Staged History and Alternative Sir Johns

“Ecce signum!”—behold the proof!—Falstaff proclaims in Act 2 of1 Henry IV, presenting his “sword hacked like a handsaw” as incontrovertible evidence of the veracity of his account of the Gadshill robbery (2.4.162).1 His subsequent claim to have been ambushed by dozens of well-armed men explains the dents in his weapon as effects of a series of events in the past. The meaning of the damaged sword, in his account, is coextensive with the historical narrative that the damage makes obvious. But, as we all know, Falstaff is lying; he actually created these material traces in order to stage the narrative that purportedly explains them. Falstaff’s forgery never risks being anything more than a punchline for Hal because we have seen the Gadshill robbery for ourselves. But how would we read Falstaff’s hacked sword if we did not have privileged access to these events? The answer, as Hal suggests, lies in the way we read Falstaff himself: “These lies are like their father that begets them” (l. 218).