"Falstaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all the morning. They went into a church-yard, in the time of divine service, and Johnson laid himself down at his ease upon one of the tomb-stones. 'Now, Sir, (said Beauclerk) you are like Hogarth's Idle Apprentice.' When Johnson got his pension, Beauclerk said to him, in the humorous phrase of Falstaff, 'I hope you'll now purge and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... murderers, of whom the latter are the more numerous. He accounts for this by saying, that whereas the robber has to make restitution before receiving absolution, the murderer, whether condemned to die or set at liberty, receives full pardon, without the "double labour," as Sir John Falstaff called it, of "paying back." Its hundred churches are vast museums of sculpture and painting. Its university, which the Bolognese boast is the oldest in Europe, rivalled Padua in its glory, and now ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... son named Edward, whom he had carefully instructed in the art for which he himself was so famous. This Edward had a grandson, who served as a volunteer under the famous Sir John Falstaff, and by his gallant demeanour so recommended himself to his captain, that he would have certainly been promoted by him, had Harry the fifth kept his word ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... disappointed. But you shall have his own account of his success. "We had made a very pretty course," he wrote, "and taken great pains. Encouraged by the cricket matches' experience, I allowed the landlord of the Falstaff to have a drinking booth on the ground. Not to seem to dictate or distrust, I gave all the prizes in money. The great mass of the crowd were laboring men of all kinds, soldiers, sailors and navvies. They did not, between half-past ten, when we began, and sunset, displace ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... independent being. There is nothing that words will not do for him; no service seems too mean or too high. And then his abundance! He puts one in mind of the definition of a competence by the only man I ever saw who had the true flavor of Falstaff in him—"a million a minute and your expenses paid." As Burns said of himself, "The rhymes come skelpin, rank and file." Now they are as graceful and sinuous as water-nymphs, and now they come tumbling head over heels, throwing somersaults, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... you let the drama halt while Chorus stalks to the footlights and drops an epicedian tear upon the fatness of Mr. Hoover. Tune the pipes to the tragedy of tallow, the bane of bulk, the calamity of corpulence. Tried out, Falstaff might have rendered more romance to the ton than would have Romeo's rickety ribs to the ounce. A lover may sigh, but he must not puff. To the train of Momus are the fat men remanded. In vain beats the faithfullest heart above a 52-inch belt. Avaunt, Hoover! ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... a passion for writing, for in your last you have repeated every word I said about my brother John, just as if you had invented it yourself. You are like Ariel, very; and I am like Prospero, very ("Dull thing! I said so"); or, no, I am like Falstaff, to be sure, and you like Prince Hal, with ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... literary sense, it is unequal to Richard II., or the two parts of Henry IV. The latter is unquestionably Shakspere's greatest historical tragedy, and it contains his master-creation in the region of low comedy, the immortal Falstaff. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... moonlit glade in a forest; and thither they came, one by one, friendly and human, yet in the full panoply of their splendor and grace. There were Shelley and Milton, and the gentle and troubled Hamlet, and the sorrowful knight of la Mancha, with the irrepressible Falstaff to hearten them all; a strangely-assorted company, yet royal spirits all of them, and no strangers to each other in their own world. And here they gathered and conversed, each in his own vein and from his own impulse, with gracious fancy and lofty vision and ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... have the hard impudence and cynical distrust of virtue, the arrogant and glorying self-unrighteousness, that distinguish another class of characters which the dramatists of the age of Charles and Anne were unwearied in providing with insolence and repartees. Occasionally we have a jest which Falstaff would not disown. Thus in "May-Day," when Cuthbert, a barber, approaches Quintiliano, to get, if possible, "certain odd crowns" the latter owes him, Quintiliano says, "I think thou 'rt newly married?" "I am indeed, sir," is the reply. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... spare and lean kind, but were he fatter he might well pose as a modern Jack Falstaff, for his one idea is summed up in Falstaff's words: "Where shall we take a purse to-night?" Downy, of course, obtained full remission of his sentence; he did all that was required of him in prison, and so reduced his ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... pasteboard cheeks and the sad disfigurement of his mates? There was no excess of scenery, Auberon says. Why, Falstaff's very person was nothing but scenery. A false face, a false figure, false hands, false legs—scarcely a square inch on which the irrepressible humor of the rogue could break into illustrative touches. And he is so human, so expressive, of so rich a physiognomy. ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... analysis, and explanation of all the principal 'characters' of our great dramatist, as Othello, Falstaff, Richard the Third, Iago, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... 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 ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... severe and his manner so belligerent that I—thrice armed, knowing my cause was just—could not restrain a smile. I touched my hat and said, "Ah, excuse me, Mr. Falstaff, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... second to the Doctor in 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 of the last age, and could compare, in his own experience, the follies of both. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Nature, if it does not represent the comical side of life, as well as Shakspeare does? We think the comical parts of Shakspeare, his extreme comical parts, are rather an exaggeration of individual qualities than a fair portraiture of the whole species. There is no Falstaff in the Bible, yet the qualities of Falstaff exist in the Bible and in Nature, but in combination, and this combination modifies their aspect ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Southampton-buildings, Chancery-lane, stood the mansion of the Wriothesleys, Earls of Southampton, one of whom was the celebrated friend of Shakspeare. But what have we not omitted also? No less an illustrious head than the Boar's, in Eastcheap—the Boar's Head Tavern, the scene of Falstaff's revels. We believe the place is still marked out by a similar sign. But who knows not Eastcheap and the Boar's Head? Have we not all been there time out of mind? And is it not a more real, as well as notorious thing to us, than the London Tavern, or the Crown and Anchor, or the Hummums, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... frightened: you are richer as well as younger; and, no doubt, will have your chance first, my dear; and in the meantime, I dare say, those verses, like Falstaff's billet-doux, you know, are ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... 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
... who will deny this, but there are people who will deny anything. There are some who will say that St. Paul would not have condemned the Falstaff plays, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and almost everything that Shakspeare ever wrote; but there is no arguing against this. 'Every man,' said Dr. Johnson, 'has a right to his own opinion, and ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... in Ayrshire, Burns kept up a will o'-wispish sort of a correspondence in rhyme, till the day of his death: these communications, of which this is one, were sometimes graceless, but always witty. It is supposed, that those lines were suggested by Falstaff's account of his ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... standing out like the lapels of a man-o'-war-man's jacket.... If you should wrap a large salt fish around a small boy, he would have a coat of such fashion as I have seen many a one wear at muster." Or, if we wish to go back still further, we might exclaim, with Falstaff, "You would think that I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals, lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks.... No ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... in 1878; reckoning by tens, '88, '98, '08—well, call it forty. He is burly, ruddy, gray-haired, and fond of corncob pipes, dark beer, and sausages. He looks a careful blend of Falstaff and Napoleon III. He has conducted the Sun Dial in the New York Evening Sun since 1912. He stands out as one of the most penetrating satirists and resonant scoffers at folderol that this continent ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... 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 "Henry ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... these arrangements with the liveliest satisfaction. The carriages now beginning to take up their company, and move away, we got into ours, and drove off too, armed with little wire masks for our faces; the sugar-plums, like Falstaff's adulterated sack, having lime ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... arias in the old-fashioned way,—superb arias, many of them, especially in "Il Trovatore" and "Aida," but still arias. Then he rested from his labors sixteen years; and when he appeared on the stage again, with his "Otello" and "Falstaff," he had adopted Wagner's maxims that arias are out of place in a music-drama; that "the play's the thing," and that the music should follow the text word ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... have adopted the title of "Latin in sport made learning in earnest"— which would give a tolerable idea of the nature of our undertaking. The doctrine, it is true, may bear the same relation to the lighter matter, that the bread in Falstaff's private account did to the liquor; though if we have given our reader "a deal of sack," we wish it may not be altogether "intolerable." Latin, however, is a great deal less like bread, to most boys, than it is like physic; especially antimony, ipecacuanha, and similar medicines. It ought, ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... anachronism, in making Pentheus speak of 'tormenta,' who lived so many ages before that time. To commit anachronisms with impunity seems, however, to be the poet's privilege, from Ovid downwards to our Shakspere, where he makes Falstaff talk familiarly of the West Indies. We find the dictionaries giving 'tormentum' as the Latin word for 'cannon;' so that in this case we may say not that 'necessity is the mother of invention,' but rather that she is ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... it, with every 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, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... or Highland sword, Your words have hewn and hack'd me; Whilst Quin, a rebel to his lord, Like his own Falstaff back'd me. ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... tones. By the law of aristocracy in art, he must be held so much the greater, as he is able to depict the nobler manifestations of her forms and passions. Of course the first excellence is that of truth. A spirited enactment of Malvolio, of Falstaff, or of Richard Crookback has the high merit of faithfully setting forth humanity, though in certain whimsical or distorted phases; but we are more profoundly enriched by the portrayal of higher types. And thus, in making an actor's chosen and successful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... countenance," is, "He looks as if he lived on Tewkesbury mustard"—this town having been long noted for its "mustard-balls made there, and sent to other parts." It may be remembered that in "2 Henry IV." (Act ii. sc. 4) Falstaff speaks of "wit as thick as Tewkesbury mustard." Then there is the familiar adage applied to the man who lacks steady application, "A rolling stone gathers no moss," with which may be compared another, "Seldom mosseth the marble-stone that ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... "No hay man que por bien no venga." He argues that Gil Blas is not the work of a Spaniard, because it does not, like Don Quixote, abound with proverbs; by a parity of reasoning, he might infer The Silent Lady was not written by an Englishman; as there is no allusion to Falstaff in it. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... calculate them like eclipses or new moons. Some were sturdy knaves, fat and saucy; and, whenever they ascertained that the "men folks" were absent, would order provisions and cider like men who expected to pay for them, seating themselves at the hearth or table with the air of Falstaff,— "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Others, poor, pale, patient, like Sterne's monk, came creeping up to the door, hat in hand, standing there in their gray wretchedness with a look of heartbreak and forlornness which ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... pleasure in playing them as cricket, but there is no game that fills the mind with such memories and seems enveloped in such a gracious and kindly atmosphere. If you have once loved it and played it, you will find talk in it enough "for the wearing out of six fashions," as Falstaff says. I like a man who has cricket in his soul. I find I am prejudiced in his favour, and am disposed to disbelieve any ill about him. I think my affection for Jorkins began with the discovery that he, like myself, saw that astounding catch with which Ulyett dismissed Bonnor in the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... "The Creation" and "The Seasons." They were the summit of his achievement, as little to be expected from him, considering his years, as "Falstaff" was to be expected from the octogenarian Verdi. Some geniuses flower late. It was only now, by his London symphonies and his "Creation," that Haydn's genius blossomed so luxuriantly as to place him with almost amazing suddenness among the very ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... thus called Cassius Clay Company, organized for the defence of Washington until troops came. For several days patrolled, drilled, and lay several nights on the hard floor. Had compensation, that the drill often reproduced that of Falstaff's heroes. But my campaigners would have fought well in case of emergency. Most of them office-seekers. When the alarm was over, the company dissolved, but each got a kind of certificate beautifully written and signed by Lincoln and Cameron. I refused to ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... I 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
... theatres without a change of garments. Steeled knights of the Conquest, bearded statesmen of Queen Elizabeth and high-ruffed ladies of her court were mingled with characters of comedy, such as a parti-colored Merry Andrew jingling his cap and bells, a Falstaff almost as provocative of laughter as his prototype, and a Don Quixote with a bean-pole for a lance and a pot-lid ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... already Ave Maria was dragging Trampy to the door and the Roofer girls gave him a triumphal exit. They sent him to Halifax, they sent him to Coventry. They flourished things at his head, amid an uproar of jolly hootings, and took aim at him—"Ping! Ping!"—and pinched him, as the Merry Wives did Falstaff in Windsor Forest. And they slipped off their shoes in honor of his wedding, by Jove! And Trampy fled under a shower of boots and slippers, fled like mad, as though the ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... 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 ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... and a sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, whom I understand to be the professional ruffian of the neighboring theater, alluded, with a certain lifting of the brow, drawing down of the corners of the mouth and somewhat rasping voce di petti, 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 ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... which one is often moved to admire. And again, the abstract butler never stoops to familiarity. But the coloured gentleman will pass you a wink at a time; he is familiar like an upper-form boy to a fag; he unbends to you like Prince Hal with Poins and Falstaff. He makes himself at home and welcome. Indeed, I may say, this waiter behaved himself to me throughout that supper much as, with us, a young, free, and not very self-respecting master might behave to a good-looking chambermaid. I had come ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... am utterly unable to see its point and therefore cannot, of course, trace its connection with the subject. Falstaff, it is true, speaks of the "horn of abundance," but then he assigns it to the husband, and makes the "lightness of the wife shine through it." (K. Henry IV. Act i. Sc. 2., on which see ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... 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 ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the characters brought upon the stage still more interesting. I think Hotspur as much of a hero as Hector, and young Henry more of a man than Achilles; and then there is the fat knight, the quintessence of fun, wit, and rascality. Falstaff is a creation beyond ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... between the two sections, would have been ludicrous had they not been fraught with such long-continued woes. Southern papers published such stuff as this: "The Northern soldiers are men who prefer enlisting to starvation; scurvy fellows from the back slums of cities, with whom Falstaff would not have marched through Coventry. Let them come South, and we will put our negroes at the dirty work of killing them. But they will not come South. Not a wretch of them will live on this side of the border longer than it will take us to reach the ground ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... always used to remind me of Wollett's beautiful engraving of a scene in the Maid of the Mill. It will be long before any artist will make a drawing of this. Only think of this redness in a picture! this boiled lobster of a house! Falstaff's description of Bardolph's nose would look pale in ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... regarded him with a fine jovial scorn, much as Sir John Falstaff might have regarded the inventor ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... a third group is dressed in most niggardly attire, which sets very loosely. In addition to this they wear very large black, white, and grey-coloured felt hats, slouched over their heads; while their nether garments, of red and brown linsey-woolsey, fit like Falstaff's doublet on a whip stock. They seem proud of the grim tufts of hair that, like the moss-grown clumps upon an old oak, spread over their faces; and they move about in the grotesque crowd, making their ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... John Falstaff talketh of "minions of the moon;" and, truth to tell, two or three hundred years ago, nowhere was such an order of knighthood more prevalent than upon the Borders. Not only did the Scottish and English Borderers make their forays across the Tweed and the ideal line, but rival ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... London he could find in Charing Cross Road, where there still beat the heart from which Fielding and Dickens had drawn their inspiration, the brave heart that could laugh through all its sufferings and through all the indignities put upon it. In Charing Cross Road he could meet almost any day Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet, Tom Jones and Partridge, Sam Weller and Sairey Gamp, and every day their descendants walked abroad, passed in and out of shops, went about their business, little suspecting that they would be translated into the world ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... 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 was crushed ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... 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 those ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... a rascal art thou, then, to praise him so for running! Falstaff. O' horseback, ye cuckoo! but a-foot, he will not budge a foot. P. Henry. Yes, Jack, upon instinct. Falstaff. I ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... course out of place, and the slavery system upon 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 as plentiful ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... how shall I describe thee? Thou compound of sense and vice; of sense which may be admired but not esteemed, of vice which may be despised, but hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with those faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief, and a glutton, a coward, and a boaster, always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous and insult the defenceless. ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... in conscience write as I do, because I know, which is more than thinking, that I write for a lawful established government, against anarchy, innovation, and sedition: but "these lies (as prince Harry said to Falstaff) are as gross as he that made them[25]." More I need not say, for I am accused without witness. I fear not any of their evidences, not even him of Salamanca; who though he has disowned his doctorship in Spain, yet there are some allow him to have taken a certain ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... The difference in voice he already had noted: now he saw that the eyes of the real Inspector Sheffield were many shades lighter than those of the spurious; that the red face was heavier and more rounded. It was almost incredible, but not quite. He had seen Tree play Falstaff, and the art of Severac Bablon ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... of 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, ...
— 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.
... large, portly gentleman who carried his head erect and had an easy, familiar way about him; for he was acting as host, being charged with the reception of guests and strangers who came to visit or to look about the place. He walked with the grandeur of a Falstaff and the dignity of a sachem. His capacious gray coat and broad-brimmed hat might suggest to a stranger that he had been at some time a member of a Shaker community, but his closely cut gray hair and his heavy, o'erhanging ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... happiness added. In England during the sixteenth century it was customary to put a "toast" in the drink, which was usually served hot. This toast was the ordinary piece of bread scorched on both sides. Shakespeare in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" has Falstaff say, "Fetch me a quart of sack and put a toast in't." Later the term came to be applied to the lady in whose honor the company drank, her name serving to flavor the bumper as the toast flavored the drink. It was in this way that the act of drinking or of proposing ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... our embrace by imagination, and by great poetic imagination. They are, as it were—I put it to suit my present comparison—creatures of the woods and wilds, not in walled towns, not grouped and toned to pursue a comic exhibition of the narrower world of society. Jaques, Falstaff and his regiment, the varied troop of Clowns, Malvolio, Sir Hugh Evans and Fluellen—marvellous Welshmen!—Benedict and Beatrice, Dogberry, and the rest, are subjects of a special ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the telegram—there was a point of honor involved; that Lamon had no agency from him, nor title to speak."[158] (This late suggestion of the point of honor would seem, under the circumstances, to have been made in a spirit of sarcastic pleasantry, like Sir John Falstaff's celebrated discourse on the same subject.) The only substantial result of the conversation, however, was the written assurance of Mr. Seward, to be communicated to the Commissioners, that "the Government will not undertake ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... Petrovna was greatly agitated and distressed. Stepan Trofimovitch assured her that this was only the first riotous effervescence of a too richly endowed nature, that the storm would subside and that this was only like the youth of Prince Harry, who caroused with Falstaff, Poins, and Mrs. Quickly, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... dreadful days there was great laughter. I think sometimes of a night I spent with the medical officers of a tent hospital in the fields of the Somme during those battles. With me as a guest went a modern Falstaff, a "ton of flesh," who "sweats to death and lards the lean earth as he ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... therefore, what is the peculiar source of De Foe's power? He has little, or no dramatic power, in the higher sense of the word, which implies sympathy with many characters and varying tones of mind. If he had written 'Henry IV.,' Falstaff, and Hotspur, and Prince Hal would all have been as like each other as are generally the first and second murderer. Nor is the mere fact that he tells a story with a strange appearance of veracity sufficient; for a story may be truth-like and yet deadly dull. Indeed, no ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Wolf-Ferrari's Florindo breathes out his languishing "Ah, Rosaura!" And in the lively chatter of the women there is frequently more than a suggestion of the lively gossip of Verdi's merry wives in his incomparable "Falstaff." Wolf-Ferrari is neither a Mozart nor a Verdi, not even a Nicolai, as a melodist, but he is worthy of being bracketed with them, because as frankly as they he has spoken the musical language which to him seemed a proper investiture of his comedy, and like them has made ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Purgatorie." 47 Glimpses of it are also to be caught through many of the humorous passages in Shakspeare. Dromio says of an excessively fat and greasy kitchen wench, "If she lives till doomsday she'll burn a week longer than the whole world!" And Falstaff, cracking a kindred joke on Bardolph's carbuncled nose, avows his opinion that it will serve as a flaming beacon to light lost souls the way to purgatory! Again, seeing a flea on the same flaming proboscis, the doughty knight affirmed it was "a black ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... rather keenness that is akin to beauty, as the thorn to the flower. So sarcasm is not unbecoming in woman, though coming from her it hurts. But ridicule which savours of bulkiness woman had better leave to our sublime sex. The masculine Falstaff makes our sides split, but a feminine Falstaff would only ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... known to military history. For although six months had not yet passed, the organization he now commanded was as unlike the Phalanx of the fifty-eight adventurers who were driven back at Rivas, as were Falstaff's followers from the regiment of picked men commanded by Colonel Roosevelt. Instead of the undisciplined and lawless now being in the majority, the ranks were filled with the pick of the California mining camps, with veterans of the Mexican War, with young ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... Prince 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, ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... Micawber never does desert Mr. Micawber. Considering her mental powers, by the way, an illogical conclusion for her would be manifestly inappropriate. Shakespeare, indeed, having seen a life whole, sees it to an end: sees it out, and Falstaff dies. More than Promethean was the audacity that, having kindled, quenched that spark. But otherwise the grotesque man in literature is immortal, and with something more significant than the immortality awarded to him in the sayings of rhetoric; he is predurable because he is not completed. ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... clear up his father's confusion. There is a difference, he says, between remembering 'a real fact' and remembering a 'thought.'[544] He illustrates this by the difference between the idea of Lafayette and the idea of Falstaff. Lafayette was real, and had been seen by the rememberer. Falstaff is a figment who, having never existed, can never have been seen. Yet the idea of Falstaff may be quite as vivid as the idea of Lafayette. What, then, is the difference between the two states of ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... most exasperating way." ... Again, "If I thought it possible that this frantic imp, my fancy, at which I laugh right sardonically in my calmer moments, could ever strain the fibres of my brain or could touch the feelers of my emotional power, I should wish to cry with Shakespeare's Falstaff, 'I would it were bedtime, and all well;'" ... and "I am accused by the Santa Hermandad of my own conscience." And in another letter he unbares the root of all his troubles in the exclamation, "Oh! that I had a ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... 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 for ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... boundless world breaks in upon him with creative force. His sympathy is universal, and therefore so is his interest. He sees the like in the unlike, the differences in things which are similar. Every little bird and every little flower are known to him. He contemplates Falstaff and Poor Tom with as much interest as though they were Hamlet and King Lear. In all original minds the power of observation is great. It is the chief source of our earliest knowledge, of that which touches us most nearly and most deeply colors ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... 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 ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... watched 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... troubles that existed between Henry IV. and his eldest son and successor, Shakspeare's Prince Hal, is involved in much obscurity. It used to be taken for granted that the poet's Prince was an historical character, but that is no longer the case,—Falstaff's royal associate being now regarded in the same light in which Falstaff himself is regarded. The one is a poetic creation, and so is the other. Prince Henry was neither a robber nor a rowdy, but from his early youth a much graver character than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... most fully and candidly himself, and where, if you were to shift the speeches round from one to another, there would be the greatest loss in significance and perspicuity. It is for this reason that talk depends so wholly on our company. 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Still 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
... on foot, to witness one of these parades; for I believe that all the annals of the burlesque do not furnish a more amusing caricature of the "pomp and circumstance" of war. Compared to one of those militia regiments, Falstaff's famous corps, whose appearance was so unmilitary as to prevent even that liberal-minded gentleman from marching through Coventry in their company, was a model of elegance and discipline. Sedeno's cavalry in the South American wars, though ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... 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
... of the Conquest, bearded statesmen of Queen Elizabeth, and high-ruffled ladies of her court, were mingled with characters of comedy, such as a party-colored Merry Andrew, jingling his cap and bells; a Falstaff, almost as provocative of laughter as his prototype; and a Don Quixote, with a bean pole for a lance, and a pot lid ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... is a tradition preserved by Mr. Rowe, that it was written at the command of queen Elizabeth, who was so delighted with the character of Falstaff, that she wished it to be diffused through more plays; but, suspecting that it might pall by continued uniformity, directed the poet to diversify his manner, by showing him in love. No task is harder than ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... these wonderful pictures. You may argue perhaps that that is untrue to the essential realities; all this array of machine and workshop, all this marshalled power and purpose, has been the creation of inventor and business organiser. But are we not a little too free with that word "creation"? Falstaff was a "creation" perhaps, or the Sistine sibyls; there we have indubitably an end conceived and sought and achieved; but did these inventors and business organisers do more than heed certain unavoidable imperatives? Seeking coal they were ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... am going out of town on Monday, June 1st, to a little old-fashioned house I have at Gad's Hill, by Rochester, on the identical spot where Falstaff ran away, and as you are so kind as to ask me to propose a day for coming to Richmond, I should very much like to do so either on Saturday the 30th of this month or ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... "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 gusto. As ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... Some low creatures are mere bellies with no brain. Thersites is merely mouth, but this mouth has just enough coarse brain above it to know a wise man and a fool when he sees them. But the railings of this deformed slave are splendid. Thersites is almost as good as Falstaff. He is of course a far lower organization intellectually, and somewhat lower, perhaps, morally. He is coarser in every way; his humor, such as he has, is of the grossest kind; but still his blackguardism is the ideal of vituperation. He is far better than ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... tragedy, however affecting. "The reason," says the Spectator, "is, that persons think it makes them look ridiculous, by betraying the weakness of their nature. But why may not nature show itself in tragedy, as well as in comedy or farce? We see persons not ashamed to laugh loudly at the humour of a Falstaff,—or the tricks of a harlequin; and why should not the tear be equally allowed to flow for the misfortunes of a Juliet, or the forlornness of an Ophelia?" Sir Richard Steele records on this subject a saying of Mr. Wilks the actor, as just as it was polite. Being told in the green-room ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... 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 ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... personality, and lives in existences that take no colourings from his own. Genius usually must pass through the subjective process before it gains the objective. Even a Shakspeare represents himself in the Sonnets before no trace of himself is visible in a Falstaff or a Lear. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stalk with the solemn air and sweeping train of a duchess. But of all the infinite shapes of human dress, I must confess that, my favourite is the kind of doublet that prince Harry wore when he assaulted Falstaff. The nearer it approaches to the guise of a common carman the better, and his long whip ought to be inseparable. If you could add to it the sooty appearance of a coal-heaver, or a chimney-sweep, it would sit, upon this more precious than velvet garb, like spangles and ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... Subaltern Iago is an attack on the army, Sir John Falstaff an attack on knighthood, and King Claudius an attack on royalty. Here again the clamor for naturalness and human feeling, raised by so many critics when they are confronted by the real thing on the stage, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... have a second sermon upon honour. 'Can honour take away the grief of a wound?' as Falstaff says. Love is the only subject I care to preach about; though, unlike many young ladies, we can talk about other things too; but as to this Duke, I certainly 'had rather live on cheese and garlic, in a windmill far, than feed on cakes, and have ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Covenden," and his most successful Victorian comedy "Araminta." In his new novel he breaks ground which has never before been touched by an English novelist. He follows no less a leader than Cervantes. His hero, Sir Richard Pendragon, is Sir John Falstaff grown athletic and courageous, with his imagination fired by much adventure in far countries and some converse with the knight of La Mancha. The doings of this monstrous Englishman are narrated by a young and scandalized Spanish squire, full of all the pedantry of chivalry. Sir Richard ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... to Stratford is Charles Knight's Life of Shakspeare, which colours all the scenes of the poet's life in Warwickshire with the atmosphere of the sixteenth century, and summons to meet us in the streets of Stratford costumes and characters contemporary with Falstaff, Shallow, and Dogberry so well, that we do not see the Clods in corduroys, the commercial Gents in paletots, and the Police in trim blue, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... the habits which were fashionable when the century was not yet in its teens, or just in them, were getting to be looked on askance when it was entering or had entered on its thirties. But, instead of being annoyed at this Socrates-Falstaff, as somebody has called it, one might have thought that both Hogg himself and his admirers would have taken it as an immense compliment. The only really bad turn that Wilson seems to have done his friend was posthumous and pardonable. He undertook the task of writing the Shepherd's life ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... anything duller. Le Melante du Sieur Vidal (Paris, 1624), though also somewhat wordy (it has 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 Damiron, which, as its title may show, belongs rather ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... 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, And Heaven's wide champaign rings with dire alarms, Till 'vengeful justice wings ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... eminent pleader at the bar, with every the least article and singularity of his utterance so perfectly imitated, that he was the very alter ipse, scarce to be distinguished from his original. Yet more; I have seen upon the margin of the written part of Falstaff, which he acted, his own notes and observations upon almost every speech of it, describing the true spirit of the humour, and with what tone of voice, look, and gesture each of them ought to be delivered; yet, in his execution upon the stage, he seemed to have lost all those ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... comprehend it, 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 ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... third scene of the second act of "Henry V.," a play written by an author whom Dale pretended to despise, Dame Quickly describes the death of Falstaff in words that are too well known to need quotation. It was thus and no otherwise that Dale died. It is thus ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... with the exception of Garrick's excellence in low comedy. Indeed he seems to have combined in himself the various powers of the three greatest modern actors, of Garrick, except as before excepted, of Barry, and of Mossop; add to which, he played Falstaff as well as Quin. The present writer got this from old Macklin, who was stored with anecdotes ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... reconnoitring glance at Mr. Mountague, she felt much in doubt how to behave towards him. Mademoiselle boasted often of the well-bred instinct, by which she could immediately distinguish "un homme comme il faut" from any other; yet sometimes, like Falstaff's, her instinct was fallacious. Recollecting that Lady S—— had sent for an apothecary, she took it into her head that Mr. Mountague was this apothecary. "Miladi is not visible yet, sir," said she; "does she know ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... show that his health and appetite had mended during his residence at the Maison Despeaux:* (* Flinders' Papers.) "My appetite is so good that I believe it has the intention of revenging me on the Governor by occasioning a famine in the land. Falstaff says, 'Confound this grief, it makes a man go thirsty; give me a cup of sack.' Instead of thirsty read hungry, and for a cup of sack read mutton chop, and the words would fit me very well." The second passage is from his private journal, and may have ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... is every reason to suppose that he must have received from her on various occasions both praises and remuneration; for we are told that she caused several of his pieces to be represented before her, and that the Merry Wives of Windsor in particular owed its origin to her desire of seeing Falstaff exhibited ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... right hand, a happy—looking, red—faced, well—dressed man, soon drew his attention towards me. The party to whom I was thus indebted seemed a very jovial—looking personage, and appeared to be well known to all hands, and indeed the life of the party, for, like Falstaff, he was not only witty in himself, but the cause ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... let some Good Templar invent it, Damaging drunkenness, nigh to prevent it, Is a drink that is nice, warm, pleasant, and pale, Delicious as 'cakes,' and seductive as 'ale,' Like 'ginger that's hot in the mouth' and won't hurt you, As old Falstaff winks it, in spite of your virtue; A temperate stimulant cup, to displace Pipes, hasheesh, and opium, and all that bad race; Cheap as pure water and free as fresh air— Oh, where shall ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the other. He had a truth in his mind, which his notions of quantity were inadequate to clothe in language. This erroneous phraseology has not found a defender; and I am almost inclined to say, with Falstaff, The poor abuses ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... familiar name, which we have never found the person to match. We have heard it so often, that it has idealized itself, and become one of that multitude of permanent shapes which walk the chambers of the brain in velvet slippers in the company of Falstaff and Hamlet and General Washington and Mr. Pickwick. Sometimes the person dies, but the name lives on indefinitely. But now and then it happens, perhaps after years of this independent existence of the name and its shadowy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... spoke with love and pride, and the father was a gentleman, like Falstaff, a pure gentleman. The daughter-in-law also peered out to look at Il Giovann', who was evidently a figure of repute, in his sordid, degenerate American respectability. Meanwhile, this figure of repute blew himself ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... tells 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... a steady concomitant of civilization. As soon as the white settlers had planted themselves securely at Pittsburgh, they made requisition on Philadelphia for six thousand kegs of flour and three thousand kegs of whisky—a disproportion as startling as Falstaff's intolerable deal of sack to one half-penny-worth of bread. Congress, in 1791, passed an excise law to assist in paying the war debt. The measure was very unpopular, and its operation was forcibly resisted, ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... advertise. Humbug, boys; rank humbug! Modern music is gone to the devil. Brahms was a fraud who patched up a compound of Beethoven and Schumann, put in a lot of mystifying harmonic progressions, and thought he was new. Verdi, the later Verdi was helped out by Boito: Just compare 'Otello' and 'Falstaff' with 'Mefistofele'! Dvo[vr]ak, old 'Borax' as they call him, went in for 'nigger' music and says there's no future for American music unless it is founded on plantation tunes. Hence the 'coon' song and its long reign. Tschaikowsky! Well, that tartar with his tom-tom ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... sorry to see me here, enlisted as a private in a company of raw recruits, looking not unlike Falstaff's ragged regiment?" ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... fancy, and imagination, built up an outward world from the stores within his mind, as the bee finds a hive from a thousand sweets gathered from a thousand flowers. He was not only a great poet but a great philosopher. Richard III., Iago, and Falstaff are men who reverse the order of things, who place intellect at the head, whereas it ought to follow, like Geometry, to prove and to confirm. No man, either hero or saint, ever acted from an unmixed motive; for let him do what he will rightly, still Conscience whispers "it is your duty." Richard, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... 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 vile our precious selves to keep, We often had recourse to the flying leap, To a black ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... pictures of everything that ever was believed! Who are pictures of everything that ever was believed!" I read that and I slapped my knees and I lay back and laughed like a very Falstaff. "Pictures of everything that ever was believed!" Ho, ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... far as to punish me because I had seen and heard. Apparently 'twas enough that I was of their race and class, for when during a pause I slipped in my word of soothing explanation the uncorked vials of her rage showered down on me. Faith, I began to think that old Jack Falstaff had the right of it in his rating of discretion, and the maid appearing at that moment I showed a clean pair of heels and left her alone ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... which he himself knew full well, namely, that most of these provisions never reached the garrison, owing to the rapacity of the dragoons sent to collect them, who readily sold to one man what they took from another, and abused the Major's press for stores, pretty much as Sir John Falstaff did that of the King ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... while together through the window; the man seemed to have been asking money. "Ye ken the last time," she said, "I gave ye two shillin's for your ludgin', and ye said——" it died off into whisper. Plainly Falstaff and Dame Quickly over again. The man laughed unpleasantly, even cruelly, and said something; and the woman turned her back on the carriage and stood a long while so, and, do what I might, I could catch no glimpse of her expression, although I thought I saw the heave of a sob ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... between, in a word, his character and his situation, are all illustrated in comedy as completely as in tragedy. The countryman in the city, the city man in the country, is in a comic situation. Here is a coward named Falstaff, and Shakespeare puts him into battle. Here is a vain person, and Malvolio is imprisoned and twitted by a clown. Here is an ignoramus, and Dogberry is placed on the judge's bench. These contrasts might, indeed, be tragic enough, but they ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... lonesome journey? If so, the apple-john came untasted to the end. Indeed, there is a look of old Egypt about the fruit. Whether my fondness for gazing at apple-johns springs from a distant occasion when as a child I once bought and ate one, or whether it arises from the fact that Falstaff called Prince Hal a dried apple-john, is an unsolved question, but I like to linger before a particularly shrivelled one and wonder what its youth was like. Perhaps like many of its betters, it remained unheralded and unknown all through its fresher years and not until the coming of its wrinkled ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... ridicule—he said we were only old-woman frighteners, and he quoted first some farwell lines of Pope's Homer, addressed by Hector to Andromache, before he went out to meet Achilles; then he quoted Hudibras, and then he would give a few lines of the character of Falstaff, the then again of Bobadil. The fatal day was, however, come, and I mounted in good time to proceed to the rendezvous at our Cornet's house at Syrencot.[12] As I rode along with some of my comrades, I could not avoid cracking a few jokes about the nature of our expedition, and ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... 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 as Baby Blake? The critics ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... Player's melancholy plight,— Falstaff in tears, Othello deadly white,— Poor Romeo reckoning what his doublet cost, And Juliet whimpering for her dresses lost,— Their wardrobes burned, their salaries all undrawn, Their cues cut ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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 ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... sacred, because these animals breathed upon the infant Jesus in the manger and kept the child warm. Old women sprinkle holy water on these animals to drive away disease" (480 (1893) 264). In I Henry IV. (Act II. Sc. 4) Falstaff says: "The lion will not touch the true Prince," and the divinity which hedged about the princes of human blood was ever present with the son of Joseph and Mary, whose divinity sprang from a purer, nobler fount than ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... drew Shylock out of his own long pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he was himself a cornjobber and moneylender, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the famine riots. His borrowers are no doubt those divers of worship mentioned by Chettle Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing. He sued a fellowplayer for the price of a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. How else could Aubrey's ostler ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Milan in 1887. The surrender of Italian opera was complete, and Verdi took his 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 well ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... hundred years and the advantage of stage representation to impress his characters on the sluggish mind of the world; and as mental impressions are governed by the same laws of gravitation as atoms, our realisation of Falstaff must of necessity be more vivid than any character in contemporary literature, although it were equally great. And so far as epigram and aphorism are concerned, and here I speak with absolute sincerity and conviction, the work of the novelist ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... time seemed interminable; but when daylight came, I landed, and found a pair of scarlet trousers pacing on their beat before every house in the village, and a small squad of prisoners, stunted and forlorn as Falstaff's ragged regiment, already hi hand. I observed with delight the good demeanor of my men towards these forlorn Anglo-Saxons, and towards the more tumultuous women. Even one soldier, who threatened to throw an old termagant into the river, took care ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Falstaff's pasteboard cheeks and the sad disfigurement of his mates? There was no excess of scenery, Auberon says. Why, Falstaff's very person was nothing but scenery. A false face, a false figure, false hands, false ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... Fielding was contented with the husk." It was not King Lear cursing his daughters, or deprecating the storm, that I remember his commendations of; but Iago's ingenious malice and subtle revenge; or Prince Hal's gay compliance with the vices of Falstaff, whom he all along despised. Those plays had indeed no rivals in Johnson's favour: "No man but Shakespeare," he said, "could ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... unknown to the same feature now-a-days. It was adapted to practical utility, in its application to domestic purposes, and moral instruction, by that great admirer and competent judge of its virtues, Sir John Falstaff, to whose sheets it did the office of a warming-pan;[7] and who made as good use of it as some men do of a death's head, or a memento mori: "I never see it," said he, "but I think upon hell fire." It stands almost unrivalled in history, and ranks at least ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... graceful manners, would have thought of such a thing. Yet he was a—I falter in writing it—a drunkard. At times he drank deeply and madly. When half intoxicated he was almost as brilliant as Hamlet, and as rollicking as Falstaff. It was said that even when fully drunk his splendid intellect never entirely ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... led 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 ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... been 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 London could he have ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... 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 ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... the second day in Canterbury, the two "toke" their inn at the sign of the "Falstaff," where hung "Honest Jack, in buff doublet and red hose," in a wonderful piece of wrought-iron work. Whether next day, after viewing the cathedral, the tricycles pursued their journey, is not told. The pilgrimage ends, as it should, at the shrine,—that is, where the shrine had been; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... principle as perfectly as his master does the intellectual or ideal. He is of the earth, earthy. Sly, selfish, sensual, his dreams are not of glory, but of good feeding. His only concern is for his carcass. His notions of honor appear to be much the same with those of his jovial contemporary Falstaff, as conveyed in his memorable soliloquy. In the sublime night-piece which ends with the fulling-mills—truly sublime until we reach the denouement—Sancho asks his master: "Why need you go about this adventure? It ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... fun. But they are all under guard. The moment they pass a certain boundary and break into reality, the moment that intemperance leads to disorder, and vice to suffering, as in real life, then suddenly Harry turns upon Falstaff, or Olivia on Sir Toby, and vice is called by its ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... emitted a most offensive odour, particularly when much heated by exertion, and the influence of a tropical climate. Imagine the action of these upon a mixture of perspiration, rancid palm-oil, clay and dust, the whole producing an effluvium little inferior to that which Sir John Falstaff describes to have been generated in his ducking-basket, 'The rankest compound of villanous smells that ever offended nostrils.' Besides, as our guests were all dressed in buff, it was necessary to clean, after them, the ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... by a great passion, he is endowed for a moment with the poet's speech. A poetic fact, one may almost say, is just any fact at its best. Art, it is true, looks at its object through a medium, but it always seems its inmost meaning. In Lear, Othello, Hamlet, in Falstaff and Touchstone, there is a revelation of the inner truth of human life beyond the power of moral science to bestow. We do well to seek philosophy in the poets, for though they teach only by hints and ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... in a note to allude to Walpole. See also, first Dialogue, where Chatturton is called, "That varlet bright." The note to which passage is "'I am the veriest varlet that ever chew'd,' says Falstaff, in Henry IV. Part 1. Act. 2. Mr. Horace Walpole, now Lord Orford, did not, however, seem to think it necessary that this varlet Chatterton should chew at all. See the Starvation ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... 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 of his way to scare up another ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... because his "visek" did not "work." A good smart nightmare, with a feeling that he had given a thorough basting to the spectre, in the form of a cat, of the supposed author of his woful and aggravated disappointment in love, was what he needed; and it cured him. "A posset of sack" was Falstaff's refuge, from the plight into which he had been led by "building upon a foolish woman's promise," when he emerged from the Thames and the "buck-basket." Many others, no doubt, in drowning sorrow and mortification, have found it "the sovereignest thing on ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham |
