Renaissance Incorporations: Negotiating the Theory of the King's Two Bodies

The book synthesizes historical approaches to Renaissance texts in order to establish a reading of them that takes at its starting point the principles behind the period's natural philosophy in order to re-evaluate the theory of the king's two bodies. Albert Rolls presents a View of Renaissance thought that could adapt itself to new discoveries.

---

In the work Albert Rolls synthesizes older and newer historical approaches to Renaissance texts in order to establish a reading of them that takes at its starting point the principles behind the period's natural philosophy in order to re-evaluate the theory of the king's two bodies. Analyzing the differences between the approaches to two-bodies theory of Edmund Plowden, the lawyer who popularized the theory in 16th-century England, James I, Shakespeare, and a number of other writers, Rolls demonstrates that there were different versions of the theory, not a single one that was drawn upon by those thinkers that used it to discuss power relations between the heads of communal bodies and their members. The book goes on to illustrate the ways in which Shakespeare's Richard II, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV,' Parts I and II, and Henry V employ the theory as well as works through it. Indeed, Rolls argues that Shakespeare's engagement with the histories that serve as the materials of his plays led him to modify his understanding of two-bodies theory as his career proceeded.