FALSTAFF
Shakespeare packed other fully fleshed lives into the Henry IV plays and the 14 busy years–1399 to 1413 –they depict: the haunted title monarch, elaborately guilt ridden about having usurped Richard II’s throne and terrified that his maverick son will complete his kingdom’s ruin; the splenetic rebel Hotspur, whose homicidal defense of his honor shames Hal into testing his own warrior valor; and Hal, who, having fled his father’s predatory court, seems almost schizophrenically skillful at playing both the monumental rakehell at the Boar’s-Head Tavern and the valiant defender of his father’s throne. (Falstaff may be a delightful diversion, but Hal knows the rollick must come to an end: “If all the year were playing holidays / To sport would be as tedious as to work”.)
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This emphasis on the domestic over the epic makes sense given Falstaff’s Falstaff. Michael W. Nash seems more tentative than outrageous, more an eager-to-please 15th- century Santa Claus than the unpredictable life force who overwhelms everyone around him. But Nash is wonderfully persuasive at showing Falstaff “out of compass,” in decline and suddenly life-size, his great stomach no longer a tribute to excess but an unwanted relic of happier days. (I admit I miss James O’Reilly most when I see anyone else do Falstaff–as does Mula, who dedicates his staging to the late, beloved actor.)
