SOURCE: Dickson, Lisa. “No Rainbow without the Sun: Visibility and Embodiment in 1 Henry VI.” Modern Language Studies 30, no. 1 (spring 2000): 137-56.

In the following essay, Dickson contends that the world of Henry VI, Part 1 is one of chaos and upturned hierarchies, where the dead Henry V's role as prophet and sun king is ceded not to his own son, Henry VI, but to the French maiden Joan of Arc.

LUCY:

O, were mine eyeballs into bullets turned, 

That I in rage might shoot them at your faces! 

(1 Henry VI, 4.7.79-80)

The opening scene of 1 Henry VI rehearses for us a variation on the familiar ceremony of succession. Ernst Kantorowicz locates the first significant use of the formula, “Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi,” to the accession of Henry VI. Henry V and Charles of France died within months of each other, and the Duke of Bedford raced to...