The chief Falstaffs of the “Merry Wives of Windsor” are Betterton (1704), Hulett (1732), Quin (1734), Delane, the young Irish actor (1743), of whom Garrick was foolish enough to be jealous; Shuter (1758), Henderson, who first played it at the Haymarket in 1777, and Lee Lewis in 1784. Bartley, Phelps, and a clever provincial actor, now in London, named Bartlett, have also played this character with great effect. The Falstaff of the last-named actor is particularly good. I have said that Quin was the greatest of Falstaffs, but the _greatest_ in the physical acceptation of the term, was undoubtedly Stephen Kemble. This actor was born almost upon the boards. His clever, but not very gentle-tempered mother, had just concluded her performance of Anne Bullen, in a barn, or something like it, at Kingstown, Herefordshire (1758), when Stephen was born, about the period when, according to the action of the play, the Princess Elizabeth is supposed to first see the light. Stephen when he had grown to manhood, weighed as much as all his sisters and brothers put together; and on the 7th of October, 1802, he made his appearance at Drury, in the character of Falstaff. This was nearly twenty years after he had made his _début_ in London, at Covent Garden, in Othello. Bannister junior prefaced his performance of the companion of Prince Hal, by some humorous lines, joking on the heaviness of the actor. As Pope played Hotspur, I should fancy, if Pope then was anything like what he was some fifteen or sixteen years later, that Hotspur was even heavier than Sir John. The lines alluded to were accounted witty; and I will conclude my record of the principal actors who have represented the knight, by reproducing them. A Falstaff here to-night, by nature made, Lends to your fav’rite bard his pond’rous aid; No man in buckram, he! no stuffing gear, No feather bed, nor e’en a pillow here! But all good honest flesh and blood, and bone, And weighing, more or less, some thirty stone. Upon the northern coast by chance we caught him, And hither, in a broad-wheeled wagon, brought him: For in a chaise the varlet ne’er could enter, And no mail-coach on such a fare would venture. Blessed with unwieldiness, at least his size Will favor find in every critic’s eyes. And should his humor and his mimic art Bear due proportion to his outward part, As once was said of Macklin in the Jew, “This is the very Falstaff Shakespeare drew.” To you, with diffidence, he bids me say, Should you approve, you may command his stay, To lie and swagger here another day. If not, to better men he’ll leave his sack, And go, as ballast, in a collier back.