Hal as Self-Styled Redeemer: The Harrowing of Hell and Henry IV Part 1

Summary

The second tetralogy begins with a king who, by calling those who condemn him ‘Pilates’ and his betrayers ‘Judases’, overtly styles himself as the Christ. This article will consider how one of Richard II’s successors revives his overt and inept imagery with subtlety and political insight and argue that Hal creates an implied, and thoroughgoing, symbolic connection between his and Christ’s redeeming action, while never explicitly equating his own power and mission with Christ’s. Henry’s stratagem of glittering Christian rhetoric, piety that has been questioned by a number of recent critics of Henry V, begins in Henry IV Part 1. Hal stages his own redemption in Christian terms: a Lenten period of expectant, self-imposed exile is followed by a reconciliation between a father and son through a decisive single combat which is staged with a resonant allusion to the harrowing of hell. The text contains reminiscences of the dramatic form of the Easter liturgy, the biblical story and the mystery plays which invest Hal’s history with their power. These allusions place Hal in the position of Christ but the connections are not simple analogies. Hal needs to redeem England and himself, but there is an uneasiness with both the glory and the humility he stages.

The harrowing of hell is the name given to a non-biblical episode in which Christ went down into limbo between his Crucifixion and Resurrection and rescued the souls of the dead. This doctrine remained the teaching of the Church of England in Shakespeare’s day and would have been well known to his audience. Some of Shakespeare’s audience may even have retained a visual image of the event from the survival of pre-Reformation images.