Joanna Robinson (125:30)
Yeah, like one listener, Mikhail said, like, sorry, but I'm officially on Team Hashtag. Not my Sir Arlen quote. A hedgehog is the truest night. Like all of these quotes that we've been saying. Right, Right. She wrote. There's just no way this free fisted SOT ever said or thought anything like that. Even if he did save Dunk's life at the moment of grief stricken pure heartedness. And then Chris has a really good email that I'll get to in a second, but I want to take us now, just like very briefly to Shakespeare Corner. Right. Because. So you mentioned the double full reference. Right. And the way in which Shakespeare uses his fool characters like Feste and Twelfth Night or the fool and Lyre. Like these fool characters often are the source of the most piercing observation and wisdom inside of these plays. But the character that he most resembles is Sir John Falstaff. And we talked about Henry V last week. We were talking about Saint Christmas Day, but in Henry iv, the prequel to Henry V. Right, right. Prince Hal, who is like fucked off because he doesn't want to be king and he doesn't want to be around his rich family and he's going to go slum. It starts hanging around with Sir John Falstaff, a knight who is a drunkard and a fool in many ways, but also capable of incredible wisdom. And he's just like one of the most revered creations that Shakespeare ever created. George R.R. martin, when talking about his favorite characters in literature, said, boromir is my favorite member of the fellowship. The tragic hero, Shakespeare's Brutus speaks to me as well, more so than the real one, the noblest Roman of them all, whose nobility and gullibility led him to commit a vile crime. Captain Ahab, blah, blah, blah. Gatsby, Falstaff and Hotspur and Prince Hal. Those plays are full of flawed characters, each with his own failings. Sir Lancelot and Sir Gawain, Gawain, however you prefer, but not Sir Galahad. So perfect, so empty. And Guinevere and Arthur and even Mordred, that little shit. Oh, the list is long and when my reading turns to history, biography, memoirs, my response is much the same. So he's a big Falstaff fan. Among Boromir and other things. Great taste. And like Lev Grossman in that Feast for Crows review that I read in Time, called Tyrion Martin's Falstaff, right, a bitter, cynical, highborn dwarf. He's Martin's Falstaff. That's what Lev Grossman said. But I think that this portrayal of Ser Arlyn, which is different than Dunk's sort of honeyed perception of him that we get in the novellas, is much more in that vein. There's this Harold Bloom, who is a very complicated figure, but taught me a lot of what I know about Shakespeare. Falstaff was his favorite character. And there's, there's this. He wrote this great book about Falstaff and Jeanette Winterson, a great author in her own right, wrote in her review of that book, had this description of him. Not that there's anything ethereal about Fat Jack, this whiskery swag bellied, omnivorous cornucopia of appetites, red eyed, unbuttoned sherry soaked, this night walker and whoremonger, a muddy conjure, swinging his old mistake Mistress Doll Tearsheet, a life affirming liar whose truth is never to be a counterfeit. Falstaff is ancient energy thumping at volume through a temporary poundage of flesh. He is part pagan, the lord of misrule, and as such his time is short. We meet him first in Henry iv, Part one. Already old, lusting at life, drinking pal of young, of young Prince Hal, who is swumming it, blah, blah, blah. Orson Welles, who plays Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight, which is this incredible movie that sort of takes pieces of Falstaff from all the plays and puts them together. His description of Falstaff is, quote, the greatest conception of a good man, the most completely good man in all drama. His faults are so small and he makes tremendous jokes out of his little faults. I disagree. Some of his faults are larger, quite large. But the whole. The reason that Harold Bloom, A reason that Harold Bloom loves Falstaff so much is that like we've been hearing again and again about Sir Arlen in the text, is that he operates outside of the rules of society. Quote, he praises Falstaff's wit and intellect and excuses his vices as a display of his, quote, freedom from society, right? So this idea of this like, drunken, old washed whoremonger, like all these things are true of Sir Arlen, and yet there is an inherent nobility to it. Him, an inherent truth to him. And that is like, exactly the sort of Falstaffian model that Shakespeare was chasing, all these other people were chasing. There's also. I love that you brought up honor because, like, Falstaff was famous. Speech is about honor. And he's like, I'm not going to read you a whole speech. But basically he's like, what the fuck is honor ever done for me? Right. You know, like, will can honor set a leg. No. Or an arm. No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honor hath no skill in honor like us is not a doctor. Is essentially his point. And so Arlen lives. Lives by a code, and he has honor, but it's sort of like it's not the honor of the knights. It's not chivalry. That is not what Arlen lives by. He lives by an inherent truth that sends him staggering, vomiting out of a brothel or a pub or a combo, if you prefer, probably to save. To save Dunk and the echoes that go down history because of that. Like, Dunk is in the start of a story that people who love George R.R. martin's work know, like, you know, has a long road were it not for what Sir Arlen does here, which is incredibly honorable while vomiting. And all those things together, you know, are incredibly important. I love that. So I just. I. I kind of love this depiction of Sir Arlen. I'm a big fan of it.
