Falstaff’s popularity, still strong today, owes much to the particular qualities of that character’s dialogue, actions, and zest, as first crafted by Shakespeare. But the life of that character, like so many of Shakespeare’s creations, enjoyed some considerable growth in the generations after Shakespeare’s death, so expanding in size, vitality, and charm as to prompt these twenty engravings of the character by the artist George Cruikshank, printed in 1857: