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OCR
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°
