This paper explores the role of forgetting in the formation and transformation of identity on the early modern stage. Normally, we associate identity with memory and forgetfulness with a threat to or loss of identity. But as we shall see, self-forgetfulness can also be a mode of experiencing and producing a sense of selfhood. Focusing on the figure of Falstaff from Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays, I will discuss the productive potential of such self-forgetfulness in the play as well as for the play; these are the two dimensions of politics and poetics that my title refers to. Falstaff’s signature self-forgetfulness enables him to distance himself from the demands of duty, honour, and the law by continually re-inventing himself: rejecting all attempts at interpellating him into a fixed identity by reminding him of his by social position and his past conduct, Falstaff develops a resistant subjectivity and agency that hinges on forgetting instead. I will then investigate the historiographical and cultural process that produced the figure of Falstaff: in a series of “shameless transformation[s]” (1.1.44) from Lollard rebel to proto-Protestant martyr to Puritan parody, I will argue, this figure emerges from a complex interplay of remembering and forgetting that the play enacts and exploits.

—Dr Isabel Karreman, LMU Munich