Page 114 [114]
SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
in public discourses of English political thought in the sixteenth century,
ultimately derives from John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, in which John of
Salisbury applies the metaphor of sickness to describe disobedience to the
monarch: “an injury to the head, as we have said above, is brought home to
all members, and that wound unjustly inflicted on any member tends to the
injury of the head. Furthermore whatsoever is attempted foully and with
malice against the head, or corporate community, of the members, is a crime
of the greatest gravity and nearest to sacrilege.”**°
Various metaphors referring to the diseased body politic, “disease,”
“foulness,” “boils,” “sore,” “injury” or “wound,” also appear in King Lear, and
in accordance with John of Salisbury’s description, they describe offences
committed against Lear. For instance, Kent warns Lear about the consequences
of his decision to banish Cordelia from his kingdom with the words cited
earlier: “kill thy Physicion, / And the fee bestow vpon thy foule disease.”**’
Cordelia then states clearly that Lear has disowned her not because of some
attack against him as king: “It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulnes, / No
vncleane action or dishonourd step / That hath depriu’d me of your grace and
fauour.”*® After Gonorill manifestly opposes Lear’s wishes, the King describes
his daughter as: “a disease that lies within my flesh, / Which I must needs call
mine, thou arta bile, / A plague sore, an imbossed carbuncle in my / Corrupted
blod."?? One of the most striking examples of the metaphorical connection of
sickness and the state emerges when Lear not only recognizes Gonorill’s and
Regan’s falseness, but also immediately understands his own error of judgment
and its consequences, saying, “I’ll forbear; / And am fallen out with my more
headier will, / To take the indisposed and sickly fit / For the sound man. Death
on my state!" Last but not least, after Lear dies at the very end of the play,
Albany invests the rule of the country to Edgar and Kent so that they will “the
goard state sustaine.”*
This study of the representation of the Early Modern body politic in King
Lear contributes to a more nuanced understanding of and appreciation for
Shakespeare’s poetic practice, as it presents the characters in the context of
contemporaneous governance theories. Applying the concept of the “King’s
two bodies,” Axton explains Lear’s tragic error as a misinterpretation of his
own role, since he treats public affairs as if he had only a “body natural”
136 John of Salisbury: The statesman’s book, 259. “Laesio capitis, ut praediximus ad omnia membra
refertur, et cujusque membri vulnus injuste irrogatum, ad capitis sectat injuriam. Caeterum
quod adversus caput aut universitatem membrorum dolo malo malatia praesumit, crime nest
gravissium, et proximum sacrilegio.” Saresberiensis: Policraticus, 11. 73.
#7 Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. B3r.
#8 Ibid., sig. B4r.
#9 Ibid., sig. F2r.
440 Ibid., sig. Flr.
441 Tbid., sig. L4r.
«112°