There is in him something of the old Greek Silenus, swag-bellied and infinitely jovial, and something of the _Vidushakas_ of the old Indian drama, half court-fool, half friend and comrade to the hero. He unites in himself the two comic types of the old Roman comedy, Artotrogus and Pyrgopolinices, the parasite and the boastful soldier. Like the Roman _scurra_, he leaves his patron to pay the reckoning, and in return entertains him with his jests, and, like the _Miles Gloriosus_, he is a braggart above all braggarts, a liar above all liars. Yet he is in his single person richer and more entertaining than all the ancient Silenuses and court-fools and braggarts and parasites put together. In the century after he came into existence, Spain and France each developed its own theatre. In France there is only one quaint and amusing person, Moron in Molière's _La Princesse d'Élide_, who bears some faint resemblance to Falstaff. In Spain, where the great and delightful character of Sancho Panza affords the starting-point for the whole series of comic figures in the works of Calderon, the _Gracioso_ stands in perpetual contrast to the hero, and here and there reminds us for a moment of Falstaff, but always only as an abstraction of one side or another of his nature, or because of some external similarity of situation. In _La Dama Duende_ he is a drunkard and coward; in _La Gran Cenobia_ he boasts fantastically, and, like Falstaff, becomes entangled in his lies. In _La Puente de Mantible_ he actually becomes (as it appears from the scenes with the Chief Justice and Colevile that Falstaff also was) renowned and dreaded for his military valour; yet he is, like Falstaff, extremely ill at ease when there is any fighting to be done, often creeping into cover, hiding himself behind a bush, or climbing a tree. In _La Hija del Ayre_ and _El Principe Constante_ he uses precisely the device adopted by Falstaff and certain lower animals, of lying down and shamming death. Hernando in _Los Empeῆos de un Acaso_ (like Molière's Moron) expresses sentiments very similar to those of Falstaff in his celebrated discourse upon honour. Falstaff's airs of protection, his bland fatherliness, we find in Fabio in _El Secreto a Voces._ Thus single characteristics, detached sides of Falstaff's character, have to do duty as complete personages. Calderon as a rule looks with fatherly benevolence upon his Gracioso. Yet he sometimes loses patience, as it were, with his buffoon's epicurean, unchristian, and unchivalrous view of life. In _La Vida es Sueño_, for instance, a cannon-ball kills poor Clarin, who has crept behind a bush during the battle; the moral being that the coward does not escape danger any more than the brave man. Calderon bestows on him a very solemn funeral speech, almost as moral as King Henry's parting words to Falstaff.