With the creation of hie ten-act chronicle play, Henry IV, William Shakespeare wrote for hie audience's enjoyment a character, held to be by many scholars the greatest comic figure in literature—Sir John Falstaff. This man, the fat, ribald companion of Prince Hal, has enticed the critical minds of writers from the Restoration Period to present time. As all great comic characters, Falstaff possesses a many-faceted personality which has left him open to much probing, many questions and many answers.|Such questions have arisen: Why do we laugh at him? Wherein doe» his humor lie? Did he fall so that Hal might rise? And even, Why was he fat? But out of the more than two hundred treatments on the character of Falstaff, the question which is given the greatest emphasis is his cowardice. Naturally, as in any debatable topic, there are two extreme stands, or schools of thought, on the subject.
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