Falstaff's Addiction
Hannah Epstein
Falstaff is an integral part of any analysis of the food in Shakespeare’s Henriad. The tavern is his main place of residence, his place of commerce, and his main sphere of interaction with Hal. Were it not for his title, one might never know he was a noble, due to his penchant for drunken tomfoolery, also performed in a tavern. Falstaff’s main delight in the tavern is sack wine. At the end of a whole monologue on the topic in King Henry IV Part 2, Falstaff concludes, “If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle / I would teach them should be to forswear / thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack” (IV.ii.127-129). Earlier in the monologue, Falstaff claims that drinking sack has made Hal “hot and valiant” (IV.ii.126). It seems that Falstaff regards drinking sack wine to excess as a virtue, despite the fact that it was commonly viewed as bad behavior.
In his article “Digesting Falstaff,” Joshua B. Fisher explains that sack is a fortified wine that modern consumers know as sherry (12). In his 1600 book Naturall and Artificial Directions for Health, Deriued from the Best Philosophers, as Well Moderne, as Auncient, drinking too much sack with a full stomach, “‘doth more harm than good’ and ‘doth make men fatte and foggy’” (cited in Fisher 12). This description clearly applies to the Falstaff Shakespeare wrote. The Falstaff in the play is often described as fat, indeed.
Falstaff’s sack addiction also plays into his financial troubles. In Act Two, Scene Five of King Henry IV Part 1, Hal picks Falstaff’s pockets and reveals his receipts to the audience. He finds that Falstaff has spent a great deal more money on sack than on anything else. Sack, like other wines at the time, would have been expensive, because it had to be imported (Sim 58).
Alison Sim notes in Food and Feast in Tudor England that, “It [wine] was, quite simply, the drink to offer your guests, and to be seen drinking yourself” (58). The audience knows Falstaff as a braggart, and it is likely that he chose to drink sack wine in order to make himself appear wealthier than he really was.
In his article “Digesting Falstaff,” Joshua B. Fisher explains that sack is a fortified wine that modern consumers know as sherry (12). In his 1600 book Naturall and Artificial Directions for Health, Deriued from the Best Philosophers, as Well Moderne, as Auncient, drinking too much sack with a full stomach, “‘doth more harm than good’ and ‘doth make men fatte and foggy’” (cited in Fisher 12). This description clearly applies to the Falstaff Shakespeare wrote. The Falstaff in the play is often described as fat, indeed.
Falstaff’s sack addiction also plays into his financial troubles. In Act Two, Scene Five of King Henry IV Part 1, Hal picks Falstaff’s pockets and reveals his receipts to the audience. He finds that Falstaff has spent a great deal more money on sack than on anything else. Sack, like other wines at the time, would have been expensive, because it had to be imported (Sim 58).
Alison Sim notes in Food and Feast in Tudor England that, “It [wine] was, quite simply, the drink to offer your guests, and to be seen drinking yourself” (58). The audience knows Falstaff as a braggart, and it is likely that he chose to drink sack wine in order to make himself appear wealthier than he really was.