1916, Sidney Lee: [Regarding the Windsor Falstaff:] "A caricature of his former self … His power of retort has decayed, and the laugh invariably turns against him. In name only he is identical with the potent humorist of Henry IV" (in Roberts 95).
1919, J Dover Wilson: "Yet Monsieur Remorse is a good puppet in the property box of the old morality, and may be given excellent motions in the fingers of a skillful showman, who is laying himself out … to make fun of the old types. Why not shape a comic part out of it, and hand it over to Falstaff, who as the heir of traditional medieval 'antics' like the Devil, the Vice, the Fool, Riot, and Lord of Misrule, may very well manage one more?" (Wilson 34-35).
1938, DA Traversi: "The Falstaff of Part II is in many ways a very different person. He has undergone, since the end of the previous play, an evolution parallel to that of the political figures who surround him, and as such proves once more Shakespeare's growing capacity to see his plays as wholes" (Traversi 41).