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

Talbot's Death as Passion Play in Shakespeare's <i>1 Henry VI</i>

“…Lucy's allusion to the regenerative phoenix resonates with the promise of the resurrection, but his feeble defiance betrays the ruin of England's heroic spirit, so perfectly embodied in brave Talbot, which cannot persist against the loss of Talbot's son and the factious state of Henry's army in France.Passion imagery establishes the quality of Talbot's tragedy, and by alternating poetic focus on both the human and the divine aspects of Christ's identity 1 Henry VI additionally engages with incarnational theology as an intellectual matter worthy of thematic exploration. In the section that follows, I will revisit 1 Henry VI's passion sequence for the perceptible inclusion of incarnational theology unique to the harrowing of hell, an event of Christ's afterlife that directly pertains to the crucifixion's role in medieval salvation history 24. Shakespeare's royal characters often vacillate between majesty and mundanity, and Ernst Kantorowicz attributed to English constitutional law the struggles of characters like King Henry V, who is 'Twin-born with greatness' but also 'subject to the breath / of every fool' (H5 4.1.234-5) 25.…”