Parasites and Noise-Cancelling Politics in Shakespeare’s Second History Tetralogy

Abstract

Abstract: This article investigates Shakespeare’s understanding of noise and parasites in the second history tetralogy. In his biopolitical imagination, Shakespeare, like Michel Serres, associates noise with parasites. Moreover, Shakespeare contributes to his contemporary ‘noise cancelling politics’, which sees controlling rumours and bruits as the essential operation of sovereign power; this lays the foundation of what Michel Foucault calls ‘governmental rationality’ of the later era. Nonetheless, Shakespeare’s historical narrative at once conforms to and dissents from discursive fashionings of early modern noise-cancelling politics. The paradox of Shakespeare’s second Henriad is that despite its negative illustration of rumours and parasites, it reveals the parasitical nature of sovereign power, upon which early modern rule and governance rely.