Falstaff

Falstaff, also known as John Oldcastle, is a member of the Illuminati and an antagonist of the Redemption Squad [1].

Appearances

• Strangled (First Appearance)
• Losers

Real World History

Falstaff is presumably named after Sir John Falstaff, one of the leading characters of Shakespeare's Henry IV plays and one of Shakespeare's most popular comical figures. A fat old knight, Falstaff is the leader of the riotous crew whom Prince Hal befriends during his madcap youth. Falstaff is a thief and a heavy drinker, but is also extremely witty, with a gift for improbable exaggeration. For example, in Henry IV Part One, after Falstaff and his band rob a group of travelers at Gad's Hill, Prince Hal and one of his associates, Poins, attack the thieves in turn and steal their loot. Falstaff afterwards claims to have fought off his assailants - whose numbers grow dramatically with each line - until Hal tells him what really happened; Falstaff then claims that he had recognized his attacker's true identity and, as a loyal Englishman, had no desire to harm the heir apparent. Falstaff's exploits fill most of the plays until, in the final act of Henry IV Part Two, Hal, now crowned king as Henry V, rejects the old knight and his crew. In Henry V, Falstaff dies off-stage, apparently of a broken heart (Mistress Quickly, who describes his death, states her belief that he has gone to "Arthur's bosom", presumably a slip for "Abraham's bosom").

Falstaff also appears in The Merry Wives of Windsor, though more as a buffoon than the wit of the Henry IV plays; the play could almost be considered the Falstaffian equivalent of The Goliath Chronicles (according to legend, Shakespeare only wrote it because Elizabeth I wanted to see Falstaff in love). Falstaff spends the play trying to woo the merry wives of the title, hoping to gain their money, only to be outwitted by them and humiliated throughout. (In an episode of The Spectacular Spider-Man, Aunt May and Anna Watson went to see a performance of the play - which was called on account of an attack from the Sinister Six.)

Though Falstaff is fictional, he is loosely based on two historical figures. The first was Sir John Oldcastle, a friend of Prince Hal's who after converting to Lollardism (a form of proto-Protestantism that began in the late 14th century, founded by John Wycliffe), raised a rebellion early in Henry V's reign, was defeated, and executed for both treason and heresy in 1417. Shakespeare seems to have used this as a first-draft name for his character, but changed it (reportedly to avoid problems with Oldcastle's descendants) to "Falstaff", a variant on the surname of a 15th century knight named Sir John Fastolf who, while an able warrior, was once falsely accused of cowardice after he ordered a retreat at the Battle of Patay during the Hundred Years' War (the battle was already lost and Fastolf had realized that withdrawing his troops was the only way to save them), and whom Shakespeare had earlier included as a minor character in one of his first history plays, "Henry VI Part One".

See also

• Falstaff at Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia