SOURCE: "The Latter-Day Falstaff," in The Golden Age of Sound Comedy: Comic Films and Comedians of the Thirties, London: The Tantivy Press, No. 1973, pp. 166-72.

In the following excerpt, McCaffrey examines Fields's comic technique as displayed in his films.

As if he were a gift from some ancient muse, a successful vaudeville juggler underwent a slow but sure metamorphosis to become the outstanding comedian of the sound age. W. C. Fields, like some reincarnation from the past, reminds us of a comic type who has weathered the test of the ages. There is something of the braggart soldier from Roman comedy, a strutting Capitino from the commedia dell' arte or Falstaff from Shakespeare's plays. But he has more than these facets. He becomes a bungling husband, harassed by his wife—a comic type that ranges from the classical Greek stage through the medieval tale, the restoration and Eighteenth...