‘Walking, Talking Minerals’: Men and Metals in King Lear and Bussy d’Ambois

This essay turns to the pervasive early modern analogy between men and metals: the conviction that understanding the metamorphoses of one will help articulate the operations of the other. Drawing on Jane Bennett’s influential account of Vibrant Matter, I argue that both metal and specific metals were frequently understood in apparently anthropomorphic terms. At the same time, humans were conceived of as resonantly metallic. The chapter explores the creative liveliness of metal as a substance to think with, before examining the popular homophone of metal/mettle and the different meanings of ‘temper’. It delves into the ‘walking, talking minerals’ of two early modern tragedies: George Chapman’s Bussy d’Ambois (first published 1607) and Shakespeare’s King Lear (first published 1608). Peopled by men and women of metal, ‘men of stones’, and men of salt, Bussy and Lear epitomise an understanding of bodies as coterminous with the stuff of the world. These plays, I argue, exemplify early modern literature’s role in articulating the experience and behaviour of natural substances, and the shared interest between literature and natural philosophy in the intimate analogies between man and other materials.