Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, January 17, 2024.

Today, I'll be reading a speech from Henry IV, part one.

The speech is delivered by one of Shakespeare's most beloved characters, Sir John Falstaff.

In fact, legend has it that Falstaff was so popular, so universally beloved,

that after the character dies off, off stage or off screen, for you millennials, in Henry V,

the Queen of England herself urged Shakespeare to resurrect the character.

Whether this is apocryphal or not,

it is true that Shakespeare did, in fact,

bring John Falstaff back to life, as it were,

to appear in the Merry Wives of Windsor,

which might have been a crime against the play because I think it suffers for his presence, but he is always lovable and enjoyable, rogue and rake as he may be.

In this passage from Henry IV, Part 1, King Henry the 4th is raising an army in order to put down the rebellion of Henry Hotspur, who threatens civil war in Britain.

And one of his commissioned officers, Sir John Falstaff, is explaining how, though the king has

provided the power to press soldiers into service, there's also the legal option

to buy your way out of service, and that John Falstaff has taken this opportunity to make

a little money by conscripting the wealthiest and noblest men he could find,

and then allowing them all to buy their way out of their military service,

and then replacing them with the leftovers, shall we say, the flea-bitten,

raggedly clothed, entirely lacking in military experience, lowest class of British citizen.

In this speech, he describes why he has done the thing that he has done, and to comic effect, he describes the new company of soldiers that he has raised.

This is Sir John Falstaff from Act 4, Scene 2, Henry IV, Part 1.

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