The Real Falstaff

This historical study examines the life and military accomplishments of the medieval knight who inspired one of Shakespeare’s most beloved characters. One of the most famous English knights of the Hundred Years War, Sir John Fastolf is widely thought to be a model for Shakespeare’s immortal character, Sir John Falstaff. In The Real Falstaff, historian Stephen Cooper examines the link in full, shedding light on his story as well as the declining English fortunes during the last phase of the Hundred Years War. Witnessing both the triumphs of Henry V, and the disasters of the 1450s, Fastolf was one of the last of the brave but often brutal English soldiers who made their careers waging war in France. Cooper retraces the entire course of Fastolf’s long life, putting special focus on his many campaigns. A vivid picture of the old soldier emerges and of the French wars in which he played such a prominent part. But the author also explores Fastolf’s legacy, his connection to the Paston family—famous for the Paston letters—and the use Shakespeare made of Fastolf’s name, career, and character when he created Sir John Falstaff.

Sir John Fastolf was one of the most famous English knights and military commanders of the Hundred Years' War, and is commonly thought to be a model for Sir John Falstaff, one of Shakespeare's greatest characters. This book examines the link in full.

"The plan of this work [is] ... to illustrate the life of Sir John Falstaff exclusively from the most striking passages in his career, as invented by Shakespeare"--Preface

"Harold Bloom writes about Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal. Just as we encounter one type of Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are young adults and another when we are middle-aged, Bloom writes about his own shifting understanding of Falstaff over the course of his lifetime. Ultimately we come away with a deeper appreciation of this profoundly complex character, and the book as a whole becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity"--Publisher's description.

Dr Dover Wilson examines Falstaff's role in the two parts of Henry IV and his relationship to the Prince. Like most other Shakespearean scholars he had accepted, Bradley's portrait as shown in The Rejection of Falstaff, until (as he writes) he 'began checking it with yet another portrait - that which I found in the pages of Shakespeare himself. As the result of much recent work on the two parts of Henry IV, a new Falstaff stands before me, as fascinating as Bradley's, certainly quite as human, but different; and beside him stands a still more unexpected Prince Hal. The discovery throws all my previous ideas out of focus.' As the reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement wrote, Falstaff 'is no hero, as the romantics have tried to make him out, nor is he merely a typical and traditional stage-butt. But he is Falstaff riding for a fall; and when he takes his toss he is up again in still unconquerable effrontery and humour ... The Prince as we watch him through Dr Dover Wilson's eyes growing in grace, first in chivalry and then in justice, we do more than observe the making of a hero-king. We get to know a very lovable, faulty, generous, noble-minded young man; and a character in the play whose scenes are so far from being mere padding between Falstaff's that the whole is seen as a masterpiece of construction.'

Now in paperback. The acclaimed account of researching and playing one of the greatest roles in English drama.