"Banish All the Wor(l)d": Falstaff's Iconoclastic Threat to Kingship in I Henry IV

In Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) vol. 4 in The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine series (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1984), Jaroslav Pelikan discusses the efforts of the reformers to develop an alternative theology to the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. Pelikan suggests that the reformers feared "'artolatory,' the idolatrous worship of the bread in the Lord's supper" (200). Much of the reformers' concern is centered around figurative language and the iconoclastic dangers the reformers saw in idolatrous images, including metaphors. The use of such figurative language as metaphor, trope, and metonymy is discussed by Pelikan on pages 193-201.

A valuable discussion of the link between iconoclasm and the Eucharistic controversy is offered in chapter 5 (pp. 169-94) of Sergiusz Michalski's The Reformation and the Visual Arts (NY: Routledge, 1993). Michalski traces the link to Wyclif's rejection of all images - including the idolatrous worship of the Real Presence in the Eucharist (174).

9) In The Mass and the English Reformers (NY: St. Martin's, 1958) 102-103, Clifford W. Dugmore claims Tyndale is the probable author of the anonymous The Souper of the Lorde. See his detailed discussion of Eucharistic theology in England, pp. 39-56.

10) Bevington's note on this passage asserts "Falstaff seems to suggest that he is true gold, not counterfeit, and so should not be betrayed to the watch by the Prince who, he hopes, is not merely playing at the tavern, but is truly one of its madcap members" (Note to 2.4.486-8). Not only does Falstaff claim his own authenticity (gold, not counterfeit), but he seems to comment on Hal's two natures: one that is "essentially made," but whose appearance seems to deny. The differences between appearance and reality may quickly be translated to the accidentals and substance of a theological debate.

11) For a popular discussion of the king's dual identity see Ernest H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957). Andrew Hadfield discusses the concept in relation to Henry V in Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics (London: Thomson Learning, 2004). His discussion of Henry V's soliloquy before the battle "can be read as a meditation on the notion of the king's two bodies, whereby a monarch was deemed to have a private and a public persona, his office and his person (Henry V 4.1.227-265)." See pp. 59-65. A powerful interpretation of the counterfeit nature of Henry's kingship is offered in Hugh Grady's discussion of the second tetralogy. In Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Montaigne: Power and Subjectivity from Richard II to Hamlet, Grady discusses the subversive nature of the play, including Falstaff's comments on Henry's counterfeit nature and Hal's illegitimacy. See pp. 128-33. Grady argues that Falstaff "illustrates the shortcomings and untruths of an era's perceived ideology," adding "Sir John's comic championing of the bodily self and its pleasures functions as a communal, class-conscious discourse of a plebeian social element oppressed by the idealisms of Church and State" (156). I would suggest that these false "idealisms" of church and state represent the vanity of pretension in both secular and sacred institutions that the play questions. It seems that Grady would at least minimally concur, given that he sees Falstaff as a protesting 'anti-saint': "while Falstaff is designed to be the very opposite of a Puritan saint [...], there are clear moments in I and II Henry IV when his very theatricality [...] is highlighted as a means of resistance to early modern power" (145). Earlier, Grady has argued that it is Falstaff's "role in I Henry IV to invert and resist the ideologies of power" (144). The resistance that I see offered by Falstaff is to the fabrication of the ideology, the Machiavellian statecraft promoted by Henry and his son.