ABSTRACT
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'. Prince Hal, knows his Bible at least as well as Falstaff, and in the concluding couplet of his soliloquy at the end of the first tavern scene. Hal's allusion to the words of St. Paul is thus at the heart of the dramatic structure. It is no accident that the Eastcheap community is described to Hal as 'Ephesians, my lord, of the old church'. Henry IV owes considerably more to St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians than the passing reference noted by the commentators. Shakespeare subsequently rechristened him as Falstaff out of deference to the family feelings of Oldcastle's Elizabethan descendant, Lord Cobham. The influence of the earlier Tudor morality drama upon the structure of the Henry IV plays has often been observed.
