Documents Illustrating the Theory of the King’s Two Bodies in the Age of Shakespeare: The Reports of Edmund Plowden and a Compa

This work makes available for the first time the texts from which scholars have drawn to discuss the theory of the king�� 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.