SOURCE: “Casting off the Old Man: History and St. Paul in Henry IV,” in Henry the Fourth Parts I and II: Critical Essays, edited by David Bevington, Garland Publishing, 1986, 315-36.

In the following essay, originally published in 1970, Palmer points to several instances in the Henry IV plays that anticipate Prince Hal's reformation at the end of Part II, drawing parallels between the words of the apostle St. Paul and those of the Prince.

I

Biblical quotations abound in Shakespeare's two Henry IV plays, and most of them are made by Falstaff, whose allusions, as Richmond Noble says, “are the aptest in the whole of the plays.”¹ They are also, of course, singularly profane in Falstaff's mouth, and his “damnable interation” of Scripture, we may suspect, is a relic of his former identity as Sir John Oldcastle, the name of Prince Hal's riotous companion in that execrable play, The...