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SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one
body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. [...] For the body is not one
member, but many. / If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of
the body; is it therefore not of the body? / And if the ear shall say, Because I am
not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? / If the whole body
were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the
smelling? / But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as
it hath pleased him. [...] And whether one member suffers, all the members suffer
with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. / Now ye are
the body of Christ, and members in particular. (1Cor 12:12-27)
Saint Paul’s image of the “mystical body” of Christ comprising the Christian
community proved an excellent manifestation of the Church’s interest in order
to support the authority of religious institutions as opposed to the worldly
and political ones. As the influence of the Church started growing even in
political affairs, the practice of applying the Pauline corporeal analogy to the
description of society also became widespread. As Paul Archambault points
out, Pope Gregory VII was the first to state emphatically that “the body politic
[is] co-extensive with the body mystical,”**’ a claim which set off a series of
debates concerning who should rule over this body: the representative of the
temporal power or divine power.
In England, with the Act of Supremacy, Henry VIII redefined the meaning
of this universal “mystical body” and established the special religious and
political unity of “the Church of England as contrasted to the Church in
England.”?% He took advantage of the organic analogy for his own political
interest and applied it in a more mundane context, claiming, “this realm of
England is an empire... governed by one Supreme Head and King... unto whom
a body politic, compact of all sorts and degrees of people... be bounden and
owe to bear next to God a natural and humble obedience.”** In the early
Tudor period, many well-known authors relied on the organic analogy when
discussing various matters related to the state. The corporeal imagery appears
in the works of Thomas More, Sir Thomas Elyot, John Fisher, as well as for
instance in the sermons of Stephen Gardiner and Thomas Starkey.*” Even in
the second half of the sixteenth century, some traces of this anthropomorphic
analogy could be found in homilies that were written with the purpose of
3 Ibid., 26.
360 Ibid., 48.
361 Ibid., 48.
362 For a detailed discussion of this period see ibid., 48-68. Moreover, as Noemi Najbauer
highlights, even John Donne, court preacher to King James, used the state as body imagery
to ensure stability in society. Noémi Maria Najbauer: “The Art of Salvation, is but the Art
of Memory”: Memory as Art and Devotion in the Sermons of John Donne, unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, Budapest, 2010, 189-193.
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