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Civitas baner

Vol. 26 (2020): POLITICAL THEOLOGIES AND THE CRISIS OF MODERNITY

Temat numeru

“Richard II is Me”. The Theory of the King’s Two Bodies and Elizabethan Political Practice

DOI: https://doi.org/10.35757/CIV.2020.26.03
Submitted: September 29, 2020
Published: September 29, 2020

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to show how the doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies formulated by lawyer Edmund Plowden influenced political practice and its artistic representation. It is worth emphasising that the image of the king as a one-man corporation includes an immanent conflict resulting not only from the coexistence of conflicting identities in one person, but also from the need to constantly negotiate relations between them. Therefore, the concept of two bodies could simultaneously serve as a tool for legitimising and contesting power. This paradox is well illustrated by Queen Elizabeth I’s famous declaration “Richard II is Me”, which has been intriguing researchers for decades and receiving extensive comments. So far it has not been placed in the context of the doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies, in which it sounds probably most fully. The perspective of abolished temporality inscribed in it sheds a new light on the queen’s identification with Richard II: both the historical ruler and the hero of the Shakespearean chronicle.

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