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
Plays of Three Decades "A Preface to the Plays Including Certain Personal Reflections." The introduction includes information about Ardrey's personal relationship to the theater, but it is mainly concerned with detailing the history of the avant garde theater movement of 1930's New York which Ardrey identifies the plays as belonging to. An "avant garde" theatre occurs when enough skeptical artists raise their voices in a common tune. The three plays presented in this volume might be dedicated to that "avant garde" theatre of which they were a part and which, born in the 1930's, died prematurely soon after the Second World War and like