‘Our King Salomon’

Abstract

Chapter 2 investigates the importance of King Solomon to visual conceptions of monarchical authority after the break with Rome. Although popular, figurations of England’s monarchs as antitypes of Solomon were complex and exegetically demanding, not least because Solomon ended his life as an idolater. Unsurprisingly, contemporary applications of Solomon’s narrative use this biblical text selectively. Yet, when scrutinized more closely, many such readings struggle to occlude fully the unhappy death of scripture’s famously wise king. This chapter considers the anonymous Latin play Sapientia Solomonis (1565/6), George Peele’s The Love of King David (1594), and John Williams’ funeral sermon for King James I (1625) to argue that the biblical narrative of scripture’s famously wise king became a popular, yet problematic, means of responding to the relocation of sacred authority after the Reformation.