Understanding Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor by Robert A. Albano - HTML preview

aging knight:

Do you set your name down in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity, and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John! (I, ii: 185-93)

Also early in the play, the character of Doll Tearsheet, Falstaff’s Eastcheap companion, also provides commentary on Falstaff’s transformation. She refers to the knight as a “basket-hilt stale

juggler” (II, iv: 133-34).8 Since Falstaff is a juggler of words, Doll Tearsheet may be metaphorically implying that Falstaff’s wit has now grown stale. Later in the same scene, Doll, who does have affection for the knight, comments on Falstaff’s advancing age and his inappropriate behavior at such a stage in life:

Thou whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig, when wilt thou leave fighting o’ days and foining o’ nights, and begin to patch up thine old body for heaven? (II, iv: 235-38)9

Comments on Falstaff’s age, both by other characters