_On the Death of Falstaff_ (Vol. viii., p. 314.).--The remarks of your
correspondents J. B. and NEMO on this subject are so obvious, and I
think I may also admit in a measure so just, that it appears to me only
respectful to them, and to all who may feel reluctant to give up
Theobald's reading, that I should give some detailed reason for
dissenting from their conclusion.
In the first place, when Falstaff began to "play with flowers and smile
upon his fingers' ends," it was no far-fetched thought to place him in
fancy among green fields; and if the disputed passage were in immediate
connexion with the above, the argument in its favour would be stronger.
But, unfortunately, Mrs. Quickly brings in here the conclusion at which
she arrives: "I knew there was but one way; _for_," she adds, as a
farther reason, and referring to the physical evidences upon his frame
of the approach of death, "his nose was as sharp as a pen on a table of
green frieze." We can hardly imagine him "babbling" at this moment. "How
now, Sir John, quoth I;" she continues, apparently to rouse him: "What,
man! be of good cheer. _So_ [thus roused] 'a cried out--God, God, God!
three or four times: now, I to _comfort_ him," &c. Does this look as
though he were in the happy state of mind your correspondents imagine? I
take no account of his crying out of sack and of women, &c., as that
might have been at an earlier period. At the same time it does not
follow, had Shakspeare intended to replace him in fancy amid the scenes
of his youth, that he should have talked of them. A man who is (or
imagines he is) in green fields, does not talk about green fields,
however he may enjoy them. Both your correspondents seem to anticipate
this difficulty, and meet it by supposing Falstaff to be "babbling
snatches of hymns;" but this I conceive to be far beyond the limits of
reasonable conjecture. In fact, the whole of their very beautiful theory
rests upon the very disputed passage in question. At an earlier period
apparently, his mind did wander; when, as Mrs. Quickly says, he was
"rheumatick," meaning doubtless _lunatic_, that is, delirious; and then
he talked of other things. When he began to "fumble with the sheets, and
play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends," though for a
moment he might have fancied himself even "in his mother's lap," or
anything else, he was clearly past all "babbling." In saying this, I
treat Falstaff as a human being who lived and died, and whose actions
were recorded by the faithfullest observer of Nature that ever wrote.