ABSTRACT

The Rebellion of Naples or the Tragedy of Massanello calls for graphic stage violence, including onstage beheadings and a woman being stabbed in the face. Specifically, the play's relentless literalization of blazon conventions, both those associated with Petrarchism and with political rhetoric dismembers and refigures the body politic. By manifesting as spectacular stage violence well-established metaphors drawn from lyric poetry and political theology, the play offers more than a royalist critique of Massaniello as a threat to the ordered social body, it attempts to reattach a monarchical head to this body as a part integrally connected to all the others through compassion. In the world of this play, blazon conventions do more than metaphorical violence to a female beloved they implicitly offer a set of instructions for the physical violence Flora must endure in order to be worthy of love. The play offers a different vision of the king's body, one in which the royal head cann.