portly knight over the past centuries will prove useful in delineating the complexity (or, one is tempted to say, variety) of Shakespeare's comic creation. According to Jeanne Addison Roberts, who deftly and far more completely summarizes the history of Falstaff criticism, the problem or debate in regards to the Windsor Falstaff begins during the Romantic Age.1 During the Neoclassic Age, critics did not have a problem with Falstaff as such and viewed the Falstaff of all three plays as essentially being the same character (Roberts 84-85). But during the Romantic Age and continuing into the Victorian Age, critics began to view Falstaff as a real man; and many of these critics rejected the character of the Windsor Falstaff outright (Roberts 84-93). During the 20th Century critics began to analyze the relationship between the Windsor Falstaff and the text and began to view Falstaff within a comic tradition, with some critics viewing Falstaff as a comic device (and, thereby, rejecting the Romantic treatment of Falstaff as a real human being). Also noteworthy in the history of Falstaff criticism is J. Dover Wilson's comment as to how certain critics had a tendency to deify Falstaff (Roberts 95-108). Such critics thus become all the more incensed at the shift in the treatment of the character in The Merry Wives of Windsor, their love for the Eastcheap Falstaff perhaps blinding them to the merits of both the Windsor Falstaff and to the comedy itself.
However, even during the 19th and 20th centuries, dissension, debate, and disagreement