Documents Illustrating the Theory of the King’s Two Bodies in the Age of Shakespeare: The Reports of Edmund Plowden and a Comparative Discourse of the Bodies Natural and Politique by Edward Forset

This work makes available for the first time the texts from which scholars have drawn to discuss the theory of the king’s two bodies. This study shows that the present-day discussions of monarchal power in the renaissance have constructed s simplistic opposition between metaphysical, or so-called absolutist theories of kingship, and more materialistic theories of power.