Epilogue

Summary

The aim of this book has been to read sixteenth-century political drama in juxtaposition with juridico-political theory, with particular focus on the figure of the usurper–tyrant, in order to reveal the transactions between aesthetics and politics. In the preceding chapters I have argued that, marking a departure from the tyrant drama of the early Tudor period, in the late sixteenth century the usurpation plot emerges into prominence as a result of ideological, dramaturgical, and historical developments. In the realm of realpolitik, Tudor attempts to manufacture their own legitimacy and the emphasis on their inviolable right to rule over England resulted in the consolidation of the myth of divine right kingship in the sixteenth century. Simultaneously the century witnessed the intensification of resistance-against-tyranny debates. Under these circumstances, the figure of the usurper provided the dramatists with a solution to the seemingly insurmountable problem of dramatizing rebellion against God's deputy. The non-allegorical drama of the later decades allowed no direct recourse to divine agency. Therefore, in this milieu of divinely ordained kingship, the case for resisting and deposing the tyrannical monarch could be made sympathetic by establishing the illegitimacy of the tyrant's rule: in other words, by making him into a usurper as well as a tyrant.

The usurper, or the new prince, also embodied a ‘poetic’ conception of politics. As a man who acquires power rather than inherits it, the usurper, despite the singular and often despotic nature of his authority, is identifiable with the more egalitarian, inclusive understanding of the state and its institutions as products of human rather than divine creation—an understanding which manifested itself in the writings of political theorists as different as Niccolo Machiavelli and George Buchanan. The importance accorded by the usurper to the symbolic consent of his subjects rivets together these two disparate facets of poiesis in politics: the violent, tyrannical usurper, spurred by the lack of dynastic claim or divine benediction, must perforce seek to manufacture his legitimacy through constitutional and popular means, thus almost inadvertently creating the space for a more inclusive model of politics.