Falstaff, by every ordinary law of human nature, should be inebriated. His exemption is a kind of atheism. But he prefers to have his own vices over-done in the persons of his companions, all of whom seem to have anticipated the sanitary argument in favor of the use of liquor that an American suggested: "If water will rot a cedar-post, what will it do to the human stomach!" Now Pistol's brain, owing to the rarefaction produced by rhetoric, is an exhausted receiver into which all fluids rush and qualify him for inebriety. It is sometimes so excessive that the fuller Falstaff has to beat him out of the room. But one can never say that Pistol is disguised in liquor; for when he is the drunkest his exalted style is most conspicuous. He calls for more sack; then, unbuckling his sword, he draws out the Bilbao blade before laying it down, and manglingly spouts off the Spanish motto that is upon it,--
"_Se fortuna me tormenta, il sperare me contenta_;"
calls the weapon his sweetheart, and, when Bardolph tries to turn him out, snatches it up, and seems to sharpen it upon horrid threats:
"What! shall we have incision? shall we imbrue? Why then, let grievous, ghastly, gaping wounds Untwine the sisters three! Come, Atropos, I say!"
Fate comes in the person of Falstaff, who declares, "An a' do nothing but speak nothing, a' shall be nothing here;" for Falstaff has the virtue of a keen appreciation of the appositeness of words.
You have your choice to regard these people as whimsical disenchantments of Falstaff by a satirical demon, or to consider Falstaff as an aggregate of these people invested with the illusion of wit. Pistol is the raw article of poltroonery done in fustian instead of a gayly slashed doublet. Bardolph is the capaciousness for sherry without the capacity to make it apprehensive and forgetive: it goes to his head, but, finding no brain there, is provoked to the nose, where it lights a cautionary signal. Nym is the brag stripped of resources, shivering in prosiness. Dame Quickly is the easy virtue in reduced circumstances, dropped out of its fashionable quarter to keep a bar and be a procuress,--all the fine phrases pawned clear down to vulgar gossip.
Thus brawling, boasting, tippling, thieving, silly tricks and waggery come strolling behind Falstaff into the company of kings and nobles, no chamberlain to announce them, no crossed halberts to repel.