falstaff
In Maurice Morgan's "The Dramatic Character of Falstaff", he gives us a critical interpretation of the Shakespearian character, Sir John Falstaff, looking at him from every point of view but a Layman's one. He summarizes Falstaff incompletely, including quotes from Henry IV, Part Two and not as much from Henry IV, Part One, which gives more information about "Old John's" character (in the first scene with Falstaff's character) from the beginning, but rather stays focused on what leads to his tragic fate. Morgan starts by giving us his thesis statement, which is questioning of whether Falstaff was a coward or if he was a courageous character. This is what I thought the article would be mainly explaining; I was wrong. Morgan seems to go off on tangents, placing Falstaff's character in weird positions by comparing and making relations between other characters in Shakespeare's historical plays. He makes an odd point by telling the reader to look at every man as two characters, rebuttaling what his goal for the essay is to be. "Every man we may observe, has two characters; that is, every man may be seen externally, and from without;- or a section may be made of him, and he may be illuminated within" (
Morgan, Maurice. "The Dramatic Character of Falstaff". Chelsea Publishing House, 1992 All in all, I believe Morgan has an excellent grasp on Falstaff's character in the later plays, but missed Prince Hal's great description in Henry IV, Part One making me question his expertise on the subject matter. By the end of reading this interpretation, I felt like I had just gone through an intellectualized mess of words that I was left to organize for review. Someone should tell Maurice Morgan that most of his readers are students and not super-intellectuals.
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Approximate Word count = 807
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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