In Shakespeare's Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor, a fat, witty, boastful knight, convivial but dissolute.
noun
0
0
A fat and jollyknight. The character was invented by William Shakespeare for his playsHenry IV (parts 1 and 2) and also appeared in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
pronoun
0
0
Advertisement
Sentence Examples
Of English plays, the interlude called Jack Juggler (between 1547 and 1553) was based on the Amphitruo, and the lost play called the Historie of Error (acted in 1577) was probably based on the Menae-chmi; Nicholas Udall's Ralph Royster Doyster, the first English comedy (acted before 1551, first printed 1566), is founded on the Miles gloriosus; Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors (about 1591) is an adaptation of the Menaechmi; and his Falstaff may be regarded as an idealized reproduction or development of the braggart soldier of Plautus and Terence - a type of character which reappears in other forms not only in English literature (e.g.
The story of Falstaff originated partly in Henry's early friendship for Oldcastle (q.v.).
The consequence of this was, that a capital player's wardrobe " [came to include] " what they call natural heads of hair; there is the comedy head of hair, and the tragedy ditto; the silver locks, and the common gray; the carotty poll, and the yellow caxon; the savage black, and the Italian brown, and Shylock's and Falstaff's very different heads of hair; ...
BATTLE OF THE HERRINGS, the name applied to the action of Rouvray, fought in 1429 between the French (and Scots) and the English, who, under Sir John Falstolfe (or Falstaff), were convoying Lenten provisions, chiefly herrings, to the besiegers of Orleans.
3, says of Falstaff: " A' made a finer end and went away an it had been any Chrisom Child."