Falstaff as Actaeon: A Dramatic Emblem

Abstract

N the final act of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare confronts his audience with an obvious burlesque of the myth. In impersonating Herne the Hunter, Sir John becomes a comic counterpart of the legendary hunter from Thebes. As Professor Bullough has observed, there is a certain T in Shakespeare's exploitation of this parallel. Actaeon had become a cant-name for a cuckold, and when Falstaff dons the horns which he would have placed on Ford's brows he suffers the poetic justice of a failed Don Juan. 1 Professor Bullough has likewise emphasized the dramatist's indebtedness to Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses: That Shakespeare had Ovid in mind when Falstaff assumed the disguise is proved by the latter's allusions at V.v. 2-I7 to the amorous metamorphoses of Jove.... was bitten by his own dogs, of whom Ovid names thirty-five and Golding calls one 'Ringwood' (a common name). Shakespeare substitutes the fairies who burn and pinch the fat knight; and for this part of the scene he takes hints from Lyly's Endimion (p. i8). Nevertheless, Shakespeare's treatment of the Falstaff-Actaeon parallel also displays several marked affinities with the representation of this myth in Renaissance iconography and mythography. The knight's disguise is virtually identical with a conventional illustration of in Renaissance emblem literature? and editions of the Metamorphoses.3 Moreover, the moral significance of Falstaff's ordeal-the punishment the unclean knight receives for his corrupted heart and lecheries-closely resembles a familiar Renaissance interpretation of Actaeon's fate. As Green's study of Shakespeare's relation to the emblem books does not consider the implications of Falstaffs disguise,4 it seems advisable to examine this problem in some detail.