Even the greatest geniuses have less successful works. Shakespeare is no exception. His The Merry Wives of Windsor doesn’t even get close to the greatest of his plays, but Falstaff is no less eternal (less grand and tragic though) of a character than Romeo, Hamlet or any of his Richards. He’s the character of the once successful everyman who once may have been powerful, but over time he’d find himself increasingly insignificant and among the losers if he didn’t lack self-reflection. There are Fallstaffs among us today clinging to either their former imagined or real greatness just like their predecessors of five hundred years before. Losers, we might say – but why didn’t they disappear inside the abyss of history?

In the 21st century, when it is increasingly embarrassing to grow old, when not the age of forty but sixty is the new thirty we tenaciously attach ourselves to the glory of our youth as the Falstaff feeling appears in many of us: we collect re-cups and do whatever we can to avoid facing the fact that this year’s festival is no longer our festival.