' What an idea is here conveyed of a prodigality of living?
What good husbandry and economical self-denial in his pleasures?
What a stock of lively recollections? It is curious that Shakespeare
has ridiculed in Justice Shallow, who was 'in some authority under
the king', that disposition to unmeaning tautology which is the
regal infirmity of later times, and which, it may be supposed, he
acquired from talking to his cousin Silence, and receiving no
answers.
Falstaff. You have here a goodly dwelling, and a rich.
Shallow. Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all, Sir John:
marry, good air. Spread Davy, spread Davy. Well said, Davy.
Falstaff. This Davy serves you for good uses.
Shallow. A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet. By the
mass, I have drank too much sack at supper. A good varlet. Now sit
down, now sit down. Come, cousin.
The true spirit of humanity, the thorough knowledge of the stuff we
are made of, the practical wisdom with the seeming fooleries in the
whole of the garden-scene at Shallow's country-seat, and just before
in the exquisite dialogue between him and Silence on the death of
old Double, have no parallel anywhere else. In one point of view,
they are laughable in the extreme; in another they are equally
affecting, if it is affecting to show what a little thing is human
life, what a poor forked creature man is!
The heroic and serious part of these two plays founded on the story
of Henry IV is not inferior to the comic and farcical.
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