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THE INELUENCE OF EARLY MODERN THEORIES OF GOVERNANCE: CORPOREAL IMAGES AND THE REPRESENTATION OF IHE BODY POLITIC IN THE 1608 QUARTO ———~o»—___ One of the conclusions I drew in the previous chapter was that certain rhetorical figures defining the relationship between the characters during the public ceremony of the love contest scene in the 1608 Pied Bull Quarto evoke the “body politic,” a metaphoric expression denoting the Early Modern idea of the state. Extending this thread of thought, this chapter focuses on the use of corporeal or body-related metaphors throughout the play and argues that the initial references to the human body develop into a whole image cluster. This series of rethorical figures signals the social function of the characters, which allows for an “anthropomorphic mapping”*” of the characters’ relation to the monarch. Since the scope of this chapter extends to the interpretation and literary representation of various Early Modern notions related to the sociopolitical aspects of royal power, it seems sensible to consider briefly the basic concepts of governance in the Jacobean period, especially in the mediated forms in which they appeared on the Early Modern stage.*** Shakespearean drama offers many answers to the question concerning what the ideal monarch was like in the first decade of seventeenth-century England, but these answers originate from two main principles of acceptable rulership.*” One of them is based on the medieval idea that political authority derives from God, whereas the 323 | am grateful to my supervisor, Professor Tibor Fabiny for nurturing my thoughts with this expression, which I believe was his own invention. 324 My short summary is based on the following two articles: Michael Hattaway: Tragedy and Political Authority, in Claire Elizabeth McEachern (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy, Cambridge, Cambdrige University Press, 2002, 105-122; and György Endre Szönyi: Matching the “Falles of Princes” and “Machiavell.” Tradition and Subversion in the Historiography and Iconography of Shakespeare’s Histories, in György E. SzönyiRowland Wymer (eds.): The Iconography of Power. Ideas and Images of Rulership on the English Renaissance Stage, Szeged, JATE Press, 2000, 5-31. 325 Szőnyi: Matching, 7. « 87 ¢
