Manipulation, Mutilation, and Unnatural Women and the Repercussions on the Body Politic in Hamlet, King Lear, and Titus Andronicus
The political state in literature has long been linked to the health and goodwill of its people and leaders within its walls. As such, the body politic mirrors the corruption and descent of certain political leaders by their unnatural or manipulative behavior as well as the literal physical state of its people, both male and female. In Shakespeare’s King Lear, Titus Andronicus, and Hamlet, political leaders seek to disfigure the political state itself. The political state becomes poisoned with the malicious whisperings of manipulation of “trusted” insiders. Another corruption of the state is evident in the unnatural behavior of certain female characters, and such behavior corrupts the natural order within the state and manifests itself in sexual impropriety. With the state’s political leaders tainted by revenge, violence, manipulation, or unnatural social behavior without any moral restrictions, the body politic itself begins to self-destruct, and the health of the state continues to fall in a downward spiral, mirroring the degradation of the main characters physical and mental state.
One of the most obvious mutilations of the state appears in Titus Andronicus. At the beginning of the play, Titus returns to Rome from a successful campaign against the Goths, leading his captives to an unknown fate. He returns in hope to find glory and peace at last, and instead returns to find Rome without an emperor and thus “headless.” Rome’s dismemberment in a sense is that she does not have an emperor to lead her or her people into glory, prestige, or even simple everyday matters. Instead, the city of Rome is caught between two camps, one that wants the power for itself, and the other that demands that the process of election should decide who would become emperor. Without the vital position of the head, the body, as represented in the people...