Falstaff: Being the Acta domini Johannis Fastolfe or Life & valiant deeds of Sir John Faustoff or The hundred days war as told by Sir John Fastolf

by Robert Nye

Falstaff

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Shakespeare, Humor, Literature, British Literature, Novels

464 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Robert Nye was an English writer, playwright and poet.

Nye started writing stories for children to entertain his three young sons. Nye published his first adult novel, Doubtfire, in 1967.

Nye's next publication after Doubtfire was a return to children's literature, a freewheeling version of Beowulf which has remained in print in many editions since 1968. In 1970, he published another children's book, Wishing Gold, and received the James Kennaway Memorial Award for his collection of short stories, Tales I Told My Mother (1969).

During the early 1970s Nye wrote several plays for BBC radio including “A Bloody Stupit Hole” (1970), “Reynolds, Reynolds” (1971), and a version of Penthesilea by Heinrich von Kleist (1971). He was also commissioned by Covent Garden to write an unpublished libretto for Harrison Birtwistle's opera, Kronia (1970). Nye held the position of writer in residence at the University of Edinburgh, 1976-1977, during which time he received the Guardian fiction prize, followed by the 1976 Hawthornden Prize for his novel Falstaff.

He continued to write poetry, publishing Darker Ends (1969) and Divisions on a Ground (1976), and to prepare editions of other poets with whose work he felt an affinity: Sir Walter Ralegh, William Barnes, and Laura Riding. His own Collected Poems appeared in 1995. His selected poems, entitled The Rain and The Glass, published in 2005, won the Cholmondeley Award. From 1977 he lived in County Cork, Ireland. Although his novels have won prizes and been translated into many languages, it is as a poet that he would probably have preferred to be remembered. The critic Gabriel Josipovici described him as "one of the most interesting poets writing today, with a voice unlike that of any of his contemporaries."

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now even literary personages are capable to write autobiographies and this is the one of such.

History is so much piss and wind. Clio is the Muse of History. And who was Clio’s mother? Mnemosyne. Mrs Memory. That’s who. And who was Clio’s father? Your author.

Falstaff isn’t exactly a work of hagiography – rather otherwise – but a life of a sinner and literary hero is always more flowery and adventurous by definition than a life of any saint.
Some picaresque personalities are so vivid and vibrant that they literally turn into the rumbustious and bawdy hymns sung to the music of nature.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vile, uproarious, lurid, Rabelaisian romp, overlong and overindulgent in the marvellous tradition of modern picaresques.

[Nicolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A raucous and ribald tale-of-tales documenting the spectacularly debauched travails of Shakespeare's enigmatic rotund knight. Brimming and frothing with an abundance of rich and bountiful prose; a vivid and intoxicating mosaic of ye ole England in the 14th and 15th centuries. Daft and absurd; tragic and unsettling; enlightening and bewildering. It's a fine feast of a memoir.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Straight out of Rabelais' codpiece.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed this even more the 2nd time around. Bawdy and rumbunctious but with a serious heart. I probably missed the Shakespearian references last time.

[Tom Quinn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bawdy and smutty, which I thought I'd enjoy but didn't.

2 stars. Did not finish.

[🐴 🍖]

bob nye the encyclopedic novel guy! loved this, w/ one big ol' caveat. (to wit: fastolf/falstaff describes several times having sex w/ his 12y.o. niece. there's evidence that it may not be true, and i personally found there was enough brilliance to the rest of the novel to make it worth my time; but i could never fault anyone for noping directly out of the book on the basis of this.) if you're into all that joycean stuff like food & bodily functions & bad jokes & faux-learned treatises you'll find them here by the boatload, plus the ups & downs of fastolf/falstaff's relationship to henry v were complex & moving, PLUS a scribe w/ a chip on his shoulder contributing notes & supplemental mat'ls that throw a pomo monkey wrench into the works. again, not for everyone in 72pt font; but if you're able to compartmentalize, the good is really, really good

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

All Shakespeare readers are familiar with the character of Sir John Falstaff, a man larger than life and large in life. But, sadly, we know so little about him—only that he was Prince Hal’s drinking buddy in Hal’s youth, that Prince Hal cast him out when he became King Henry V, and that he died in the Boar’s Head Inn with Mistress Quickly at his side.

Well, Robert Nye has discovered his memoir and has published it as Falstaff: A Novel (1976). Clearly it is the essence of truthful, but Nye has added “A Novel,” no doubt to protect himself from the hordes of Falstaffians who would reject this unflattering truth and consider the book libelous. Now the truth is out there, and there is much truth to tell—about 450 pages worth. This memoir confirms the view that Falstaff is the epitome of a Dirty Old Man. And God bless him for that!

Falstaff: A Novel is remarkable in many ways. Not least is that it is very erudite, steeped in the history of Falstaff’s era—the early 15th century. This would not be surprising if the author was a medieval historian, but Nye left formal education at the age of sixteen. He is proof that intelligence and depth are not the provinces of those with a Ph.D. It is also a remarkably bawdy novel with tales sometimes so gross that you can’t stop laughing even as you register disgust.

Sir John Fastolf was the real historical figure upon whom Shakespeare built the character of Falstaff. Fastolf was a military leader in the Hundred Years' War with France; this is his memoir. Early on we learn that Fastolf (we'll call him Jack) was conceived on the long and very erect penis of a Giant that had been etched on a Devon hillside in antiquity; more precisely, the seminal event occurred under a fig tree that had been planted to hide the Giant's penis from the eyes of young maidens. This set Jack out on the lustful life to which he happily attests. For example, Jack reports that until his older years his erections were so strong that he couldn’t suppress them even with both hands. Now, however, one hand is sufficient. He finds it strange that he has gotten so much stronger as he ages.

Jack’s love of grape began during the 14th century plague, when all around were dying from the Black Duke’s visits in spite of their chosen nostrum (posies, masks, etc.). As an infant Jack was liberally given wine both to drink and wash in; thus he found that wine was, really, the elixir of life. Indeed, his heavy use of that elixir extended his life into his 80s, a lesson is there for us all!

On this matter of excess, Jack reports that an army colleague married a rich old lady whom he expected to die soon. When she failed to comply, he was advised to enter her seven times each night for seven months—no woman could survive that much sex for more than seven months. His dying words, spoken six months later, were, “The bitch only has a month to live.” At his death the lady remained hale and hearty, much improved from her earlier self.

The vignettes never stop: Jack serving for three years as a female Lady of the Bedchamber for the Duke of Norfolk’s wife; Jack’s time as a monk; Jack’s amazing though unplanned defeat of two French warships at the naval Battle of the Slugs; Jack’s extensive odes to the many aural and aromatic qualities of flatulence; Jack’s defeat of a siege by Irish peasants by throwing them bottles of ale and sacks of potatoes, thus distracting them as they scrambled for the two things they love most; Jack as Prince Harry’s mentor, showing him all that was needed to run a kingdom; Jack, whose pride in his girth was matched only by his pride in what lay below it; Jack, the man who really turned the tables at Agincourt; Jack, the legend in his own mind who was unabashed at his ego, his size, his lustiness, and his ability to cheat others while still feeling cheated.

Well, you get the drift. This is a rip-roaringly funny sendup that would scandalize anyone over 120 and amuse the rest in varying degrees. I’ll stop with two of Jack’s best bon mots:

Friends are the enemies you’re just getting to know.

Old age is when it takes all night to do what you used to do all night.

Five stars—with a slight boost for imagination.

RATING SYSTEM:
5 = I would certainly read another work by this author
4 = I would probably read another work by this author
3 = I might read another work by this author
2 = I probably would NOT read another work by this author
1 = Never! Never! Never!

[Matt Brady]

This was going along fairly well, a nice Shakespearean version of the Flashman Papers, and then I hit the chapter where Sir John Falstoff cheerily narrates how he molested his 12 year old niece. It wasn't just the subject matter, though that's gross enough, it was the tone of the chapter which really put me off, written like this was just another of rogueish Sir John's bawdy hi-jinks. Maybe there's a deeper point to it, maybe it pays ff somehow later in the book, unreliable narrator and all that business, but since it left such a bad taste in my mouth I've just got no desire whatsoever to keep reading.

[Jen3n · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really ought to add a "history" shelf to my bookshelves. I keep running into books which really ought to be classified as such. Even the works of fiction. Probably especailly the works of fiction.

So, I really liked this book. It's well written and in a style that feels genuine and fresh. The novel is supposedly dictated by an excessivly age'd Sir John Falstaff to one of four men who tend to rotate in and out. And, having been told to write down every word he says, there tends to be a good bit of very funny side business happening during the crux of tha narrative, which is the biography of the knight.

it's good. I won't kid you. Robert Nye knows his history both forward and backward and he has Shakespear down cold. It's a dark, sad, hillarious, very bawdy story.

My dad would love the hell out of this book. He's played Falstaff a couple of times and is a fan of this sort of novel, too. But I'm going to have to find someone else to give it to him. Call me a wimp, call me squeemish and silly or antiquated and prudish: but I can not give this book to him because there's sex in this book.

I know. Dumb. But there it is.

And there it is, indeed. There is a great deal of sex in the book. Some of it very graphic. But the way those pages are handled gives me an even higher opinion of the author. The sex is written as distant rememberances, fun, lusty, possible lies from an old man who grew accustomed to being an excellent self-promotor.

Anyhoo: if this is your sort of thing, then I would recommend this book.

[Steve Prentice · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an OK story - a strange mix of 15th Century historical fact from the time of King Henry V to comedy to extremely bawdy encounters with the opposite sex by a character who was not easy to like or empathise with (Falstaff).

Falstaff takes full advantage of his social position to exploit everyone and everything surrounding him to his own advantage and claims achievements, for example as a soldier, that are according to him, misunderstood. For example he complains that he was not a coward when hiding up a tree for strategic reasons when his soldiers are attacked by a superior French force. In reality he lives exclusively for immediate sensual pleasure and arranges his life around this goal, boasting that what he is capable of and has achieved is much greater in prowess and/or importance than is generally understood and is far more than any ‘normal’ man could have achieved under similar circumstances.

Robert Nye wrote this prize winning novel in the 1970s. In content it reminded me in many ways of the more popular Flashman series by Thomas Hughes. But unlike the Flashman books this is not a novel that I would recommend to friends.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just can't waste the time on this one. There is no redeeming feature to this book whatsoever. I had wanted to finish it by the end of the semester so that I can bring it to my old English teacher - thought I would make a nice gift after having not seen him for almost half a decade - but, instead, I think I'll give it to him without having finished it. He likes Shakespeare, and this kind of humor.

I, on the other hand, cannot tolerate this kind of humor. I made it to page 160 or something like that. No, no, no! I managed to endure through the graphic chapter 10 where he rapes his young niece repeatedly, but, ultimately, the hope that it would improve has not materialized, and I truly do not believe it ever shall. Good bye to this nutjob of a book for ever!

[Diane Nichols · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wish there was a could not finish option !!!
I was looking forward to reading this book but once again was disappointed by Robert Nye.

I am by no means a prude but just could not waste so much of my limited reading time on all the chapters celebrating such debauchery and lecherous behavior.
I even tried skipping over the chapters which were insulting but it left very little historic content to be worth my time.

[Christopher Trend · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on Shakespeare’s Falstaff, the book is full of the bombast and ribaldry that fits the character. It is written in the form of 100 dictations to his scribes including Scrope who pays no attention to Falstaff’s tales. Interesting hints that Falstaff may not be who he claims but this isn’t followed up.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I get the author’s take on Falstaff as a Henry Miller type, but he somehow lacks the redeeming quality that Shakespeare made so apparent in your heartbreak over poor Jack’s banishment. I hated his step-son (a pix on him) and still felt poor Bardolph deserved better. All in all, a great book if you love Falstaff(?) Fastolph(?) fast-off(?)

[Kevin Archard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe not for everyone's taste but I loved this tale of the bawdy, beer swilling, lecherous old dinosaur, who reflects many of the issues we are struggling to deal with in modern life.

[Annm · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was encouraged to read Shakespeare’s Henry V. The graphic sexual descriptions were a bit over the top.

[Cindy · Rating 1 out of 5]

i rarely quit reading a book without finishing it, but for this one, i made an exception.

[Count of the Saxon Shore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much flotsam. Your Falstaff is a crank. We get it. Narrative please.

[Matthew · Rating 3.25 out of 5]

"He writes a kind of requiem for a life he never lived." –Scrope
"It's just my wound talking now." –Falstaff

Robert Nye's ostensible autobiography of Sir John Falstaff is at times exquisitely poetic, at times disgusting and reproachable, and, at times, simply tedious. And I can already hear some of you quipping "What better autobiography for Falstaff?"

One of the first things the reader notices, and one of the first things worthy of praise, is an incredible attention to detail paid to the plays in which Falstaff appears. Every Shakespearean character that Falstaff speaks two words to is in this book, from Hal and Shallow and Quickly, to Hugh Evans and Fang and Davy. All of the minor episodes and briefly-mentioned offstage happenings that Falstaff might've had the slightest thing to do with are given airtime here, whether it was his service as page to Thomas Mowbray, or his legendary decision to "break Skogan's head at the court-gate" (indeed, Nye quite thoroughly mines Shallow's memories of the old days from Henry IV, Pt. 2). Nye is the sort of Shakespearean, and perhaps you are too, who is not only transfixed by what happens in the plays, but by what happened before, between, and behind them. Whether his source is Henry IV, Henry V, Richard II, The Merry Wives of Windsor, or more unlikely sources besides, all is fair game and all is grist for the mill.

Unfortunately (and this is the danger of writing in the voice of a character so famous and beloved), for all of Nye's invention he doesn't always end up sounding like Falstaff. Nye's Falstaff (as opposed to Shakespeare's Falstaff) is incredibly and filthily perverse. He constantly brags about the prodigious size of his penis; he contends to have laid his nursemaid as a child, and his niece as an old man; his continued sexual humiliation of Shallow approaches a kind of sadistic fetishism. This kind of rib-thumping, Playboy-style bawdy may have gone over in 1976, but in 2023 it's boring and conspicuous. I can't imagine the Falstaff of Henry IV, who tenderly sits Doll Tearsheet in his lap and purrs cool nothings in her ear, bragging of such frat house tedium as he does in this book. Midway through the book I found myself outright skipping certain chapters if I sensed they were primarily to be catalogues of sexual exploits--and there, perhaps, is a bit of life imitating art, as surely one would do the exact same thing if faced with the memoir of a real-life braggart, cad, pervert, and liar.

Nye's other career was as a poet, and you can certainly tell when he writes such sterling silver lines as "Light on the water like diamonds scattered. Or a blade, cutting drowned fire," a description of the sea's surface as Falstaff sails queasily on a warship to France. There is, too, a bit of fun to be had in the postmodernist battle between Falstaff and his scribe Scrope, who will occasionally refuse to copy what Falstaff dictates if the lies are too outrageous, and will claim the odd chapter here and there for himself and his own musings.

If you enjoy the high poetry of old men who feel they've conquered the world, or if suspect you may be tickled by a rediscovery of Shakespeare's 14th and 15th centuries and all the bloviators therein, you may like this book. But if you're rusty on your Henriad knowledge, or if you're particularly unmoved by the prating of old sex fiends, you have complete license to leave this one be.

[Carolyn Stevens Shank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Nye's FALSTAFF (published in 1976 and reissued in 2012) was first hailed "as one of the most ambitious and seductive novels of the decade" by Michael Ratcliffe of The Times. It went on to win the Guardian Fiction Prize and the Hawthornden Prize and was listed in Anthony Burgess's THE BEST IN ENGLISH SINCE 1939, (published in 1984).
The book is equally ambitious as an undertaking for the reader, playing as it does off William Shakespeare's plays and his most famous character, Falstaff. Other of Shakespeare's characters appear in the novel also: Doll Tearsheet; Nell Quickly, Bardolph, Pistol, Jane Nightwork, and more.
One must be at least conversant with the Henry plays (Henry IV, parts one and two, and Henry V), to fully appreciate how cleverly Nye has interwoven his characterizations with those of Shakespeare, and to appreciate the many allusions and parallels Nye draws to Shakespeare's other plays, as well. This novel purports to be Falstaff's diary in which he attempts to set the record straight and to answer all the unresolved questions about his life and actions.
Falstaff, the character, is in many respects a literary parallel to Bacchus of Greek myth, but he is even greater: he is a giant of revelry: the King of lewdness and of bawdy adventure. His sexual appetites are enormous, and his eating, drinking, merry-making and riotenousess is second to none. He is the King of Misrule. In the Henry IV plays, Falstaff is the boastful, fat, and seductive figure who teaches the young Prince Hal the ways of the world. But having experienced the world, when Hal becomes King Henry V, Hal repudiates the friendship.
This book is outrageously bawdy. It is joyously sensual: deliciously and unashammedly sexual; funny, ribald, raucous, poetical and mythical, as befits the huge girth of Falstaff, himself. For what he attempted, Nye is rightfully admired. I found the book a demanding read, and a tad long. But for its celebration of life, it gets an A.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Fastolf, retired from the fray at his Caister Castle, 84 years old and as randy as ever, settles down to record his memoirs, dictated to a series of obsequious scribes, and one deeply aggrieved step-son. He relates all the scenes we know from Shakespeare plays (Gadshill robbery, role playing the king and the prince with Hal, escapades at the Boarshead Tavern) and most of the historical events attributed to the historical Fastolf. And he records all the women he has merrily bedded, all of whom have names of Shakespearean heroines. Two-thirds of the way through the bitter step-son, Scrope, bursts into the narrative to castigate the fat old man, and call him a liar, which, unfortunately, the penultimate chapter, Falstaff's confession, pretty well admits.
A re-reading of a novel I bought in England many years ago. Still much fun, with lots of good inside Shakespearean jokes and rambunctious sex scenes. A wimpy guy shaking a spear even appears very, very briefly.
I was surprised to find that my favorite joke was told at the very beginning. As a youth, Falstaff boasts, he couldn't push down his might erection with both arms. Now, he finds that he can push down his boner. He goes to the doctor and asks plaintively, Doctor, as I get older.....am I getting stronger? But there are plenty of other japes as well. I will remember the long discussion of how medieval siege warfare was carried out, and the particulars of the way that Henry V won at Agincourt.

[Don Socha · Rating 3 out of 5]

While at the start I delighted in its echoes of Robert Coover, Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie and even Dylan Thomas, not to mention Rabelais, of course, as well as in its encyclopedic/hedonistic elements, after another fifty pages, which takes us past the ticklish allusions to F's relations with his niece, the book may be thought less like the work of Eco and more akin to George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman.

But its cleverer erudition is again enhanced, however, with sojourns into the kind of fascinating religious history as found in Eco's Name of the Rose, as well as most poetic meditations on sex, London Bridge and farting.

By design readers are witness to the writing of the text as the title character narrates the story of his life of gargantuan enthusiasms.
There are asides to the reader, more sex as entertainment and lots of wonderful vocabulary.

[Monty Milne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book when it first came out in 1976 and I was a pustular 14 year old entranced by its lubricious qualities. I would have awarded it five stars then. Looking back, it feels remarkably dated, especially in its depictions of sex - then, I found it racy and exciting, now, I am bored and sated. The 70's were a more liberal era than today, and though I am no puritan I cannot be the only reader who finds graphic descriptions of sex between an adult and a 12-year old somewhat queasy, to say the least.

If reading it for the first time today, I would give it only one or two stars. As a sustained exercise in historical imagination, it has its merits; some of the chapters (and not the ones about sex!) are as clear in my mind today as they were in 1976. For that reason, and for reasons of nostalgia about my never-to-be-recaptured youth, I give it 3 stars.

[Sammy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Nye's Shakespeare trilogy is bawdy, dense, demanding, irreverent, historically overflowing, and a keen mix of fact, speculation, and myth. I enjoyed Mrs. Shakespeare: The Complete Works a reasonable amount, and really enjoyed The Late Mr. Shakespeare, but Falstaff is the critically acclaimed one (and much longer than the other two!) so I'm fascinated to see what these pages hold.

However I can say without reading it: those with short attention spans will probably struggle, as will a lot of Americans, who seem to gloss over with disgust at anything even remotely earthy. I hope to represent the rest of us on this next literary odyssey.

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, this book could be about 50 pages shorter and be better for it, but beyond that I really have no complaint and I have to say, this book surprised me with how good it ultimately turned out to be. Nye's narrator is by turns profane and poetic, epitomizing Shakespeare's Falstaff with astonishing accuracy while still managing to re-invent him and many of the other figures of the Henry plays. The book is both quintessentially medieval and English as well, filled with details and side stories that paint a complex and pageantry filled portrait of 80 years of England and France after the end of the high gothic period and before the onset of the Renaissance, thus satisfying one's taste for literary revision, historical epic and comic yarn all in one novel.

[Steve Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic novel, the imagined 'autobiography' of one of Shakespeare's most famous, characters, dissolute, drunken, lecherous, cowardly, a rascal, but somehow lovable.

The author captures the tone of Sir John brilliantly, borrowing from Falstaff's appearances in Shakespeare's plays and retelling the stories from his perspective, versions which invariably make him look more heroic and even more lusty.

The book is funny and even moving as Falstaff recognises the waning of his prodigious powers as age finally takes its toll.

A book to read over and over again, it's pure vitality and entertainment.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

This has a stunningly perfect, vivid, and vivacious recreation of the voice of Shakespeare's character, rushing along in deft, playful prose that's full of life and beauty and woven with constant quotations from and allusions to the bard.

It is however far, far more lewd and vulgar than it at all needs to be EVEN FOR FALSTAFF. That, and the constant self-indulgent meandering which I don't believe the conceit at all justified, really turned me off more and more. Nye can write, the prose is wonderful, but that isn't enough to sustain 500 pages. Much as I LOVE Falstaff and live for the Henriad, I got so bored and disgusted I flipped through the rest and then gave up.

[Ruth · Rating 1 out of 5]

c1976. I am not sure if a historical novel can be described as dated. But it certainly seemed to me that there was a lot of gratutious mention of sex and various activities. I don't think that I am a prude but this was overwhelming due to the absolute volume. Not even well done really - just crude and coarse and I can't help thinking that this was typical of the popular novels of the period where it was considered daring and fresh to write "candid" and romping2 novels. I think I got to this novel a bit late. A little bit of depth when it came to Joan of Arc though.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are easily offended by coarse language and so on, this is definitely NOT the book for you.

It is a fictional autobiography of Sir John Falstaff, who for the purpose of the book is mixed up with the historical Sir John Fastolf.

I found it amusing in parts, tedious in others. Some people are worried by historical novelists 'defaming the dead'. Well, I reckon the real Sir John Fastolf would do his nut over this one.