Sleep and the Shepherd-King in Quevedo and Shakespeare: An Essay in Comparative Semiospherics

Through a comparative reading of the shepherd-king trope in Francisco de Quevedo's Política de Diosand William Shakespeare's history plays, with particular attention to Henry V, this essay argues that the centrality of the trope to Quevedo's treatise and its only vestigial presence in Shakespeare are the result of ideological differences in the English and Spanish semiospheres of the time. Evidence from a variety of sources, including Edward Hall's Chronicle and George Chapman's Homer, as well as from religious controversy and courtly pastoralism, suggests that the trope's residual presence in Shakespeare is more consistent with Queen Elizabeth I's regnum in parlamento than with the Christological discourse of absolutism.