‘I say I must for I am the kings Shrieve’: magistrates invoking the monarch’s name in 1 Henry VI (1592) and The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon (1598)

This article examines the presentation of magistrates invoking the king’s name in two 1590s plays from the popular theatres. It examines what these moments of invoking the king’s name suggest about the state and its structure in these plays, linking the drama to recent historiography on the manifestation of the state in arrests and other magisterial interventions, conceptualizing the state as an entity that was performed into reality. It argues that both plays engage with anxiety over the succession, with little hope that a state without a strong monarch can function properly.