Oh, What a Knight!<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
By John Ahlin<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n If I may, I\u2019d like to humbly offer a few tedious and brief thoughts on playing Sir John Falstaff. Henry IV, Part 2<\/em> marks the last leg of my Falstaff Triple Crown here at Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, having already done Henry IV, Part 1<\/em> and The Merry Wives of Windsor<\/em>. But, Ahab-like, I have been pursuing this whale of a man for nearly my whole career, and with this production<\/span> I think I will have played Falstaff from the three plays a total of 15 times.<\/span> Yet I truly feel in playing Sir John I am not trotting out the same old tired performance. On the contrary, every time I surf the Big Sir it only skims the oceanic vastness this globe of a man presents, as he spins magnificently in the larger universe of Shakespeare. There is so much more\u2014so much new to explore\u2014that, being here, now, getting to play Falstaff anew and afresh, I can say I am as excited as any time in my long career.<\/span><\/p>\n And tackling Falstaff in this original way, the \u201cExtreme Shakespeare\u201d fashion: just jumping in, lines learned, four days of rehearsal, and no director, is exhilarating \u2026like bounding into the Versailles of bouncy castles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cTackling\u201d is actually the perfect word in that it originates from the idea of gaining control over something with tackle, or ropes, like a wild horse or Professor Marvel\u2019s balloon. Falstaff cannot be tied down; he rises, ascends, soars till \u201cin the clear sky of fame he o\u2019ershines all, as much as the full moon doth the stars in the firmament.\u201d Since I have a unique vantage point\u201415 times inside the belly of the behemoth\u2014I\u2019ll now, Shakespeare-like, coin a new word: Anthro-portray-ology, meaning: the study of Falstaff by performing him. Herewith are a few clumsy, random and oddball observations I\u2019ve made of the Fat Knight by being the Fat Knight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0The key is freedom! Othello, Hamlet, the Scottish King, and Lear are all hobbled within their first few scenes by fate\u2019s fickle hand, learning of what will plunge them, as Sir Ralph Richardson puts it: \u201cInto an avalanche of circumstances that will become a terrific drubbing in Shakespeare\u2019s washing machine, stripping the characters to the very thread of their fabric.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Of all Shakespeare\u2019s greatest creations, only Falstaff isn\u2019t taken to the cleaners. Slight spoiler alert (this sentence only), Falstaff doesn\u2019t find out his fate until the last possible moment \u2026his Shakespearean flaw is a blind spot in his inestimable wisdom\u2026he didn\u2019t see the trap he can\u2019t escape coming. (Resume reading)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Falstaff is free\u2026free to be Falstaff through all his plays. Free to do whatever it takes to survive, to which an actor can bring all his imagination, cleverness and experience in creating the character. Falstaff is like a chess queen that can move twice in a row; he has nearly boundless freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n Playing Sir John is a buffet accompli! He\u2019s not simply Vice, or the Lord of Misrule, or some archetype; he is all things\u2026he is vastly human. Falstaff is fully formed, forged by a ruthless world set against him. But he fights back with all he\u2019s got: aplomb, charm, pathos, rationality, sagacity, invention, appetite, learning, and a dozen more. And chief amongst his weapons is his wit. His nimble, youthful mind out thinks anyone: \u201cI am only old in judgement and understanding,\u201d he says. He is the greatest rhetorical escape artist in all literature, swiping the cheese out of any verbal trap. The feast of facets that is Falstaff will make any actor fat with acting choices.<\/span><\/p>\n A cowardly liar? Imposerous! Embellisher yes, raconteur yes, but Falstaff sees clearly how the world works. He may steal a purse, but he will not be lectured to by those who steal a crown. He sees through \u201chonor\u201d to what it can sometimes result in\u2014being bluntly dead. He rejects war\u2019s self-sacrifice on principle, hollering \u201cGive me life!\u201d on the battlefield. He is a lover not a fighter, but if badgered into a corner, he will wolverine his way out using his genuine ferocity; he\u2019ll put the fist in pacifist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For centuries critics called him a coward, and labeled his antics \u201ca parody\u201d of a soldier. They couldn\u2019t comprehend that Falstaff\u2019s choice to avoid foolishness and folly would become a legitimate viewpoint. A viewpoint standing in stark contrast to Henry IV\u2019s, whose dying word of advice to Hal is to \u201cbusy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.\u201d Shakespeare was ahead of his time…ahead of all time.<\/span><\/p>\n Get that prince over the finish line! Falstaff, the Bible-quoting hulk, pursues a single less-than-divine goal; redemption on Earth. He seeks not Elysian but strawberry fields\u2026forever. And for that he must survive this cruel world until Hal, his presumed patron, becomes king. He only has to delay the decay of his aging body. Shakespeare always has sub-themes in his plays, and Henry IV, Part 2 constantly touches on growing old, disease, and mortality. Falstaff is acutely aware of time. <\/span>He has heard the \u201cchimes at midnight\u201d but never gives up hope of a golden dawn.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Falstaffection! What I love most playing Falstaff is Shakespeare\u2019s sub-theme of having Sir John measuring everyone he meets by how they can laugh. From the moment he first limps onstage chiding all humankind that he alone is the cause of all laughter to the moment his life changes hearing the new king say \u201cReply not with a fool-born jest,\u201d <\/span>laughter is Falstaff\u2019s life\u2019s blood.<\/span> For me the saddest moment in Part 2 is Falstaff planning how he will make Prince Harry laugh\u2026pining for a once-was that he doesn\u2019t know is a never-will-be.<\/span><\/p>\n There is honor in that word Falstaff! The one-of-a-kind unrequited love story that is Falstaff and Hal in both Part 1 and Part 2 is not only momentous within Shakespeare\u2018s canon, but all theatre! The Act 2, Scene 4 tavern scene in Part 1, where Hal and Falstaff take turns majestificently playing Hal\u2019s father, the king, and then Falstaff hilariously portraying Hal, with all that is unsaid and below the surface, to me is the birth of modern theatre\u2026the fulcrum on which all theatre is catapulted toward its full potential.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And then to play its mirror, the Act 2, Scene 4 tavern scene in Part 2, with decay and entropy hanging heavy, and glory gone, with Falstaff speaking of being \u201cthe man of action,\u201d it is Shakespeare\u2019s genius to have Hal run out to do his duty. The world is seeing (and needing) Henry V for the first time!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When you think that the next thing Shakespeare created when he took up his quill again was Beatrice and Benedick, you know he was in the groove of all time; his greatest plays were about to spill forth. <\/span>Shakespeare changed theatre by creating human beings; alive, introspective, flawed, conflicted. And in my view, Falstaff is the most human\u2026and greatest of them all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n To stand on stage and share him with these wonderful, smart PSF audiences is\u2026is\u2026well, some new word has yet to be coined to perfectly describe this glorious, joyous feeling<\/span>.\u00a0 \u25a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Oh, What a Knight! By John Ahlin If I may, I\u2019d like to humbly offer a few tedious and brief thoughts on playing Sir John Falstaff. Henry IV, Part 2 marks the last leg of my Falstaff Triple Crown here at Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, having already done Henry IV, Part 1 and The Merry Wives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n