Jennifer Low
“Those Proud Titles Thou Hast Won”: Sovereignty, Power, and Combat in Shakespeare’s Second Tetralogy
Volume 34.3, Fall 2000

The judicial duel is an ideal form for embodying concepts of royal power, for it presents the intersection of language and violence. Staging the trial by combat (or judicial duel) emphasizes the ritual’s underlying rationale as a stylized performance of justice. The combat deserves particular note when rule obscures justice, as it comes to do in Richard II and 1 Henry IV. Because the combat brings into play institutional energies that call sovereign authority into question, its performance tests the monarch’s hegemony. Shakespeare’s portrayal of the trial by combat suggests that the potential of the monarchy can be developed most fully by the ruler who engages in reciprocal negotiation for power with the aristocracy; yet the unique status of the monarch straitens his ability to engage in such exchanges.

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