Abstract
Scars are a visible part of the political forum in the Roman Republic and in English
hereditary monarchy. Coriolanus's scars are celebrated by Romans in Shakespeare's
Coriolanus, while an absent record of King Richard II's skin ever breaking is part of the collective
fiction of hereditary monarchy in Shakespeare's Richard II. For democracy in Rome, the symbology of scarring may be a practical element in ratifying
the consulate: as a reminder of Rome's experience with the Tarquin Kings they had
expelled and as a reminder to avoid the concentration of power in any one man. Consuls
would serve one year only and there were two consuls each year; scars demonstrated
that these consuls were not gods like kings wish to be. In parallel, scar-free skin
preserves King Richard II's symbolism of an anointed monarch. Henry Bolingbroke and
his son, Prince Hal and future Henry V, face the consequences of stripping the kingship
of this aura, demonstrating that a king's skin can be penetrated on the battlefield
by any other human being.
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Article info
Publication history
Edited by Mauricio Goihman-Yahr, MD, PhD
Publication stage
In Press Accepted ManuscriptFootnotes
Funding: None
Conflicts of Interest: None to declare
Identification
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© 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
