Sodomy and kingcraft in Urania and Antony and Cleopatra

Despite his description of sodomy as a horrible crime that a king is "bound in conscience neuer to forgiue," James I pursued the affections of a string of young and handsome "favourites" on whom he lavished gifts, titles, and power. Relying on the evidence of the King's own letters and frank comments from his Puritan critics, most historians assume that his relations with some of these men were sexual. The King's friendship with Robert Carr (who was later made Earl of Somerset), coupled with his estrangement from Queen Anne, may have been an inspiration for at least two literary accounts of kingship confounded by sex: Lady Mary Wroth's Urania (1621) and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (1608). Wroth describes a duke who is made politically vulnerable by his love for a young man that leaves him "issue-les." The rise and fall of this disloyal companion closely resembles that of Somerset and would seem to indicate Wroth's belief that the King's relationship with the Earl was sexual. Antony and Cleopatra is in many ways a reflection of Jacobean court extravagance and decadence. Cleopatra, despite her sex, seems to fill the same role in political and sexual scandal as did Somerset; and Antony's vacillation between pleasure and duty recalls a certain Renaissance discourse on sodomy and "kingcraft".