Module 5: Richard II And The Origins Of Political Theology
An Iconographical Inquiry

In order to anatomize, scrutinize the corpus/the body of Richard II, Ernest Kantorowicz’s famous doctrine of the king’s two bodies is of direct relevance for us. Kantorowicz published The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology in 1957, in which he states that:

The king has two “bodies”: the body natural and the body politic. The body natural is the ordinary mortal one, the body politic infuses with the divine right to govern which marks off the monarch from other men. These two bodies form one indivisible unit, with the body politic superior to the body natural.¹

In an essay marking the fiftieth anniversary of Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies, Stephen Greenblatt notes that:

The King’s Two Bodies has indeed a strange and account of the body. (…) The mortal body plays a significant role in Kantorowicz who begins with Richard II’s agonized recognition that he is, after all, made of flesh and blood: “I live with bread like you, feel want,/Taste grief, need friends.” But – the crucial fact of mortality aside – the material body in its insistent, peculiar specificity is only modestly present in the King’s Two Bodies.²

I take Kantorowicz’s study and reading of Richard II very seriously, but I also take Kantorowicz to task, and whilst taking into consideration Greenblatt’s observation, I argue that through a specific reading and an emphasis of Richard II’s royal body, the play uncovers a foucaultdian biopower discourse, which highlights a set of mechanisms/phenomena through which the basic organic/biological features of the royal body becomes the object, or as I take it, the stigmatized recipient of a theologico-political strategy, of a general strategy of power. Foucault’s definition of biopower - who was largely influenced by Ernst Kantorowicz – could constitute a form of continuation of Kantorowicz’s study and help us to zero in upon the body of the king in order demonstrate how the perfect unity of the king’s divine, yet organic body gradually splits and fractures itself, opens itself up, offering in its fall and climactic deposition the vision of a wounded body or even a stigmatized body.

I propose to follow the symbolic transformation of Richard’s royal/divine body within the textual landscape of the play. As Shakespeare envisions the body (and its transformations) of Richard in three different topos, thus offering to the gaze a tripartite topography, namely: (1) the coast of Wales, (2) Flint Castles, and of course (3) Westminster Hall – where Richard revealed the sacred anatomy of his body.

On The Coast Of Wales

As Kantorowicz brilliantly argues “there is as yet no split in Richard when, on his return from Ireland, he kisses the soil of his kingdom. The indelible character of the king’s body politic, god-like or angel-like is expounded. The balm of consecration, which envelops his body, resists the power of the elements” ³:

The breath of worldly man cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord.
III. 2. 54

In a nutshell, Richard is the “deputy elected by the Lord” and “God's substitute . . . anointed in his sight” I.2.37. We can also illuminate Richard II’s lines through the Wilton Diptych, a portable portrait depicting the coronation of the King by Mary and a host of angels. The painting strikingly demonstrates the power of political theology in Richard’s lifetime, tropes that Shakespeare both takes apart and reassembles over the course of his play.

The Wilton Diptych (c. 1395–99) tempera on wood,
each section 47.5 cm × 29.2 cm. National Gallery, London

“Richard then is still sure of himself, of his dignity, and even of the help of the “celestial hosts”, which are at his disposal.” ⁴ Hence he does not seem to fear the rebellion organized by Bolingbroke against him:

For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd . . . ,
God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay
A glorious angel.
III.2.60

However, “this glorious image of kingship does not last. It slowly fades, as the bad tidings trickle in. A remarkable change in Richard's attitude--as it were, a metamorphosis from “a full-bodied King” to “Nominalism” now takes place.” ⁵ As Kantorowicz argues “the Universal called “Kingship” begins to fracture, to split; its transcendental “Reality”, its objective truth and god-like existence, so brilliant shortly before, pales into a nothing”,⁶ (a nomen) or at least into a “airy nothing” thus projecting the new image of another portrait or the portrait of another. A new identity thus emerges, causing the king to depart or turn away from the self- knowledge he previously had to the point of doubting, forgetting or even dreaming his own identity and status, as shown is this excerpt:

I had forgot myself, am I not king?
Awake thou coward majesty! thou sleepest,
Is not the king's name twenty thousand names?
Arm, arm, my name! A puny subject strikes
At thy great glory.
III.2.83

The king once made of two in(di)visible bodies starts to split as he is asking his second body to wake up. Here Richard becomes split in two to the point of experiencing a disjunction of the self. Richard and Richard, Richard is speaking to Richard or even Richard is waking up himself.

Flint Castle

According to Kantorowicz, it’s at Flint Castle that “the “cascades” begin to fall. The celestial hosts are called upon once more, this time avenging angels and “armies of pestilence,” which God is said to muster in his clouds (III. 3. 85).” ⁷ Again here, the “Name” of kingship plays its part:

O, that I were as great
As is my grief, or lesser than my name!
III. 3. 136

Must (the king) lose
The name of king? a God's name, let it go.
III. 3. 145

“The fiction of the oneness of the double body breaks apart. Godhead and manhood of the king’s two bodies, both clearly outlined with a few strokes, stand in contrast to each other. Here at this precise moment of the play the crack/fracture appears.”⁸ Up until this point the analysis has led, I would say, towards a “visual catastrophe,” namely the opening/separation of the (double) royal body which previously was in(di)visible: an opening made by the king himself who, in creating this space, will cause the breakdown of his identity/failure to recognize himself/his own representation.

Westminster Hall

Richard will openly expose the fracture of his indivisible bodies even greater when he will “undo his kingship”. He will expose himself and will strip/defrock himself before the eyes of the spectators:

RICHARD II

Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be;
Therefore no no, for I resign to thee.
Now mark me, how I will undo myself;
I give this heavy weight from off my head
And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,
The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;
With mine own tears I wash away my balm,
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duty's rites:
All pomp and majesty I do forswear;
My manors, rents, revenues I forego;
My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny:
God pardon all oaths that are broke to me!
God keep all vows unbroke that swear to thee!
Make me, that nothing have, with nothing grieved,
And thou with all pleased, that hast all achieved!
Long mayst thou live in Richard's seat to sit,
And soon lie Richard in an earthly pit!
God save King Harry, unking'd Richard says,
And send him many years of sunshine days!
What more remains?

IV, 1, 203-13

Needless to say that Richard’s self-undoing is a quite an overt bit of theatrics. Non sans droict, as he is the king, he is staging/performing his own fall or his own passion as we shall see later. Richard legitimizes this impossible act - his own deposition/abdication by his authority/absolute power (he has the right to do this — non sans droict) in order to mark the end of his life as absolute sovereign whilst emphasizing on the pathos of his fall/passion. Thus it can be said that it is indeed the transubstantiation or the cunning performativeness of Richard’s speech, which sets in motion and marks out the whole itinerary of the royal deposition in a sort of “inverse ceremony,” thus authorizing Richard to dispossess himself, to strip himself of all attributes of power until he has lost all effective substance of his body politic.

¹ Kantorowicz, E. The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton University Press, 1997), 84
² Greenblatt, S. “Fifty Years of The King's Two Bodies.” Representations Vol 112(2010), 63-66
³ Kantorowicz, E. The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton University Press, 1997), 88
⁴ Kantorowicz, E. The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton University Press, 1997), Ibid.
⁵ Kantorowicz, E. The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton University Press, 1997), Ibid.
⁶ Kantorowicz, E. The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton University Press, 1997), Ibid.
⁷ Kantorowicz, E. The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton University Press, 1997), Ibid.
⁸ Kantorowicz, E. The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton University Press, 1997), Ibid.