Falstaff's Green Sickness unto Death

Abstract

most elusive line of Shakespeare's-one upon which unusually large amount of commentary has been written espeA~w u cially of late-is Mistress Pistol's allusion to Falstaff's dying moments (his nose was as sharpe as Pen, and of ( Add fields).' Most of the significant scholarship on it, WM @ dating principally from Theobald's famous emendation of babbled for a Table, is covered in Professor Ephim G. Fogel's recent article, 'A of Green Fields': A Defense of the Folio Reading.2 With the realization that Table often had the figurative meaning of picture for the Elizabethans,3 scholars have noticeably shifted their interest from Table to greene.4 Though Professor Fogel's belief that here refers to the pallor of death warrants due consideration, one should notice that he qualifies his proposal by admitting that there is of course element of exaggeration in Mistress Quickly's 'a of fields.' A pale sickly-sallow, or bilious complexion is not nearly as green as grass (p. 489). For Professor A. A. Mendilow demonstrated at the same time that the Hostess did not exaggerate-at least when she referred to the burning quotidian tertian (proven to be an exact medical description) 5It may then be misleading to infer that she exaggerated when she spoke of greene fields, should the connotative value of her remark be one which does not derive its effect from mere hyperbole. For instance, greene, as used in this context, might also be appropriate in still another context (as applicable to Falstaff's complexion prior to his death). If so, the Hostess' description could indicate extension or even parody, rather than exaggeration, of his usual appearance. What then was the color of Falstaff before his death? To understand this, one must take into account Renaissance psychology and the Galenic theory of the humours. The fact that Shakespeare was indeed aware of the conventional relationship of color to humour is evident especially in Love's Labours Lost