SOURCE: "Fields and Falstaff," in Thalia, Vol. VIII, No. 2, Fall-Winter, 1985, pp. 36-42.

In the following essay, Gehring equates Fields's persona with that of Shakespeare's Falstaff.

In writing a book on America's greatest native-born comedian (see W. C. Fields: A Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Press, 1984), the author happened upon occasional fleeting comparisons to Shakespeare's Falstaff. For example, New Republic film critic Otis Ferguson, the most poetically articulate of Fields's critical champions, described the comedian as a "natural resource .. . a minor Jack Falstaff on the sawdust of the twentieth century."¹Fields, a self-taught student of literature, was not beyond comparing himself humorously with Falstaff. Author Gene Fowler, Fields's friend, drinking companion and later biographer, remembers the comedian observing: "If Falstaff had stuck to martinis [Fields's favorite drink], he'd still be with us. Poor soul!"²

Unfortunately, no one ever pursued this comparison. Yet today, one argument for the ongoing popularity of W. C...