'Ha, Sir John, Said I Well?'

One of the unexpected rewards for reading Shakespeare early and often is recognizing his people wherever you go for the rest of your life. Cloten (Cymbeline) has been much in the news of late. Many a politician is a low-rent Coriolanus. Walk into any hipster coffee shop and you’ll bump into Hamlet. On a personal note, I once dated Ophelia, and last week I met Justice Shallow. Do you remember him? A minor but memorable figure in Henry IV, Part 2 and The Merry Wives of Windsor. He’s old and vain though no longer handsome, a not unusual coupling of traits. He tells dubiously “lusty” tales of his youth and fancies himself still a ladies’ man. He is Falstaff’s foil, ripe for the picking.

In Act III,Scene 2 of Henry IV, Part 2, Shallow reunites with Falstaff after a long absence, and reminds him of when they “lay all night in the windmill in St. George’s field.” Shallow inquires after Jane Nightwork.

   

Shallow: “By the mass, I could anger her to the heart. She was then a bona-roba [Johnson’s Dictionary: “a showy wanton”]. Doth she hold her own well?”

Falstaff: “Old, old, Master Shallow.”

A gentleman would get the message. Not Shallow. Another country justice, Silence, says, “That's fifty-five year ago.”  Shallow replies: “Ha, cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this knight and I have seen! Ha, Sir John, said I well?” Then Falstaff utters the line that gave Orson Welles his title: “We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.”