How the Body in Renaissance Drama Shapes the Concept of Power and Identity

The European scene from roughly the fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries is referred to as the “renaissance drama.” The imitation and rediscovery of classical works during this time period laid the groundwork for a modern theater renaissance. Not just because Shakespeare was written during that era, but also because of the show that was presented about Renaissance England. Shakespeare wrote Richard II and King Lear as the European attitude toward monarchy and authority began to change from one of religion to one of non-religion. However, both King Richard II and King Lear have trouble letting go of their notions of their absolute power. They both lied on their rule to confer absolute power and warrant a complete respect for their subjects and their actions. Nevertheless, the Renaissance drama reveals the mindset that believes their position of being the kings to be inviolable and invulnerable. The drama of Renaissance uses the body in shaping the conceptions of power and identity through several ways such as invincibility, ornamentation, body natural and body politic.

In the Renaissance drama, body politic can be separated from body natural of an individual. This indulges in a freedom which was not available to a particular character. For example, according to King Lear, King James had alluded to the conception of the two bodies of the king in his original speech to Parliament. In 1606, as King James watched King Lear at Whitehall, he did so with a culturally created belief which the body natural and body politic of the king are indivisible. The relationship between the physical body and body politic may appear to be a simple dichotomy associated with dichotomies such as the heart and the head, or the private and public parts of an individual life. At the same time, none of the pairs are simple, for example, our private and public selves interconnected, and the head does not exist discrete from the heart. Similarly, the bodies of the monarch cannot be separated and the defined connection between the two changes, for the body natural and the body politic are not fixed realities, but social constructs which vary with the point of view and time. The genders identity is the performativity achievement which is compelled by a taboo and a social sanction. Thus, the body’s natural and bodies politic are historical perceptions which attain their meaning through the concrete and arbitrated expression in the world.

Shakespeare is interested in the conception of royal power and identity all through his history plays. In Richard II, Shakespeare sensationalizes several attitudes about kingship. Richard II and his followers claim that kings must inherit the crown from their fathers, and they have the freedom of ruling since they are selected representatives of God on earth (Healy 75). King Lear and his followers argue that the right of a king to rule is the privilege which can be granted to him by his subjects. Alternatively, this indicates that the freedom of ruling relies on whether or not the individual is essentially a good leader. Literary historians and critics state that when Shakespeare was writing Richard II, the conception of European about monarchy and power were starting to change from the religious attitude to a more secular point of view. However, the drama renaissance drama is a reflection of this shift.

Between 1756 and 1904, King Lear was usually dressed in ermine-trimmed scarlet robes in most of the plays. Currently, there are no kings left in the western community and no one that exercises vital power. This form of playing of Lear with all the majesty panoply, and overtaken it especially in the understanding of an important dimension of a notion of identity and power. In some contemporary adaptations and productions of the play, Lear is highly seen as the boss than being the king. For example, in the recent adoption of the Renaissance drama known as the Hysteria, the figure of Lear was a very wealthy businesswoman who started the show by signing over the company to her sons (Shupack 96). Evidently, something important is not seen in the translation. However, for the wealth parent, it is not a monarch meaning that Gloucester cannot be Lear. In the modern democracy, there is sharing of political power, and hence the body politic can appear to be the metaphor for all the people in authority. In the monarchy of Renaissance, power was invested in the body of the king who was anointed. Conversely, the body politic could not be shared, divided, or given to any person. Even though God anointed Queen Elizabeth II, she could become figurehead instead of being an absolute ruler. The political power needed by the elected leaders should manage the people and control the weal of the public. Nevertheless, the weal of the public is not ordained by God, but it is withdrawn and by ballot. However, in the twenty-first century, Pope will be offering an excellent example of embodied power than the Queen, for his idea of identity and authority within the state of Vatican is divinely absolute and bestowed.

However, I am interested in bringing into attention to another kind of embodied power suitable for this renaissance drama. While going through several productions of King Richard II and King Lear, I was struck by the occurrence which came up often all through the performance of the drama history. In once or often in a century, the revered and old actor selects to play Lear as his final performance. Nevertheless, in such circumstance, the comparison between the character and the actor are inevitable. In case a celebrity opts to give the final performance as King Lear, he chooses to perform himself playing Lear. The body politic of the king is injected with the embodied identity and authority of the star’s body legendary. Thus, critical responses to such presentations combine the subjective and objective response to the personified monarch.

The conception of invincibility makes Richard II and King Lear experience procedures leading up to and after their relinquishments. The tragedy of the two culminates in the respective of their realizations of their humanity and mortality at the end of widespread existential or physical suffering. King Lear was formerly a powerful ruler of his lands after she succumbed to the ruling o those he relinquished to, the fool has always had the opportunity of being free to acquiescently mock the king and his authority. He has the right to explicitly state his position on the foolhardiness and ignorance of King Lear, arguing that he was ready to beat Lear in case he was also a fool (Shupack 104). With the physical threat, there is further implication through the rhetorical situation of fool that Lear does not as well own the necessary reasoning power and wisdom of acting as a valuable tool, much less the amount needed of the sufficient king.

The Kings directly pleas to the gods addressing invisible, evidently powerful forces which can have had a hand in the anguish they experience. Lear acknowledges his physical frailty, referring to himself as a poor old man. At this point, his recognition of self-frailty is purely rational realization since he has not yet experienced the total sacrifice of human physical requirements. His appearance of self-pity is logical, coming from the man of former power going through a complete lack of potency and respect for the first time in his life. His self-pity is the technique to come to terms with the sudden absence of power. Lear attests to the wretchedness in both the grief and age. In age, he is despicable for the deterioration of his faculties both mental and physical. In sorrow, he is inferior in the recognition that the love of his daughter formerly blasphemed him was not predestined candidly. The king desires to disbelieve the veracity of his daughter’s treatment which has given him hope that it is the gods who can turn their hearts against him and not the part of their failings or natures. However, the word invincibility considers both the trickery the gods can be playing on him and his personal status as the fool who lacks the necessary wisdom of such a sick and old man.

In the service of coronation, the mode of dressing adds a significant meaning to the body of a king. It infuses it with a symbolic and cultural significance of the monarchy. In this perverted service, Richard II erases himself and removes material items; thus shedding their symbolic meaning. In the coronation, the king is meant to become a king. Thus, Richard negates his identity by discarding the appurtenances of sovereignty. In the ceremonial disrobing, Richard is getting lighter, freeing himself from the heavyweight of the crown, both in respect to sovereign responsibilities and material mass it connotes (Healy 78). The intimate reflections of the king on the construction of his kingship offer insight into the way where the identity of the king is reliant on and consisted of the adornments worn in that station. Since all the ornaments of the kingship station are essential, a king needs his complete set of regalia; a crown is a first ornament that is appropriate. This means that the crown is integral to kingship both on the personal and institutional level. The most obvious symbol of the realm is the circle; dressing in the crown is hence to have access to the recognized supremacy of the English kingdom. On the personal level, to the person who reigns as the king, a crown is what first facilitates the world to see people as sovereign. Moreover, it is through ornamentation that the king can understand his place in his social world. The crown has the identity and power in its right; its presence can make the king as much as its loss can destroy a person. In this way, one can see that the crown is the object which supplements the body and the life of the king, but the ornament is inseparable from the body of a king. Once the king wears the crown, the object and body are the same and one. Thus, the loss of the crown is tantamount to the loss of self that is exactly what one can see as the true tragedy of King Lear and Richard II.

All through the course of speech, King Lear and Richard II have divested themselves of all the pomp of their kingship given away each ornament in striving to the eradication of the qualities of a king from the person. In building the understanding of his self which is constituted by and dependent upon the ornament, the ramifications to lose the ornament are from Richard II, immeasurable. The dramatization of Shakespeare in the historical of Richard II and King Lear does not only lead to the loss of the crown by one ruler and the ascension to the throne but through the top exchange from head to head and hand to hand. Every person comes to understand the magnitude of the power extant with the object of a single material. Through the planned separation of the royal appurtenances for the body of King Lear and Richard II, they both erases themselves, leaving only the unembellished, value body neutral, body of the earthly man.

In this way, it is clear that the drama of Renaissance uses the body in several ways to shape the conceptions of identity and power. Thus, according to Richard II and King Lear, the several ways discussed are invincibility, ornamentation, body natural and body politic. They both believed in their rule to bestow absolute power and warrant full respect from their actions. Thus, Richard II and King Lear struggle with their notions of indomitability as kings.

Works Cited

Healy, Margaret. Richard II Shakespeare: Texts and Contexts. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000, 48-80.

Shupack, Paul. M. Natural Justice and King Lear. Boalt Hall: University of California Press, 2007, pp. 67-107.