THE FATE OF FALSTAFF
To the Editor of The Idler.
Dear Sir: I am an actor; a follower of Thespis, an interpreter of men and emotions. To become such was the dream of my boyhood’s ambition. At an early age (I shall not state when, since you would probably be incredulous) I used, Sir, to act plays for my own amusement and afterward for the amusement of my elders. Where other children were content to play in careless fashion, without attempting anything like an exact reproduction or imitation of Nature, I was most particular in this respect. If I played Julius Cæsar, I had, to satisfy my artistic instinct, to carry a short sword and not a long one; I must needs wrap myself in a sheet and swear by the heathen gods. Nothing short of this satisfied me. I could not, as so many children do, thrusta feather duster down the neck of my jacket and play at being an Indian chief; on the contrary, I must have the feathers in my hair and my complexion darkened until I bore some actual resemblance to the aborigine. Without these aids to illusion I could not enjoy myself or get any manner of amusement from the sport. I was so close a student of details, even at that age, that in playing Indian I acquired a habit of toeing-in which caused my mother much distress and which clung to me for many months.
Nor was I less particular in the matter of my speech. I was forever mouthing sentiments and speeches culled from my father’s library, some of them, I dare say, weird and bizarre enough upon my youthful and innocent lips. However this may be, I had an abiding horror of all sorts of anachronisms, and I preferred Ben Jonson to Shakespeare for the reason that he was less frequently guilty of offending my artistic sense in this respect.
It was not long before my parents were impressed with my natural bent in this directionand encouraged me in my favorite diversion by taking the part of an audience, while my younger brother was pressed into service with his harmonica and rendered the overtures and the interludes to the best of his somewhat limited ability; for I could no more act without an orchestra than I could act without a make-up. Incidentally I came to practise the art of elocution, and it was said in our neighborhood that I could interpretHoratio at the Bridgein a most telling fashion, and that not Riley himself could improve upon my rendition ofThe Raggedy Man.
With such a wealth of youthful experience, it was not surprising that I found myself at the age of twenty-one a supernumerary in a theater, nor that soon afterward I was given a speaking part and rose, before long, to the dignity of “leads” in a stock company of the first class. It was at this time that I was given my first opportunity really to distinguish myself. A prominent manager, who shall be nameless, sent for me and told me that he had chosen me to play Falstaff in a production ofHenry the Fourthwhich he intended putting on the following winter.
Elated as I was at this splendid opportunity for a display of my genius for acting, I could not forbear voicing certain conscientious scruples as to my ability to do the part justice.
“I can undoubtedly interpret the character to your most complete satisfaction,” said I to the manager, “but there is an obstacle, which, while by no means unsurmountable, must, nevertheless, be overcome at once or not at all.”
“And what is that?” he inquired.
“Why,” said I, “I am not fat enough.”
“What odds?” he answered; “while there are pads and pillows, this should be no matter for despair. You have only to stuff your doublet and pad your hose until you are as swollen as you like.”
“That,” I protested, “may do very well for your merely commercial actors who have no concern in their acting beyond the matter of drawing a salary; but I, Sir, am anactor, not a mere buffoon, not a vulgar clown to waddle about a stage wagging a hypocritical belly andpassing off feathers for fat. If I am to play Falstaff, I will be Falstaff, in the flesh as well as in the spirit. My corporosity shall be sincere, my puffing and grunting shall be genuine; I will eat real food and drink real liquor upon your stage, and when I waddle I shall waddle as Nature intended fat men to waddle—because I can not help it. My calves shall be as natural as Sir John’s own, so that if I am pricked with the point of a rapier, I shall give utterance to a howl which is not mere mockery, but as real as a howl may well be, and which will delight the audience as no feigned howl ever could do.
“No, no! I shall not play Falstaff like a clown in a pantomime, but like that very knight himself. My performance shall be as real as the performance of Nature. I will be Sir John redivivus. Falstaff shall live again in me. He shall be I and I will be he, and there is an end of it.”
Well, Sir, to be brief, the manager was so struck with my unusual and, I may say, unaffected, sincerity, that he voluntarily advancedme a portion of my salary and agreed to my proposal that, instead of wasting valuable time in rehearsing a part in which I was already practically letter-perfect, my part in the rehearsals should be taken by a substitute, while I retired to the country and devoted myself to my labor of love—to the task of putting on so much flesh as would be necessary to act with fidelity the pursy knight errant. And this I did to so good purpose that from my normal weight of about one hundred and ninety pounds, I soon came to weigh upward of two hundred and eighty, and was as fat as any one could wish when we opened inHenry the Fourthin the Autumn.
To say, Sir, that my performance was a success is to do scant justice to the literary ability of William Shakespeare and to my own histrionic powers. It was not merely a success—it was a triumph! Ah, Sir, if I could but whisper in your ear the name by which I was known in those days of superlative glory, you would recall in the flash of an eye the days when the whole of the English-speaking world was convulsedwith merriment at my performance and when press and public were vying with each other to do me honor! Never was such a performance of Falstaff given before, and never, I fear, will such a performance be given again. I was Falstaff to the very life! Falstaff in person and not to be mistaken for any one else. You could have sworn that I had stepped bodily out of the pages of the folio edition and thrust my way into the theater of my own volition, usurping the place of the actor.
Four whole seasons we played to crowded houses—New York, Chicago, San Francisco and London—and everywhere the critics all agreed that never had such a perfect Falstaff been seen before. This we followed withThe Merry Wives of Windsor, repeating our success for two seasons, so that for six years I was known to every actor and patron of the theater as the greatest Falstaff that ever was.
But Fate, alas! however prodigal she may appear for a time, is not constant in her favors. All things come to an end sooner or later, and our production ofThe Merry Wivesran itscourse in time. How well do I remember that last night of all—the glitter of the electrics overhead, the glare of the footlights, the music of the orchestra, and, oh, above all else, the thunderous applause that greeted me when I appeared before the curtain, clad in trunks and doublet, to make my farewell speech! There ended our production, and there ended my greatness and my life. My grossness I have still, but my greatness has fled forever! Disconsolate I wander through the haunts of stageland, a fat pale ghost of my former self; a Falstaff out of place and out of time; a Falstaff without jollity or joy. I, Sir, have become that thing which I hate above all other things in the world, I have become an Anachronism!
Conceive, if you can, my consternation when I discovered my dilemma. Having no further need for my excessive flesh, I sought to reduce my weight only to find that I could not lose it! Six years of playing Falstaff had made me Falstaff for good or ill. No fighter of the prize-ring, no beauty of the court, ever laboredas I labored to struggle back to slimness. No Hamlet ever cried more earnestly than I,
“Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!”
“Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!”
“Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!”
“Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!”
Like Sisyphus, I toiled for months with my burden, rolling off flesh only to have it roll on again, until at last I gave up in despair.
No manager would employ me to play for him—I was too fat. Too fat to act, too fat to play at any part but one. Once only since that time have I tried to obtain an engagement and that was when I saw an advertisement of a revival of my own great play,Henry the Fourth. But would you believe it, Sir, the manager had the impudence to laugh in my face, to deny the truth of my story and scoff at my insistence upon my identity. He called me, Sir,a fat slob! In desperation I tried a Dime Museum, only to be told that no “fat freaks” were employed who weighed less than three hundred and fifty pounds. At last I fell into my present disgraceful situation; I was employed by a restaurant-keeper as a decoy. In the window of one of the cheapest and vilestcafés in this city I sit for eight hours daily drawing a crowd about the place while I toy with a knife and fork and pretend to eat of a meal that I would not feed my most bitter enemy. I do not eat it. I can not eat it. And so, Sir, here I sit each day, a mere husk of my former self, a hulk, a wrecked Leviathan! A fraud and a freak; a delusion and a snare. This have I suffered in consequence of my devotion to an ideal—I who was for six years the greatest Falstaff the world has ever known!
T. P.