Knox contended that "the head hath [God] joined with the body, that from it, doth life and motion flow to the rest of the members" the extended metaphor continued, encoding the head as male, and the kingdom as female, thus when a King became ruler he was symbolically married to the realm. In traditional gender hierarchy, the male leader dominates over the female state, when there is a female head of state, the symbolic body is inverted, "For who would not judge that body to be a monster where there was no head eminent above the rest, but that the eyes were in the hands, the tongue and mouth beneath in the belly, and the ears in the feet?" However this damning paper was aimed primarily at Mary Tudor and Mary Stuart therefore to accommodate Elizabeth a body politic was created "out of a combination of faith, ingenuity and practical expediency" . Elizabeth further distended gender boundaries by frequently referring to herself in male pronouns as well as female. The concept of the body politic and redefining gender in the context of possessing two bodies, one male, the other female are inextricably entwined in The Old Arcadia. .
The Old Arcadia, through a series of surrogacies demonstrates the ideal of the body politic transferred from male to female, in similar circumstances to that of Elizabeth, culminating in an address by Cleophila to an unruly mob. Alfred Bill states that despite the "background of forest shepherd and shepherdesses, flocks and herds" political undercurrents make Arcadia "no true pastoral" , this is highly evident in Cleophila's speech. In accordance of the body politic as a concept which embodies "kingship", rather than the actual king, Cleophila assumes "the judgement seat of the duke" , and thus acts as a substitute for Basilius briefly adopting the responsibilities of a monarch. As Elizabeth is granted by God's permission "a body politic to govern" , so too Cleophila was destined by the Oracle to sit in Basilius's place: "And in thy throne a foreign state shall sit" .
