1777, Maurice Morgann: "A butt and a wit, a humorist and a man of humour, a touchstone and a laughing stock, a jester and a jest, has Sir John Falstaff, taken at that period of his life in which we see him, become the most perfect Comic character that perhaps ever was exhibited" (Morgann 80-81). "Such, I think, is the true character of this extraordinary buffoon; and from hence we may discern for what special purposes Shakespeare has given him talents and qualities, which were to be afterwards obscured, and perverted to ends opposite to their nature; it was clearly to furnish out a Stage buffoon of a peculiar sort" (Morgann 91).
1817, William Hazlitt: "The Merry Wives of Windsor is no doubt a very amusing play, with a great deal of humor, character, and nature in it; but we should have liked it much better if anyone else had been the hero of it, instead of Falstaff. … Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor is not the man he [Shakespeare] left him. Instead of making a butt of others, he is made a butt by them. Neither is there a single particle of love in him to excuse his follies; he is merely a designing, bare-faced knave, and an unsuccessful one" (Hazlitt 15).
1826, Samuel Weller Singer: [Regarding the Windsor Falstaff:] "The most perfect comic character that ever was exhibited" (in Roberts 89).