Doll Tearsheet

In the play

Doll is introduced by name when Mistress Quickly asks Falstaff whether he would like her company that evening. The Page later mentions to Prince Hal and Poins that Falstaff will be seeing her, primly referring to her as "a proper gentlewoman, sir, and a kinswoman of my master's", though Hal quickly concludes that she is probably "some road" (meaning a whore: accessible to anyone, as in the phrase "as common as the cart-way").

Doll is first seen about to be sick after drinking too much "canaries" (fortified wine from the Canary islands). When Falstaff arrives they exchange lewd banter about venereal disease. Informed that Ancient Pistol is at the door, Doll insists that he should not be allowed in because he's "the foul-mouthed'st rogue in England." After Pistol enters, Doll berates him with a string of insults: "I scorn you, scurvy companion. What! you poor, base, rascally, cheating, lack-linen mate! Away, you mouldy rogue, away!" She then threatens him with a knife, and Pistol pulls his sword. In the ensuing fight, Falstaff and Bardolph force him out.

After his display of fighting prowess, Doll becomes very solicitous to Falstaff, calling him a "whoreson little valiant villain". She sits on his knee and kisses him. She asks him what Prince Hal is like; Falstaff gives a rather unflattering picture of him, unaware that Hal and Poins are nearby. When they reveal themselves, Falstaff claims he was intentionally "dispraising" the prince in the presence of "the wicked". Hal professes to be shocked, describing Doll as a "virtuous gentlewoman", to the enthusiastic agreement of Mistress Quickly. But Falstaff says Doll is "in hell already, and burns poor souls" (a reference to the burning sensation of venereal disease). When Falstaff is called away to the war, Doll becomes tearful. He leaves, but then calls on her to join him.

She next appears, apparently heavily pregnant, with Mistress Quickly. They are being arrested because Pistol has beaten up a man in a brawl in which they were involved. The man has since died. The officer says she will probably be whipped. Doll says that she should not be manhandled because she might have a miscarriage, but the arresting officer insists she has stuffed a cushion up her dress. Doll unleashes a stream of insults directed at the arresting officer's skinniness.

After the death of King Henry IV, Falstaff learns about Doll's arrest and promises to have her released. But Hal, now king, refuses to listen to him.

Character

Doll's name is obviously emblematic of her trade. A contraction of Dorothy, the name "Doll", with its connotation of "plaything", was often given to prostitute characters, as with Doll Common in Jonson's play The Alchemist. Her surname is suggestive of her activities, as is that of the other "loose woman" mentioned in the play, Jane Nightwork. Stanley Wells and Eric Partridge say she is "so called, either because she tore the bed-sheets in her amorous tossings or because her partners did so while consorting with her". According to René Weis,

"Tearsheet' has been read as a misprint for 'Tearstreet' (i.e. street-walker) in the light of Hal's anticipating to meet 'some road' ( 2. 2.158), but a 'sheet-walker' or 'tearer' is equally plausible, in view particularly of Beaumont and Fletcher Valentinian 3. 1.340-1, where Maximus says 'If my wife for all this should be a whore now, / A kind of kicker out of sheets'"

Harold Bloom says that Doll's eccentric compliments to Falstaff ("thou whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig") complement Hal's own apparently affectionate insults, with the difference that Doll's are sincere, since "Falstaff the Bartholomew boar-pig has just proved himself to his doxy as being, in her words, a 'whoreson little valiant villain', and is fully to her taste. Falstaff the Manningtree ox, however, has just been unmercifully made game of by the Prince for running away at Gadshill in a fashion that could only, by everyone in the tavern company except Falstaff, be taken as showing downright cowardice."

In other literature

Doll appears along with Falstaff's other cronies in the play Falstaff's Wedding (1766), a comedy by William Kenrick, which is set in the period between the end of Henry IV, Part 2 and the beginning of Henry V. Doll and Mistress Quickly, having bribed their way out of prison, appear in the first act explaining to Falstaff how they were arrested. They later plot to disguise themselves as gentlewomen in order to find rich husbands, targeting Robert Shallow and Abraham Slender. Quickly intends to marry Shallow, and Doll to marry Slender. The plan appears to succeed, but Shallow and Slender find out their true identities and switch places at the weddings with Ancient Pistol and Corporal Nym, so Doll ends up married to Nym.

James White's book Falstaff's Letters (1796) purports to be a collection of letters written by Falstaff and his cronies, provided by a descendant of Mistress Quickly's sister. Several letters from Quickly to Falstaff complain about his treatment of Doll.

In Oliver St. John Gogarty's poem "Applied Poetry" Doll is invoked. The poet tells his beloved that she is filled with the beauties of springtime, and like the breeze that sways a field of buttercups, "As if Doll Tearsheet lay / And leapt again". When she expresses outrage at being compared to a whore, he explains,

Doll also appears as a character in Gustav Holst's 1925 opera At the Boar's Head. A soprano role, it was first performed by Constance Willis, conducted by Malcolm Sargent.