The 2023 British Graduate Shakespeare Conference "The Balance of Sovereign Power and Natural Law in Shakespeare's Richard II"
Abstract
In my presentation, I would like to look closely at the representation of Sovereign Power and Natural Law in the political discourse of Shakespeare's Richard II. Throughout the play, we see the two characters of kings, Richard II and Henry IV, and their diametrically different approaches to kingship manifested in their exercise of the sovereign power and its limits. As
James Phillips argues, "the king is subject not to the law but to justice" 1 and has the power to intervene in its interest for the good of the realm. The greatest limit to the Sovereign Power therefore should be the Natural Law which, according to the work of Michel Foucault, is also at the very heart of the discourse of Sovereign Power. My aim is to look at the connection and conflict between these two powers in the context of the play. The main theoretical pillars of my paper are
Foucauldian Discourse analysis and the work of Ernst Kantorowicz.