In this essay, I wish to suggest that, in writing two of his plays, Shakespeare was more than usually aware of the sometimes complementary, sometimes opposing functions of the mind and the body in human life; and that this awareness may be discerned in the layout of the narrative – the overall design – in the characterisation, and in the language: not simply the diction, but also the choice of sentiments to be uttered. I do not suggest that a reliance on these concepts accounts for every aspect of the plays’ structure, nor that Shakespeare may not have had other guiding principles, too. But I hope that an analysis of the plays with these ideas in mind may tell us something about how they are made; I hope, too, that the juxtaposition of two essentially very different plays may also be fruitful.

The relationship between mind, or soul, and body was a common topic in Renaissance writings about religion, philosophy, morality, and physiology. There is, to give just one example, an essay about it in Plutarch's Moralia which, interestingly enough, first appeared in English translation (by Philemon Holland) in 1603, shortly before the composition of King Lear, though I can find no evidence of direct relationship. Shakespeare has many glancing references to the theme, and some longer treatments of it. The plays with which I am concerned are not the only ones to which, I believe, it can provide a useful critical approach.