The notion that Shakespeare deliberately manipulated or altered his character of Falstaff as he moved him from one play to the next may help to explain the variety of opinion that exists on this character. Shakespeare was certainly aware of the quite various and distinct comic roles that were assigned to the comedian or clown of his acting troupe, and he more than likely developed close relationships with his comic actors. A number of critics (such as Videbaek, Wiles, and Colucci) also remark upon the quite distinct clown roles that existed during the Renaissance and suggest that the regular comedic actors who took on such roles could often replay similar roles in different plays but would also, more likely than not, be called upon to perform quite separate and distinct comic roles that would suggest that these actors could and did perform in a variety of separate and distinct manners of presentation. Such comedic actors were not necessarily pigeonholed into playing one type of stock character and may have prided themselves upon the variety of roles that they played. Shakespeare may have seen the repetition of his use of the Falstaff character as a challenge to his dramatic art to bring something new to the stage each time his Falstaff appeared. Shakespeare was an innovator and a breaker of traditions in both poetry and the theater. In his Sonnets, for example, he made his object of adoration and beauty a young man (and, later, an older dark lady) where the many previous sonnet cycles had always used a young lady of fair features. In Love's Labour's Lost he ends a romance comedy