A judgment such as this one is characteristic of Johnson; it is elaborate, somewhat prejudiced, and very narrow. Johnson evidently saw Falstaff as a mere man, perhaps as one whose ghost he would willingly have taught to smoke a churchwarden at the 'Cheshire Cheese.' He saw in him neither heroic nor national qualities and would have scoffed at the possibility of their existence, basing himself on his own remark to Boswell: 'I despise those who do not see that I am right....'
But smaller men than Johnson have judged Falstaff in a small way. They have concentrated on his comic traits, and considered very little whether he might be dubbed either giant or Englishman: if Falstaff is a diamond they have cut but one or two facets. Now the comic side of Falstaff must not be ignored; if he were incapable of creating laughter, if he could draw from us no more than a smile, as do the heroes of Anatole France, of Sterne, or Swift, his gigantic capacity would be affected. It is essential that he should be absurd; it is almost essential that he should be fat, for it is an established fact that humanity laughs gladly at bulk, at men such as Sancho Panza and Mr Pickwick. It is likely that Shakespeare was aware of our instinct when he caused Hal to call Falstaff 'this bed-presser, this horseback-breaker, this huge hill of flesh.' In the mathematics of the stage fat = comedy, lean = tragedy; I do not believe that Hamlet was flesh-burdened, even though 'scant of breath.'
Fat was, however, but Falstaff's prelude to comedy. He needed to be what he otherwise was, coarse, salaciously-minded, superstitious, blustering, cowardly, and lying; he needed to be a joker, oft-times a wit, and withal a sleepy drunkard, a butt for pranks. His coarseness is comic, but not revolting, for it centres rather on the human body than on the human emotion; he does not habitually scoff at justice, generosity or faithfulness, even though he be neither just, nor generous, nor faithful: his brutality is a brutality of word rather than thought, one akin to that of our poorer classes. Had Falstaff not had an air of the world and a custom of courts he would have typified the lowest classes of our day and perhaps stood below those of his own time. His is the coarseness of the drunkard, a jovial and not a maudlin drunkard; when sober he reacts against his own brutality, vows to '... purge and leave sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should do.'