Fat was, however, but Falstaff's prelude to comedy. He needed to be what he otherwise was, coarse, salaciously-minded, superstitious, blustering, cowardly, and lying; he needed to be a joker, oft-times a wit, and withal a sleepy drunkard, a butt for pranks. His coarseness is comic, but not revolting, for it centres rather on the human body than on the human emotion; he does not habitually scoff at justice, generosity or faithfulness, even though he be neither just, nor generous, nor faithful: his brutality is a brutality of word rather than thought, one akin to that of our poorer classes. Had Falstaff not had an air of the world and a custom of courts he would have typified the lowest classes of our day and perhaps stood below those of his own time. His is the coarseness of the drunkard, a jovial and not a maudlin drunkard; when sober he reacts against his own brutality, vows to '... purge and leave sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should do.' Falstaff led his life by a double thread. Filled with the joy of living, as he understood it, limited by his desires for sack and such as Doll Tearsheet, he was bound too by his stupidity. He was stupid, though crafty, as is a cat, an instinctive animal; none but a stupid man could have taken seriously the mockery of the fairies in Windsor Park; himself it is acknowledges that he is 'made an ass.' We laugh, and again we laugh when, in silly terror and credulity, he allows the Merry Wives to pack him in the foul linen basket; where Falstaff is, there is also rubicund pleasantry. In the same spirit we make merry over his cowardice; the cowardice itself is not comic, indeed it would be painful to see him stand and deliver to Gadshill, if the surrender were not prefaced by the deep grumbles of a man who suspects that Hal and Poins have captured his affections with drugs, who acknowledge that 'eight yards of uneven ground is threescore and ten miles afoot' with him. The burlesque conceals the despicable, and we fail to sneer because we laugh; we forgive his acceptance of insult at the hands of the Chief Justice's servant: it is not well that a knight should allow a servant to tell him that he lies in his throat, but if leave to do so can be given in jest the insult loses its sting. Falstaff is more than a coward, he is the coward-type, for he is (like Pistol) the blustering coward. The mean, cringing coward is unskilled at his trade: the true coward is the fat knight who, no sooner convicted of embellishing his fight with highwaymen, of having forgone his booty rather than defend it, can roar that he fears and will obey no man, and solemnly say: ''Zounds! an' I were at the strappado, or all the racks in the world, I would not tell you upon compulsion.' The attitude is so simple, so impudent, that we laugh, forgive. And we forgive because such an attitude could not be struck with confidence save by a giant.