“Aurea mediocritas” Deconstructed: Devouring the Social Body in The Bloody Banquet

Abstract

This article examines Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Bloody Banquet (c. 1609) as a radical interrogation of transgression, abjection, and power dynamics in Jacobean drama. It argues that the play’s staging of taboo violations – tyranny, sexual desire, and cannibalism – reflects a broader crisis of order and meaning in early modern English culture. Through a close reading of key scenes – particularly the grotesque bloody banquet – this article traces how the central characters – the transgressive Queen Thetis and the tyrannical Armatrites – paradoxically embody dynamics of excess and restraint, subversion and containment. The play’s portrayal of the erosion of social, political, and ontological boundaries challenges the early modern ideal of moderation, exposing the fragility of the self and the body politic amidst the radical destabilisation of stereotyped categories of identity and difference.