Free Dreaming Spies by Laurie R. King Page B

give that future King such an inappropriate companion in the first place? “I know. They might as well be called Falstaff Parts One and Two .”
    “Prince Henry say— says —Prince Henry says he is only friends to make himself look better, later. This does not seem to me a noble thing to do.”
    “No. I think Shakespeare was far more interested in Falstaff than he was in either of the kings, but he was working his way through the kings of England, so he had to let the Henrys come forward.”
    “He would rather have been writing a comedy?”
    “ The Merry Wives of Windsor does seem a more comfortable setting for the old drunkard.”
    “But Shakespeare put him into the Henry plays.”
    “Most of his dramas have comic touches.”
    She did not seem satisfied. Then again, neither was I. There was no way around it: Sir John Falstaff got a bum deal from his Prince, and his creator.
    “I think maybe Falstaff is the hero,” she said after a time.
    “Oh, I agree that Shakespeare probably wanted to write a comedy here, but at the time found himself stuck with dramas.”
    “No, I mean, he is the hero. Prince and Falstaff both not what they appear: Harry says he is pretending to be young and irresponsible—an act, so everyone will be very impressed when he suddenly grows up, becomes noble. Silly reason. But Falstaff also act the fool, only he stay there, to force Harry to choose—really choose. Where does noble behaviour get a man? Forced to behave, made to marry a stranger for his country, having to lead men he loves into death? Who would want that? But with Falstaff, Harry is forced not just to look noble, but to be noble, and turn his back on the old friend for the bigger cause.”
    She frowned at the book, looking for words that fit her thoughts. “I think maybe, secretly, Shakespeare make Falstaff not just the fool, but his hero. In the end, Falstaff teaches Harry all. About loyalty, about how very, very hard it is to be king. In the end, Falstaff give his— gives his life, his honour, to his new King. When Harry refuses his foolish old friend, that is when he is marked as a king.”
    I stared at her delicate and unlined face, frowning at the mysterious volume in her hands as if it was conveying some personal message to her alone. I’d never thought of the character that way, merely regarded him as a problematic artefact of a playwright working too fast for reflection.
    “That’s an … interesting interpretation.”
    She looked up then. “Ah, sorry, is only my silly thoughts.”
    “Absolutely not. It’s … Well, certainly that’s what the playwright did with Lear’s fool. Have you got to King Lear yet?” Lear’s nameless man-boy wields neither power nor fear. He is a despised servant who is yet the King’s only friend, a non-son who brutally mocks his master but remains loyal when everyone else has betrayed him. The Fool spends all his energies trying to goad Lear from his madness, and at the end—with an enigmatic, I’ll go to bed at noon —he disappears. Theologically speaking, the Fool is an Old Testament prophet with pratfalls. I shook my head. “I admit, I’d never seen Falstaff as a hero. I will have to read those plays again.”
    “Aloud?” Her dark eyes had a twinkle.
    “Yes. You know,” I said, “that’s not a bad idea. We might ask a few of the others to join in, and we could do group readings.” Long ago, my teacher Miss Sim had done that with me, revealing an invaluable dimension to the text.
    This entailed another approach to the purser, who was looking a bit bemused at the seaborne university taking shape around Miss Sato. However, he agreed, and half a dozen of us were soon launched on the Henry plays.
    All of which meant that between the stern linguistic demands of Miss Sato, earnest lessons from the devout American Buddhists, the group readings, and her public lecture series on customs of all kinds (followed by the enthusiastic discussions those lectures set off amongst