In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

178 Some Americans are old enough to remember when a recently defeated politician snarled at reporters in California that soon “you won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” Little did we know. True, kicking kings can be more dangerous than kicking candidates for democratic office, but once the bad ones are safely dead, exploiting their memory can be useful. In this essay I recount how one king—Saul—was put to work in early modern England. That Saul was a bad ruler was generally assumed, although in another culture and in another text (or if he had written the great poetry conventionally ascribed to his son-in-law and successor) he might have found more defenders. The story yields a familiar if uncomfortable significatio : History, like fiction, is most compelling when morally or intellectually contradictory, if not to an individual reader then collectively in cultural memory. In this, Saul and David are alike, for David too was a sinner.1 Yet Saul has drawn less attention from scholars of the period. Here I look at some high points of Saul’s life in more or less chronological order, but first I provide a rapid-fire summary of his career, usefully outlined by Henoch Clapham’s Briefe of the Bible (1596) in flat verse with prose commentary: The Israelites, heedless of the prophet Samuel’s warnings , insist on having a king so as to be more like the heathens. And so God doth appoint Samuel to annoynt Saul . . . a tall fellowe to the Kingship . Saul seeking his Fathers Asses, he found a Kingdome: for comming to enquire of Samuel concerning his Asses, . . . Samuel annointeth him, after the which, the Spirit (not of Sanctification, but) of Government and Majestie came upon him. This Saul afterAnne Lake Prescott Exploiting King Saul in Early Modern England Good Uses for a Bad King 7 Exploiting King Saul in Early Modern England 179 wards neglecting his charge concerning the slaughter of Amaleks Cattle and Agag the King [i.e., Saul would not kill Agag, king of the Amalekites, and his cattle], the Lord therefore taketh from him the former Spirit, and put in him a frantick Spirite: commanding Samuel to annoynt David, the youngest sonne of [Jesse] . . . upon whome came the former Majesticall Spirite. After this, Saul ceaseth not to persecute David . . . but David, (though hee had him at vantage) wou’d not hurte him. In the end, consulting with a Witch at Endor . . . hee runneth to the Devill to speake with [the dead] Samuel. Saul, the next daye after, was slaine (togither with his Sonnes) in his warres with the Philistims, running himselfe desperatlie on his swordes pointe. (72–73) Events also figuring in later exploitations of Saul’s name include his sacrifice of cattle before the prophet Samuel arrives to supervise the rite (thus usurping a priestly prerogative); David’s musical expulsion of Saul’s “frantick Spirite”; Saul’s envy of David’s victories; his throwing a spear at David; his giving his daughter Michal to David for doubtless slimy political reasons; his demand that David bring him 200 Philistine foreskins; his ordering Doeg to kill priests who had helped David; his going into a cave to defecate, where David sees him and cuts off a piece of his skirt but spares his life because he is an anointed king; Saul’s weeping admission that David is the better man; and David’s lament for the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. Also notable are the loyalty of most Israelites to Saul, Samuel’s grief that God withdrew his spirit from Saul, and God’s chilling silence after that withdrawal. Early modern memories of Saul are not always solemn. An epigram in John Donne Jr.’s Cabinet of Merry Conceits (1662) tells how three Oxford students in a pub assault an old man “with flouts and jeers.” One calls him “Father Abraham,” another “Father Isaac,” and the third “Father Jacob.” The codger replies that he is none of these: “Wherefore forbear your flouts I you do wish, / For indeed am Saul the Son of Kish, / Who for to seek my Fathers Asses came / From far, and here have found three of the same.”2 Bad verse, good joke. Usually, though, Saul is a guilty tyrant. What was so particularly noxious about Saul’s sins? The usual answer was that whereas David broke God’s laws against adultery and homicide, Saul ignored a direct personal command—to kill Agag and...

Share