisping hawthorn buds that smell like Bucklersbury in ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... The example to which I point, is the character of the Prince of Wales, in the two Parts of Henry the Fourth, Such a natural and beautiful decorum is maintained in the display of that character, that the Prince is as discoverable in the loose scenes with Falstaff and his associates, as in the Presence Chamber, or the closet. after the natural, though mixt dramas, of Shakespear, and Beaumont and Fletcher, had prevailed on our stage, it is surprising that our progress to pure Tragedy and Comedy, should have been interrupted, ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... Dinmont and Colonel Mannering wanted to speak to you, sir," Pleydell turned his head, and blushed a little when he saw the very genteel figure of the English stranger. He was, however, of the opinion of Falstaff, "Out, ye villains, play out the play!" wisely judging it the better way to appear totally unconcerned. "Where be our guards?" exclaimed this second Justinian; "see ye not a stranger knight from foreign parts arrived ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... his especial interest. That he would have seen through the eyes of Sir John Falstaff and his riotous, dissolute cronies of the Boar's Head Tavern. Georgian London? What better companion could he have had in his scheme of investigation than Mr. Thomas Jones, recently come up from the West Country? For a vision of Corinthian ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... to his labors. But notwithstanding his own inquisitiveness and the aid of others, he still has not had the good fortune to find the following, for the whole or any one of which he will be particularly obliged:—'Remarks on Shakespeare's Tempest,' 'An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff, by Mr. Maurice Morgan, 8 vo, 1777,'" ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... sans-peur et sans reproche, inspired by the highest ideals of faith and chivalry. If only some new Shakespeare would come out of the ranks after this war to give us immortal portraits of a twentieth- century Falstaff, with a modern Nym, Pistol, and Bardolph—what a human comedy would be there in the midst of all this tragedy in France and Flanders, setting off the fine exalted heroism of all those noble and excellent men who, like the knights and men-at-arms of Henry at Agincourt, thought ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... lecture on false criticism (especially in poetry) and on its causes, two-thirds of the remaining course," continues the prospectus, "will be assigned, 1st, to a philosophical analysis and explanation of all the principal characters of our great dramatists, as Othello, Falstaff, Richard the Third, Lago, Hamlet, etc., and to a critical comparison of Shakspeare in respect of diction, imagery, management of the passions, judgment in the construction of his dramas—in short, of all that belongs to him as a poet, and as a dramatic poet, with his ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... health and return thanks for the same in your absence; though we had rather you were present to witness and share our exceeding great joy; and then to commence our Thirteenth Volume. Pardon this exuberance of the season: we reason with Falstaff:—"If then the tree may be known by the fruit, as the fruit by the tree, then, peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue in that Falstaff: him keep with; the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 12, No. 349, Supplement to Volume 12. • Various
... a ranting character in a play called "The Lamentable Tragedy"; referred to by Falstaff in I Henry IV., ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... with the opera of Barbier, Carre, and Gounod, though it was far from Boito's intentions that it should ever be subjected to such a comparison. Boito is rather more poet and dramatist than he is musician. He made the book not only of "Mefistofele," but also of "Otello" and "Falstaff," which Verdi composed, "La Gioconda," for which Ponchielli wrote the music, and "Ero e Leandro," which he turned over to Bottesini, who set it with no success, and to Mancinelli, who set it with little. One ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Fair—the great triumph of modern fiction—is Becky Sharp: a character which will ever stand in the very foremost rank of English literature, if not with Falstaff and Shylock, then with Squire Western, Uncle Toby, Mr. Primrose, Jonathan Oldbuck, and Sam Weller. There is no character in the whole range of literature which has been worked out with more elaborate completeness. She is ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... without Tears." These are for a bass voice, and by all odds the best of his songs. An appropriate setting is Edmund Clarence Stedman's "Falstaff's Song," a noteworthy lyric of toss-pot moralization on death. His song of "Joy" is exuberant with spring gaiety, and some of his best manner is seen in his "Elegie," for violin and piano. He has also written a deal of ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... purse, a frequent and steady patron of the Drama, especially as its interests were represented by "the Lord Chamberlain's servants." Everybody, no doubt, has heard the tradition of her having been so taken with Falstaff in King Henry the Fourth, that she requested the Poet to continue the character through another play, and to represent him in love; whereupon he wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor. Whatever embellishments may have been added, there is nothing incredible ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... month for seventy or eighty centuries, he would have strengthened his hold. As it is, he has ignored all these people officially, treats them like criminals personally; makes friends with Mazarin and Powhatan, awards the office of Tax Assessor to Dick Turpin, and makes old Falstaff commander of his Imperial Guard. And just because poor Ben Jonson scribbled off a rhyme for my ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... have been said about this most remarkable personage. He has been fathered upon the Cingar of Folengo, which is too much of a compliment to that creation of the great Macaronic, and Falstaff has been fathered upon him, which is distinctly unfair to Falstaff. Sir John has absolutely nothing of the ill-nature which characterises both Cingar and Panurge; and Panurge is an actual and contemptible coward, while many good wits have doubted whether Falstaff is, in the true sense, a coward ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... creative in that, from any given emotion or motive, it could form a human character who should be completely governed by that motive. Ambition in Macbeth, pride in Coriolanus, wit in Mercutio, broad humor in Falstaff, indecision in Hamlet, pure fancy in Ariel, brutality in Richard, a passionate love in Juliet, a merry love in Rosalind, an ideal love in Perdita,—such characters reveal Shakespeare's power to create living men and women from a single ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... him unobserved. I had a sudden vain relenting. Repentance bludgeoned me. As I had predicted to Nares, I stood and kicked myself. Here was I come home again, my honour saved; there was my friend in want of rest, nursing, and a generous diet; and I asked myself, with Falstaff, "What is in that word honour? what is that honour?" and, like Falstaff, I told myself that it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... harboured one of the proscribed; he tore up every code of laws, broke every enactment; he caused the deported to rot by thousands in the horrible holds of the hulks; he sent to Lambessa and Cayenne one hundred and fifty children between twelve and fifteen; he who was more absurd than Falstaff, has become more terrible than Richard III; and why has all this been done? Because there was, he said, "a plot against his power;" because the year which was closing had a treasonable understanding ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... embellishments of life, and has worn down society into a more smooth and polished, but certainly a less characteristic surface. Many of the games and ceremonials of Christmas have entirely disappeared, and, like the sherris sack of old Falstaff, are become matters of speculation and dispute among commentators. They flourished in times full of spirit and lustihood, when men enjoyed life roughly, but heartily and vigorously: times wild and picturesque, which have furnished poetry with its richest materials, ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... retreat from the mid-day sun, and they may be seen in single file by scores, at the approach of an intruding footstep, scrambling up the pipe. Dying in this way, affects these creatures, as "sighing and grief" did Falstaff, "blows them up like a bladder;" and, like Sampson, they do more mischief in their death, than in all their life together. They swell up, and stop the water entirely, or partially dam it, so that the effect of the work ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... love that is not ashes. But just as he may let himself go more than the Puritan in the matter of enjoyment, so he may let himself go more than the Puritan in the matter of melancholy. The sad exuberances of Hamlet are merely like the glad exuberances of Falstaff. This is not conjecture; it is the text of Shakespeare. In the very act of uttering his pessimism, Hamlet admits that it is a mood and not the truth. Heaven is a heavenly thing, only to him it seems a foul congregation of vapours. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... easily one into another. But when the Greek imagination had once done its work upon them, a figure like Athena or Aphrodite had become, for all practical purposes, a definite person, almost as definite as Achilles or Odysseus, as Macbeth or Falstaff. They crystallize hard. They will no longer melt or blend, at least not at an ordinary temperature. In the fourth and third centuries we hear a great deal about the gods all being one, 'Zeus the same as Hades, Hades as Helios, Helios the same as Dionysus',[64:1] ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... indicative of wealth or importance, when worn by the middle classes who had obtained any municipal position. When Falstaff speaks of his slenderness in his youth, he declares that he could then have "crept through an alderman's thumb-ring." Like the massive gold chains still worn by that honourable fraternity, they told ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... right place at the head of the vigorous new school which has arisen in Italy, and which promises to regain for the "Land of Song" some of her ancient preeminence in music. A comic opera by Verdi, "Falstaff," was announced in 1892: it has ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... and finding it full of Shakespeare's principal characters! What a babel of tongues! What a jostling of wits! How eagerly one's eye would go in search of Hamlet and Sir John Falstaff, but droop shudderingly at the thought of encountering the distraught gaze of Lady Macbeth! We should have no difficulty in recognising Beatrice in the central figure of that lively group of laughing courtiers; whilst did we seek Juliet, it would, of course, be by appointment on the ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... Hal's companions was a fat old knight named Sir John Falstaff. Once Falstaff was boasting that he and three men had beaten and almost killed two men in buckram suits who had attacked and tried to rob them. The prince led him on and gave him a chance to brag as much as he wanted to, until finally Falstaff swore that there were at least a ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... of Jack Falstaff about Francis Schlatter, whose whitened bones were found amid the alkali dust of the desert, a few years ago—dead in an endeavor to do without meat and drink for ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... "even more uninteresting than the first," we find the two following extraordinary ideas. Firstly, that Shakspeare followed a theory of physical temperaments in his characters—that Hamlet was a representative of the melancholy or nervous, Othello of the choleric, Romeo of the sanguine, and Falstaff of the phlegmatic. Secondly, that in Falstaff, Shakspeare parodied—himself! Or to give his own words, "We may suppose that Shakspeare's physical constitution inclined to corpulence, and inspired in him the disposition to the life of a bon vivant. His intimacy with the Earl ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Pleasures. But they were said openly then, and by great writers. There is nothing here so nauseatingly indecent as the viler poems of the Rev. Robert Herrick and the Very Rev. the Dean of Dublin, Jonathan Swift, D.D. There are salacious hints, there are bawdy words, but no more than Falstaff or the wife of Bath or the Summoner or Tom Jones might have used—less, on the whole. There is no need, to borrow a phrase from the book's sequel, to "make use of the gesture of casting up the whites of the eyes." "True-hearted souls will solace their spirits with a little laughter, ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... While coward conscience still affrights his eye, Still groans the dagger'd sound, "despair and die." And hapless Juliet's unextinguish'd flame, Gives to the tomb she mock'd, her beauteous frame; Yet diff'rent far, where Claudio sees return'd To life, and love, the maid too rashly spurn'd; Or Falstaff, in his sympathetic scroll, Forth to the Wives of Windsor pours his soul. Again, forsaking mirth's fantastic rites, The Muse to follow, through her nobler flights, Where Milton paints angelic hosts in arms, ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... the most remarkable emendations ever made by an editor is that of Theobald in Mrs. Quickly's description of Falstaff's deathbed (King Henry V., act ii., sc. 4). The original is unintelligible: "his nose was as sharp as a pen and a table of greene fields.'' A friend suggested that it should read " 'a talked,'' and Theobald then suggested " 'a babbled,'' a reading which has ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... satirical angle, and is the oldest and most persistent species of comedy in the language. None the less, Jonson's comedy merited its immediate success and marked out a definite course in which comedy long continued to run. To mention only Shakespeare's Falstaff and his rout, Bardolph, Pistol, Dame Quickly, and the rest, whether in "Henry IV." or in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," all are conceived in the spirit of humours. So are the captains, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish of ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... in London at the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, the very tavern[681] where Falstaff and his joyous companions met; the members of which all assume Shakspeare's characters. One is Falstaff, another Prince Henry, another Bardolph, and so on. JOHNSON. 'Don't be of it, Sir. Now that you have a name, you must be careful to avoid many things, not bad in themselves, but which will lessen ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... enough men, elephants, gorillas and leopards, and I preferred to go into wild districts under the French flag to any flag. I am still thinking about taking that voyage, but I'll not march through Coventry with the crew we had down the Rembwe— that's flat, as Sir John Falstaff says. Picture to yourselves, my friends, the charming situation of being up a river surrounded by rapacious savages with a lot of valuable goods in a canoe and with only a crew to defend them possessed of such ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the latter. Yusuf and several more tolerant gentlemen held out hope of mercy to us all, as God was "the Compassionate and the Merciful." The chaouch also lectured the people on courage, and publicly maintained that the Fezzanees were all cowards. This fellow is a second Sir John Falstaff, without the corpulence. The tone of all members of the caravan, as I have mentioned, is now much humanised. Every one is more civil to us, and, by habit, to one another. However, the chaouches must, of course, get up a quarrel now and then: they do it between themselves; ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... comes swarmin' into the hills while I'm thar to try the pine trees on his 'tooberclosis,' as he describes said malady, an' whose weakness is to saw off cognomens on everythin' he sees. As fast as he's introdooced to 'em, this actor sport names the Long's Canyon bull 'Falstaff'; the Red River five- year-old 'Hotspur,' bein' he's plumb b'lligerent an' allers makin' war medicine; while the little three-year-old, who inhabits about my camp in the Caliente, he addresses as 'Prince Hal.' The fool ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... from war to love is by no means so remarkable as we might at first imagine. We quote Jack Falstaff in proof of this; or, if the reader be disposed to reject our authority, then we quote Ancient Pistol himself—both of whom we consider as the most finished specimens of heroism that ever carried a safe skin. Acres would have been a hero had he worn gloves to prevent the courage from ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... too, that speakers of all orders and characters use all the forms. Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Coriolanus, Lance, use prose; Leontes and his little boy, Lear, Coriolanus, and his domestics—to say nothing of the Steward—Macbeth and his murderlings, use blank verse. Even Falstaff, now and then, a verse. All, high and low, wise, merry, and sad, rhyme. Fools, witches, fairies—we know not who else—use lyrical measures. Upon the whole, the uttermost—that is, the musical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... always liked the town. I was acquainted at one time with a great many of your old citizens. Most of them have died, and I know but few of the present generation. I used to stop at the old Planter's House, and I was there quite often during the war. In those days I saw Hackett as Falstaff, the best Falstaff that ever lived. Ben de Bar was here then, and the Maddern sisters, and now the daughter of one of the sisters, Minnie Maddern Fiske, is one of the greatest actresses in the world. She has made a wonderful hit in New York this season. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... does lush young England dissipate. Cricket and football order into violent action both pairs of extremities, while the upper pair and the organs of the thorax labor profitably at the oar. The Thames, in its three bends from Senly Hall, the Benny Havens of Eton, down to Datchet Mead, where Falstaff overflowed the buck-basket, belongs to the boys. In this space it is split into an archipelago of aits. In and out of the gleaming paths and avenues of silvery water that wind between them glide the little boats. The young ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... has not yet quite vanished before modern improvement. It is a mighty heavy, clumsy conveniency, hung on leather springs, and looking for all the world as if elephants alone could move it along; and, if it should upset, like Falstaff, it may ask for levers ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... terms than I had ever seen man and horse upon before. But even while the thought was passing through my head, Memnon was lying at my feet, flat as his equine rotundity would permit. Ashamed of my doubt, I lost not a moment in placing myself in the position suggested by Sir John Falstaff to Prince Hal for the defence of his own bulky carcase—astride the body of the animal, namely. At once he rose and lifted me into the natural relation of man and horse. Then he looked round at his master, and they set ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... heads, banishing all security for the present or hope for the future. The theatre is, I believe, doing very well just now, and we go pretty often to the play, which I like. I have lately been seeing my father playing Falstaff several times, and I think it is an excellent piece of acting; he gives all the humor without too much coarseness, or charging, and through the whole, according to the fat knight's own expression, he is "Sir John to all the world," with a certain courtly deportment which prevents him ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... come in sight of the wooded steep of Haughmond, Shakspere's "bosky hill." It commands the field where Falstaff fought "an hour by the Shrewsbury clock;" and has still a thicket, called the Bower, from which Queen Eleanor is said to have watched the battle in which the fortunes of her husband were involved. A castellated turret crowns the summit of the rock next the Severn; beyond, is Sundorne Castle ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... other friends, how strange and unnatural they seemed. Their most intimate friends would scarcely have recognized them. Margaret was a fat, jolly Falstaff, stuffed out to immense proportions. Edith was entirely disguised as a jester and enjoyed her own quips immensely when she tapped a visitor on the shoulder with her bauble and said, "Good morrow, fair maid, art looking ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... pierced the walks of men; Then Folly blush'd, Vice fled the general hiss, Delight met Reason with a loving kiss; At Satire's glance Pride smooth'd his low'ring crest, The Graces weaved the dance.—And last and best Came Momus down in Falstaff's form to earth. To make the world one universe ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... (between you and me) it was much more owing to that, than to any superior knowledge or merit of my own. Apropos, the word PLEASING puts one always in mind of Lady Hervey; pray tell her, that I declare her responsible to me for your pleasing; that I consider her as a pleasing Falstaff, who not only pleases, herself, but is the cause of pleasing in others; that I know she can make anything of anybody; and that, as your governess, if she does not make you please, it must be only because she will ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... was placed on the truckle-bed, which rolled under the large bed, and was generally used by a servant, who slept in his master's room. The reader will remember the speech of Mine Host of the Garter, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," who says of Falstaff's room: "There's his chamber, his house, his castle, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... me; and perhaps a proof that 'blows hurts' might have followed, but just as I finished, my boss came in, and commanded the party to leave his premises, with an assurance that he would not suffer me to be molested. The leader, who seemed as much ashamed of his followers as Falstaff was of his ragged regiment, immediately beat a retreat, and his troop with him; one or two, as they went out, declaring that they would 'hammer' me whenever they caught me in the street. I, however, went and came as usual, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... premonition of these particularities, I secured our pleasantry.' The feminine characters, Flirtillas, and Cleoras, and Euphelias, and Penthesileas, are, if possible, still more grotesque. Macaulay remarks that he wears the petticoat with as ill a grace as Falstaff himself. The reader, he thinks, will cry out with Sir Hugh, 'I like not when a 'oman has a great peard! I spy a great peard under her muffler.' Oddly enough Johnson gives the very same quotation; and goes on to warn his supposed ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... 1000 pages), is much more Astreean, and therefore, perhaps, better. Things do happen in it: among other incidents a lover is introduced into a garden in a barrow of clothes, though he has not Sir John Falstaff's fate. There are fresh laws of love, and discussions of them; a new debate on the old Blonde v. Brunette theme, which might be worse, etc. etc. The same year brought forth Les Chastes Amours d'Armonde by a certain ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... clew to man's relation with the unseen and eternal that we miss in Shakspere. He fails to show one trait which belongs to human nature as truly as Hotspur's courage or Falstaff's drollery. He nowhere depicts a life controlled by a moral ideal, deliberately chosen and resolutely pursued. His world is rich in passion, but deficient in clear and high purpose and soldierly resolve. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... Sheffer, in his belief in himself. But he despised Sheffer and feared Severance, not for what the latter represented, but for the cynical honesty of his attitude. In retort for Severance's stab, he dubbed the pair Mephistopheles and Falstaff, which was above his usual felicitousness of characterization. Sheffer (who read Shakespeare to improve his mind, and for ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... were amply compensated by his being called upon, and, as it were, compelled, by the nature of his audience, to rouse them with his thunder, and to melt them with his dew. I question much if the age of Charles II. would have borne the introduction of Othello or Falstaff. We may find something like Dryden's self-complacent opinion expressed by the editor of Corneille, where he civilly admits, "Corneille etoit inegal comme Shakespeare, et plein de genie comme lui: mais le genie de Corneille etoit a celui de Shakespeare ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... a servitor he no doubt made such acquaintances as offered themselves, and spent a good deal of his leisure perforce with second-rate actors and writers in common taverns and studied his Bardolph and Pistol, and especially his Falstaff at first hand. Perhaps Marlowe was one of his ciceroni in rough company. Shakespeare had almost certainly met Marlowe very early in his career, for he worked with him in the "Third Part of Henry VI.," and his "Richard III." is a conscious imitation of ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... 1793 the days of large armies had not dawned. It was usual to maintain small forces of professional soldiers, together with a more or less inefficient militia. In England methods not unlike those of the age of Falstaff still held good. War was an adventure, not a science. In France first it became an intensely national effort. The Jacobins evoked the popular enthusiasm; the Committee of Public Safety embodied it in citizen armies; and the science of Carnot and Napoleon led them ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... in jail, the mob-leader in the hands of the police, and the murderer on the drop will be unanimous in favor of this new heresy of the unconstitutionality of Constitutions, with its Newgate Calendar of confessors, martyrs, and saints. Falstaff's famous regiment would have volunteered to a man for its propagation or its defence. Henceforth let every unsuccessful litigant have the right to pronounce the verdict of a jury sectional, and to quash all proceedings and retain the property in controversy by seceding from the court-room. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... creations; and thus only does his Lear say with such perfect naturalness, "Pray you, undo this button." Hence, too, all the distinctness of character in his lifelike men and women, be it Hamlet or Falstaff, Cordelia or ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... he paused, his pencil in the air, and his eyes doubtfully fixed on the senator. For all this time Mr. Trevor had been fidgeting in his seat; but now he opened his long coat, button by button, and thrust his hand inside the flap. Oh, Falstaff! ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... but this was very rakish and very crafty.) It must have been abandoned long ago by wild pirates of the southern seas; for clinging to the rigging, and jovially cheering as the ship went down, I made out a man with blazing eyes, clad in a velveteen jacket. As the ship disappeared from sight, Falstaff rushed to the rescue of the lonely navigator—and stole his purse! But Miranda persuaded him to give it back. Stevenson said, "Who steals my purse steals trash." Falstaff laughed and called this a good joke, as good as any he had heard ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... again, and briefly, is justice an inexorable law like the law of gravitation or can its operation have exceptions? Is it simply a quality of action or conduct, or, as stated by Ulpian, is it a disposition or state of mind? Finally, is it a reality or, as Falstaff said of honor, is it after all ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... under the workman's hands: we can almost see it happening in these Essays: and we know how often enough a writer finds his own creation kicking over the traces, as it were, and becoming almost independent of his volition. There is no original for Sir Roger or Falstaff or Mr. Micawber: they may not have sprung Athena-like fully armed out of the author's head, and they may have been suggested by some one he had in mind. But once created they came into a full-blooded life with personalities entirely ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... was qualified; but he loved "M'Andrews' Hymn," and often recited lines from the "Recessional." Of the great novelists Dickens was easily his first favourite; a long way behind came Scott, Stevenson and Jules Verne. Dickens he knew and loved in every mood. Pickwick like Falstaff was to him a source of perennial delight. He loved and honoured Dickens for his rich and tender humanity, the passion of pity that suffused his soul, the lively play of his comic fancy. Endowed with a keen sense of humour, he read Mark Twain and W. W. Jacobs with ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... perhaps is none too wide, And hardly fit for royal Richard's stride, Or Falstaff's bulk, or ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... productions, are little known to readers of this age, though it appears that she hoped her works would be read for a long time after her death. She wrote, “If my poems are of that common order which have, as Falstaff says, a natural alacrity in sinking, the praise of hireling and nameless critics would not keep them above the gulf of oblivion. If, on the contrary, they possess the buoyant property of true poetry, their fame will be established in after years, ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... who is as huge, though not so witty, as Falstaff. It is his custom when he travels to book two places, and thus secure half the inside to himself. He once sent his servant to book him to Glasgow. The man returned with the following pleasing intelligence: "I've booked you, sir; there weren't two inside places left, so ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... two maniacal sections of his English had the vaster conceit of superiority in purity; they were baring themselves, as it were with a garment flung-off at each retort. He reproached them for undermineing their countrymen; whose Falstaff panics demanded blood of animals to restore them; and their periods of bragging, that they should brandify their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... afterwards, when H—— was between fourteen and fifteen, he made another trial, and he found that he understood the language of Shakespeare without any difficulty. He read all the historical plays with the greatest eagerness, and particularly seized the character of Falstaff. He gave a humorous description of the figure and dress which he supposed Sir John should have, of his manner of sitting, speaking, and walking. Probably, if H—— had been pressed to read Shakespeare ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... us it rolled off the horse, whether intentionally or unintentionally we could not say, and leaving the beast to the care of chance, unfolded two short legs from somewhere and waddled towards us—a fat, jovial Chinese John Falstaff. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... count the petals of the cuckoo-buds in the river-pastures; and untouched, we admire. But let old Falstaff, as he lies a' dying, "babble o' green fields," and all the long, long thoughts of youth steal over ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... humor, Lincoln appreciated to the utmost the inimitable presentation of "Falstaff" by a well-known actor of the time. His desire to accord praise wherever it was merited led him to express his admiration in a note to the actor. An interchange of slight civilities followed, ending at last in a singular situation. Entering the President's office ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... followed by fresh shouts of laughter. For he had forgotten to stuff himself behind, and, when the company caught sight of his back as he strode out, the tenuity of the foundation for such a 'huge hill of flesh' was absurd as Falstaff's ha'p'orth of bread to the 'intolerable ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... opinion of the future as to the coup d'Etat of the Prince de Polignac himself? In consequence of a whim of Shakespeare—or perhaps it may have been a revenge, like that of Beaumarchais on Bergasse (Bergearss)—Falstaff is, in England, a type of the ridiculous; his very name provokes laughter; he is the king of clowns. Now, instead of being enormously pot-bellied, absurdly amorous, vain, drunken, old, and corrupted, Falstaff was one of the most distinguished men of his time, a Knight of ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... expresses character is asserted chiefly on the ground of the characters of Lear, Cordelia, Othello, Desdemona, Falstaff, and Hamlet. But all these characters, as well as all the others, instead of belonging to Shakespeare, are taken by him from dramas, chronicles, and romances anterior to him. All these characters not only are not rendered more powerful by him, but, in most ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... than a herd of swine a kennel muddy, More than a brilliant belle polemic study, More than fat Falstaff lov'd a cup of sack, More than a guilty criminal the rack, More than attorneys love by cheats to thrive, And more than witches to ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... More, he generously repaid to Shakespeare, Swift, and Sterne. The famous Abbey of Thelema is inspired by More's "Utopia"; on the other hand, Shakespeare's praise of debt is taken from the speech of Panurge—the most humorous character in French literature, and worthy to stand beside Falstaff. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... Nothing but the fractiousness of our horses and the rapidity of his flight had prevented this desirable consummation. The Major even declared positively that he had seen the bear a long time before, and only rode over him "to scare him up," and said almost in the words of the redoubtable Falstaff, "that if we would do him honour for it, so; if not, we might scare up the next bear ourselves." Looking at the matter calmly and dispassionately afterward, I thought it extremely probable that if another bear did not scare the Major up, he never would go out ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... that we loved, and must have read in common, or at least at the same time: but others that I more especially liked were the Histories, and among them particularly were the Henrys, where Falstaff appeared. This gross and palpable reprobate greatly took my fancy. I delighted in him immensely, and in his comrades, Pistol, and Bardolph, and Nym. I could not read of his death without emotion, and it was a personal pang to me when ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Samuel Johnson: Preface to Edition of Shakespeare. 1765. Richard Farmer: An Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare: Addressed to Joseph Cradock, Esq. 1767. Maurice Morgann: An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff. 1777. Notes. Nicholas Rowe. John Dennis. Alexander Pope. Lewis Theobald. Sir Thomas Hanmer. William Warburton. Samuel Johnson. Richard ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... King's Regulations, which contemplates "emergencies"; still less did he know that an emergency had arisen—such an emergency as will cast lustre upon British arms to the end of time. But that strange things were happening ahead he knew full well, for his new unit was as oddly made up as Falstaff's army: gunners, cooks, and A.S.C. drivers were all lumped together to make a company. Some carried their rifles at the slope and some at the trail, some had bayonets and some had not, certain details from the Rifle Brigade marched with ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... took him up in a moment, and we went on. Presently, the very queer small boy says, 'This is Gadshill we are coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... shadows of Tippoo Tib's* old stairway hiding her tale of years. But I felt my regard for her slipping downhill (and so, I rather think did Yerkes). "You look well, Lord Montdidier, trapesing about the earth with a leash of mongrels at your heel! Falstaff never picked up a more sordid-looking pack! What do you feed them—bones? Are there no young bloods left of your own class, that ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... 'have a busy time of it when these gentry are collected in numbers in the district. Poultry disappear with the most miraculous promptitude; small linen articles hung out to dry have no more chance than if Falstaff's regiment were marching by; and garden fruit and vegetables, of course, share the results produced by a rigid application of the maxim, that la propriete c'est la vol. Where these people come from is a puzzle. There will ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... comfort him,"' I followed, quoting Mrs Quickly concerning Sir John Falstaff, '"bid him, 'a should not think of God: I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... confined my observations to the tragic parts of Shakspeare. It would be no very difficult task to extend the inquiry to his comedies; and to show why Falstaff, Shallow, Sir Hugh Evans, and the rest, are equally incompatible with stage-representation. The length to which this Essay has run will make it, I am afraid, sufficiently distasteful to the Amateurs of the Theatre, without going any deeper into ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... prospect of a norther before their eyes. We stopped at the house of the "Marine Monster," Don Leonardo Mata, before crossing the bar, took up our shells, and had the felicity of making his acquaintance. He is a colossal old man, almost gigantic in height, and a Falstaff in breadth—gruff in his manners, yet with a certain clumsy good-nature about him. He performs the office of pilot with so much exclusiveness, charging such high prices, governing the men with so iron a sway, and arranging everything so entirely according to his own fancy, that he is a complete ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... his voice or by the syncope of a chuckle, move his audience at pleasure to tears or to laughter. He could haunt their memories for years afterwards with the infinite tenderness of his ejaculation as Hamlet, of "The fair Ophelia!" He could convulse them with merriment by his hesitating utterance as Falstaff of "A shirt—and a half!" Incidentally it is remarked by the biographer of Henderson that the qualifications requisite to constitute a reader of especial excellence seem to be these, "a good ear, a voice capable of inflexion, an understanding of, and taste ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... suggest the idea, that nature has relaxed her efforts during that period, after having been stimulated during the flood? Shakespeare, who was a true observer of nature, has not omitted this circumstance; speaking of the death of Falstaff, Mrs Quickly observes, 'It was just at the turn ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... indirectly testified to the poetic skill of young Arouet. He was exiled to a point three hundred miles from Paris and forbidden to come nearer on penalty, like unto the injunction issued by Prince Henry against the blameless Falstaff. Rumor said that the father had something to do ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... young Major's boasting did not a whit reduce my estimate of his efficiency. For in America, swaggering does not necessarily indicate cowardice. I knew a Captain of artillery in Smith's division, who was wordier than Gratiano, and who exaggerated like Falstaff. But he was a lion in action, and at Lee's Mills and Williamsburg his battery was handled ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend |
