Vinculum Fidei: The Tempest and the Law of Allegiance

Abstract

In English constitutional law, Calvin’s Case (1608) laid down a new, deeply affective basis of personal allegiance; the bond between sovereign and subject was now to be understood in personal, embodied terms as a tie of obligation and love between natural men. This essay argues that Shakespeare’s The Tempest is a work of hypothetical constitutional commentary designed to illustrate the fragility and awkwardness of this new norm at home and abroad; it is, more over, intended to rebuke the theoretical ambitions of James I. The late Shakespeare, in this account, is not a political quietist but a skeptical constitutional theorist who in his play outlines a proleptic vision of the affective costs of personal sovereignty.