Thus Shakespeare purposely represents Bertram as a very mixed character, in whom the evil gains for some time a most unhopeful mastery; and he takes care to provide, withal, the canon whereby he would have him judged:  “The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together:  our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipp’d them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.”  A pregnant and subtile reflection indeed, which may sound strange to many; but the truth and wisdom of it are well approved by the grave and saintly Hooker, who was “not afraid to affirm it boldly,” that proud men sometimes “receive a benefit at the hands of God, and are assisted with His grace, when with His grace they are not assisted, but permitted, and that grievously, to transgress; whereby, as they were in overgreat liking of themselves supplanted, so the dislike of that which did supplant them may establish them afterwards the surer.”

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Captain Parolles is verily Shakespeare’s most illustrious pronoun of a man.  Several critics have somehow found it in their hearts to speak of him and Falstaff together.  A foul sin against Sir John! who, whatever else he may deserve, certainly does not deserve that.  Schlegel, however, justly remarks that the scenes where our captain figures contain matter enough for an excellent comedy.  It is indeed a marvel that one so inexpressibly mean, and withal so fully aware of his meanness, should not cut his own acquaintance.  But the greatest wonder about him is, how the Poet could so run his own intellectuality into such a windbag, without marring his windbag perfection.  The character of Parolles is interpreted with unusual fulness in the piercing comments of the other persons.  He seems indeed to have been specially “created for men to breathe themselves upon.”  Thus one describes him as “a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality”; and again, as having “outvillained villainy so far, that the rarity redeems him.”  And he is at last felt to be worth feeding and keeping alive for the simple reason of his being such a miracle of bespangled, voluble, impudent good-for-nothingness, that contempt and laughter cannot afford to let him die.  But the roundest and happiest delivery of him comes from the somewhat waggish but high-spirited and sharpsighted Lord Lafeu, who finds him “my good window of lattice,” and one whose “soul is in his clothes”; and who says to him, “I did think thee, for two ordinaries, to be a pretty wise fellow; thou didst make tolerable vent of thy travel; it might pass:  yet the scarfs and the bannerets about thee did manifoldly dissuade me from believing thee a vessel of too great a burden.”  The play is choicely seasoned throughout with the good-humoured old statesman’s spicery; and our captain is the theme that draws most of it out.