Introduction

Lear’s character arc is a recovery. Rehabilitating himself from a life in sovereign office is the colossal task of the play. There is a legitimate suspicion towards religiously redemptive readings, but even Marxist criticism necessarily exhibits religious inflections. Political theology explores the religious history of modern political concepts. Giorgio Agamben has examined sovereignty, martial law, monasticism, outlawry, to name but a few. His work—and that of Nicholas Heron—on office and duty, whose implications stretch from kings to constables, have not yet been incorporated into Shakespeare criticism. From this perspective, sovereign office appears as one example, albeit a glamorous one, within a wider category. Lear acknowledges this, when he reflects on the ‘rascal beadle’ and a farmer’s dog ‘obeyed in office’ (4.6.156, 155). King Lear also forces us to surpass Agamben’s models: sovereign power sacralises not only the sovereign but also their consort and children, and even their vicarious representatives, like judges and chancellors. Civil death, waivery (bona waviata), and petit treason show that sacred life was not an exceptional exchange but already the norm. Such concepts rely on dutifully internalising official identities; King Lear, in turn, dramatises their costs.