Word: falstaffs
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...enthusiastic extras were to have received $1.00 a performance for the privilege of serving their muse. However, because of long rehearsals and a special boon by Orson ("Falstaff") Welles, their pay has been raised to $2.00 for each performance and rehearsal...
...Welles plays Falstaff, and his characterization is always good and sometimes excellent Burgess Meredith has the part of Prince Hal, but he seems too boyish in his rendition and not at all gallivanting; furthermore his occasional lapses into a "toity-toid street" accent, ostensibly for lightness, does little credit to Shakespeare's blank verse. John Emery, as Hotspur, has great vitality, but often he palls in tearing his passions to tatters. Morris Ankrum as Henry IV gives a sterling performance throughout, and outstanding in the lighter vein are Gus Schilling, as Bardolph, and John Berry, as Poins...
...Falstaff o'erstrides the play. Unknightliest of knights, a "tun of a man," a "huge bombard of sack"-guzzler, lecher, liar, braggart, coward, thief-he is like some centrifugal force overcoming gravitation. Far from being a villain, he is the most entertaining and lovable of knaves. Caught out in his outrageous boasts, his fantastic lies, shamming dead (to avoid being killed) on the battlefield, he never loses his unshatterable aplomb, never lags in invention or languishes in wit. At bottom Falstaff may well be a superb showman, not expecting to be believed, only counting on being relished; not expecting...
...plot, Henry IV poses the cool Hal against the fiery Hotspur; but for theme it poses Hotspur against Falstaff, contrasting on a mighty scale the romantic and realistic ways life. To great-hearted Hotspur honor is everything. But Falstaff asks: "Can honor set to a leg? . . . Honor hath no skill in surgery then? . . . Who hath honor?-he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. . . . Therefore I'll none of it." So Falstaff lives; and Hotspur dies...
...uncut Hamlet, Margaret Webster's fine direction gives life and movement to a congested, multiform play. If the production has faults, they spring from excess of theatricality, not from taking Shakespeare too reverently. As Falstaff, Actor Evans has gusto and wit, though not quite enough of the knight's profound worldliness. And-perhaps surprisingly-he is better as the fat roisterer than he was as the melancholy Dane...