SOURCE: “Shakespeare's Comic Sense as It Strikes Us Today: Falstaff and the Protestant Ethic,” in Henry the Fourth Parts I and II: Critical Essays, edited by David Bevington, Garland Publishing, 1986, 349-58.

In the following essay, originally published in 1978, Hunter theorizes that the rejection of Falstaff in the Henry IV plays dramatizes the victory of the Protestant ethic, presenting the evolution of Prince Hal as a triumph of the principles represented by this moral code.

If there are such things as antibodies (and I am told that there are), then let there be such things as antiembodiments and let Falstaff be one. Let him also be an embodiment (there is plenty of room), for Falstaff embodies a large part of my subject, Shakespeare's comic sense. Simultaneously he antiembodies the Protestant ethic. What he is, it is not. What it is, he is not. Did Shakespeare's comic sense serve the...