The 16th-century English Lawyers on Succession and King’s Two Bodies

The article is focused on the analysis of the tragedy “Gorboduc” written by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville as a Christmas drama, to be presented at Inner Temple, one of the four London Inns of Court, in 1561. The tragedy is well-known to the historian of theatre and scholars who have studied the political history of Elizabethan England, since the play is often seen as a drama equivalent of a succession pamphlet. The present article discusses legal notions linked to the succession problem. The tragedy “Gorboduc” reflects the lawyers’ reaction to the concept of the “king’s two bodies” formulated by Edmund Plowden at the same time. The author of the article shows that Elizabethan lawyers did not see this legal fiction in the context of the enhancement of royal authority as Ernst Kantorowicz thought but, on the contrary, viewed it as a way to conceptualize a (temporary) transition of royal dignity to the “body politic of the realm” personified by parliament.