This section contains 11,607 words (approx. 39 pages at 300 words per page) |
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SOURCE: Hall, Jonathan. “The Evacuations of Falstaff (The Merry Wives of Windsor).” In Shakespeare and Carnival, edited by Ronald Knowles, pp. 123-51. Houndsmills, Great Britain: Macmillan, 1998.
In the following essay, Hall examines the language of The Merry Wives of Windsor and views the play “as a successor to 2 Henry IV.”
Counterfeit? I lie, I am no counterfeit. To die is to be a counterfeit, or he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man. But to counterfeit dying when a man thereby liveth is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed.
(Falstaff)1
Laughter is essentially not an external but an interior form of truth; it cannot be transformed into seriousness without destroying and distorting the very contents of the truth which it unveils. Laughter liberates not only from external censorship but first of all from...
This section contains 11,607 words (approx. 39 pages at 300 words per page) |
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