Shakespeare did not entirely understand saints, and that what he did understand, he did not entirely like. In the huge panoply of characters in his plays, there are strikingly few who would remotely qualify. Joan of Arc appears in an early history play, but she is a witch and a whore. King Henry VI has a saintly disposition—“all his mind is bent to holiness / To number Ave-Maries on his beads” (2 Henry VI, 1.3.59–60)—but he is pathetically weak, and his weakness wreaks havoc on his realm. The elegant young men in the court of Navarre swear to live a “Still and contemplative” existence, the
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