Falstaff (opera) to think of "Falstaff" as a work that has a certain Englishness. In fact the opera is no more English than "Aida" is Egyptian. Boito and Verdi between them transformed the fat knight into one of the archetypes of "opera buffa"." Verdi himself, however, felt that the Falstaff of the opera is not a conventional Italian "buffo" character, but portrays Shakespeare's fuller, more ambiguous Falstaff of the "Henry IV" plays: "My Falstaff is not merely the hero of "The Merry Wives of Windsor", who is simply a buffoon, and allows himself to be tricked by the women, but also the
Characters of Shakespear's Plays the three witches on the "blasted heath", with which Macbeth struggles, wrestling with his destiny, through to the play's tragic climax. Hazlitt is especially interested in the "design" of "Macbeth", in its general mood, its "full poetic 'impression, and in this, according to John Kinnaird, he anticipates the method of the twentieth-century Shakespearean critic G. Wilson Knight. "Shakespear", writes Hazlitt, "lost sight of nothing that could in any way give relief or heightening to his subject [...]." Further noting Shakespeare's crafting of the play, Hazlitt points to fine touches at the beginning that contribute to a unified effect: "The wildness