CIGARETTE PAPERS

Southland Times, Issue 21855, 4 November 1932, Page 8

CIGARETTE PAPERS

SHAKESPEARE’S LIBEL. Did Shakespeare, when he created his character of Sir John Falstaff, knowingly commit a libel? We know that the original fat knight whom Shakespeare drew was called Sir John Oldcastle; but that name had to be dropped. Too many folk recalled the history of that knight, who had suffered death in 1417 for treason, or for his Lollard opinions—according to which way you looked at it. Was it just by chance, then, that the poet hit on another name close enough to reality to perpetuate an historic libel? The real Sir John Falstaff, who died on November 3, 1459, was a very different man from the rubicund rascal of the plays. Victor in the famous Battle of Herrings, he did, true, lose much prestige by a subsequent defeat. But the catalogue of his services, in the Paston Letters, shows him to have had little kinship with the pot-valiant warrior whom Shakespeare made the butt of all time. —CRITICUS.