Walking, Waking, and the Armor of Light: Pauline Enactments in Henry IV, Part 1

Summary

Stephen Marx's Shakespeare and the Bible usefully points out that “Shakespeare read the Bible with a wide range of interpretative responses to its vast plenitude of meanings.” Among the many ways in which the plays appropriate scripture, more or less exact echoing of phrases is one of the most prominent. This essay will begin by considering some obvious verbal borrowings having to do with repentance and reform in preparation for salvation from Paul's epistles in 1 Henry IV. I will then argue that each clearly identified borrowing is embedded in or closely linked to a cluster of images, heretofore unconnected to the play by modern criticism, that have also been assimilated and are just as verbally and thematically significant as the obvious borrowings. Together, these appropriated passages supply an inventory of related images that Shakespeare translated into the spiritually fraught actions of his chief characters. The inextricable linking of metaphorical and literal, of spiritual and secular in the sayings and doings of Falstaff, the King, Prince Hal, Hotspur, and others endows the play's exploration of perhaps its key question—when to act, and in what way—with an extraordinary complexity.