Texts and Traditions

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

“…Beatrice Groves contends that the harrowing fundamentally informs the 'self-fashioning' narrative by which Hal masks his nobility through 'Covering discretion with a coat of folly' (H5 2.4.38). 31 For Groves this metaphorical allusion echoes Hal's tendency to disguise himself in borrowed clothes in clever emulation of Christ who cloaked himself in humanity. 32 Hal's dissimulation, as with Christ's, results in confusion on behalf of friends and enemies alike who cannot discern his true nature, and he ultimately attains political magnificence through the cultivation of an ignoble pretense; in contrast, the mythic Talbot is estranged from his 'invincible unconquered spirit' and exposed as ordinarily human in anticipation of his death at Bordeaux.…”