For whom is everything unspeakably awful? Falstaff and the pursuit of joy
What if everything was unspeakably awful? According to an ancient Greek legend retold by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, King Midas asked the wise satyr Silenus: “What is the most desirable thing among humankind?” Silenus was immortal. His wisdom was legendary. What was his answer to King Midas? “For humans,” Silenus said, “the best for them is not to be born at all… not to be is best… the next to this is, when we are born, to die as soon as we can.”
This story confounds philosophers, who are left with a grim question. Is the world indeed such a horrible place for humans? (Check out our article on this very topic) And, if so, what should we do? Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Falstaff offers an interesting view on this topic.
Opera’s id:
Composer: Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
Libretto: Arrigo Boito
Language: Italian
Premiere: La Scala, Milan, 1893
Falstaff was Verdi’s last and most musically sophisticated opera. He composed it when he was almost 80 years old. By then, Verdi was considered a “master of tragedies”: he had composed no less than 26 tragic operas, most of them considered masterpieces. His ability to present life’s most terrible situations in his operas, bringing his audience to the brink of tears, was renowned. On the other hand, his ability to compose a comedy was doubted. The common belief among opera lovers was what Rossini had once said: “Verdi is a great composer but he can’t write a comedy to save his life.” 50 years prior to this, in his youth, the composer had created the comic opera Un Giorno di Regno which was deemed a failure and was canceled after its first performance. Allegedly, after this attempt, Verdi had sworn never to compose a comedy again.
But after a lifetime of dealing with life’s tragedies through his operas, Verdi changed his mind. Like Silenus, Verdi had grown wise with the years, rich in experiences. Next to having his fair share of personal tragedies, he was well acquainted with the most tragic aspects of the human condition through his works. His response to this knowledge, though, was quite different from Silenus’. “After having relentlessly massacred so many heroes and heroines,” he said after the success of his penultimate opera, Othello, “I have at last the right to laugh a little.” And there comes Falstaff.
Verdi’s Falstaff is based on the homonymous Shakespearean character of Sir John Falstaff, the fat knight. In Shakespeare, Falstaff appears in Henry IV (Parts I and II), Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. He is a rogue, a scoundrel who seeks to make the most of life’s pleasures with no concerns for the morality of his actions. His contempt for the notion of honour in Verdi’s opera is revealing:
Falstaff appears as the perfect opportunist. And there’s no doubt that he is. Yet, his wit is remarkable, as is his passion for life and joy. In the opera, which follows the plot of The Merry Wives of Windsor, he devises a scheme to seduce not one, but two wealthy married ladies, Mrs. Alice Ford and Mrs. Meg Page, in order to cover his large bills. The two ladies find out that they are being set up and they plan their revenge. The opera consists of a series of comic episodes during which the various characters trick and humiliate Falstaff, who gets a taste of his own medicine. But despite his moral shortcomings, the characters cannot but forgive Falstaff at the end of the opera. After all, he has given them a good laugh. Likewise, the audience of the opera is won over by the antics of the fat knight, who manages to respond with skill and gusto even to his punishments.
“I begin to realize
that I've made a great ass of myself!”
He admits at the end of the opera, but then he regains his calm and adds:
Maybe the most astonishing feature of Falstaff is this unique self-confidence and this ability to boost his ego, even when he finds himself being mocked by everyone. The signs of this confidence throughout the opera are abundant. Despite his growing age and his fat body, Falstaff has no second thoughts about his ability to seduce the two merry wives.
In one incident, the husband of Mrs. Ford, who is plotting his own scheme, visits Falstaff under the disguise of Signor Fontana, a supposed admirer of Mrs. Ford. He pleads with Falstaff to seduce the virtuous Mrs. Ford, so that afterward she may consider betraying her husband with Signor Fontana as well – Falstaff sees nothing off in this plan and happily agrees to help!
The distance between reality and Falstaff’s perception is integral to the opera’s comic character. Yet there’s more to it than Falstaff being delusional. This becomes clear at the beginning of the opera’s third act, in a scene that transforms our understanding of Falstaff’s character. In that scene, Falstaff is alone. At the end of the previous act, Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page took revenge by throwing him into the Thames in a laundry basket, turning him into a laughing stock. Now, wet and bruised, he ponders over these events. In a sad repetition of his previous glorious tune, he laments:
“Wicked world. There is no virtue left.
Everything in decline.
Go, old John, go,
go your way; walk
until you die.
Then true manhood
will disappear from the world.
What a bleak, horrible day!
Heaven help me! I’m getting too fat.
My hair is going gray!”
At this moment, Falstaff stares at himself with bleak honesty. His misfortunes, his old age, and his impending death weigh upon him. But this dark mood does not last. As soon as the tavern-keeper brings him a large glass of wine, Falstaff cheers up:
Is this another similarity with Selenus? Both Falstaff and Silenus resort to getting drunk, when confronted with the horridness of their condition. But while for Silenus this appears to be an escape from the world, for Falstaff it is more of a reminder of all the pleasures that exist in it. Silenus thought that it is best not to be born; second best to die as soon as one can. Falstaff has a thirst for life; he considers it the highest good. And life is most enjoyable when one’s spirits are high – that’s why getting drunk is valuable, it lifts our mood and allows us to enjoy life to the fullest. Falstaff’s jests are so enjoyable because they derive from this desire to make the most of his life. Nothing can stop him from satisfying this goal. This quality, this affirmation of the value of life even when faced with difficulties, renders Falstaff not only hilarious but also, in a sense, admirable. Not only do we forgive him for his moral shortcomings. We also marvel at his ability to maintain his positive attitude toward himself, the rest of the characters, and the world, despite everything that happens to him during the opera.
The culmination of this attitude comes at the end of the opera. Falstaff has realized that he has been made a fool. All the masks have come off and the truth has been revealed. The opera ends in a glorious fugue, in which everyone participates:
Looking for joy and laughter was Falstaff’s answer to the realities of life. Verdi, a man of character and high ideals – and, in that sense, very different from Falstaff – also turned to joy and laughter as a way to end his legacy. When he finished Falstaff, he wrote on the score an affectionate farewell to its protagonist: “It’s all finished. Go, go, old John. Go on your way for as long as you can. Amusing rogue, forever true beneath the masks you wear in different times and places. Go, go, on your way. Farewell.” Many musicologists even suggest that in Falstaff, there are elements that satirise themes from Verdi’s tragedies, transforming them from pain into jest (Mr. Ford’s jealousy of his wife, for example, can be seen as a parody of the same theme in Verdi’s previous opera, Othello). The world may be a tragedy or a comedy, this seems to suggest. It ultimately depends on what we make of it. But the Falstaffs of the world are here to remind us of this fact.
Bengt Nyman, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons