Shakespeare's Plays of Deranged Authority: The King's Three Bodies

Authors

Daniel Krier

Abstract

Shakespeare's plays are situated upon the threshold of two worlds: a declining traditional order torn apart by political rivalry and ascendant early-modern capitalism. The history plays dramatize infighting among warring factions of privileged aristocrats as well as revolutionary forces propelled by the rising commons and the politics of commodity. Legitimate authority is rarely secure among the kings perched upon Shakespearean thrones. In Shakespeare's Henriad and King John, crowns are contested from the moment they are placed upon royal heads, inspiring Kantorwicz's political theology: the corporeal body of short-lived kings is distinct from the sovereign's sublime body that reigns without cease. "The King is dead, long live the King!"  A re-reading of Shakespeare's plays of deranged authority reveals, as Lacan would predict, that his kings possess three bodies: corpo-"real," imaginary, and symbolic. When fractured and animated by different characters, the king's three bodies map onto Weber's three modes of legitimate domination. In King John, the "imaginary body of the king" the character most capable of acting with noble warrior honor expected of Kings “is the charismatic "Bastard" who can never ascend to symbolic legitimacy. The article ends with an analysis of the three bodies of sovereignty in the contemporary moment of deranged authority: Trumpism.

Author Biography

Daniel Krier, Iowa State University

Daniel Krier is Professor of Sociology at Iowa State University. He specializes in critical social theory, political economy, and comparative-historical sociology. Books include Speculative Management: Stock Market Power and Corporate Change (SUNY: 2005), NASCAR, Sturgis and the New Economy of Spectacle (with William Swart, Brill: 2016), Capitalism's Future: Alienation, Emancipation and Critique (co-edited with Mark P. Worrell, Brill: 2016), The Social Ontology of Capitalism (co-edited with Mark P. Worrell, Palgrave Macmillan: 2017), and Capital in the Mirror: Critical Social Theory and the Aesthetic Dimension (co-edited with Mark P. Worrell, SUNY Press, forthcoming).

Recommended Citation

Krier, Daniel (2019) "Shakespeare's Plays of Deranged Authority: The King's Three Bodies," Fast Capitalism: Vol. 16: Iss. 2, Article 8.
DOI: 10.32855/1930-014X.1270
Available at: https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/fastcapitalism/vol16/iss2/8