Shakespeare's Law PDF Free Download
1 / 34
/34
100%
SHAKESPEARE’S LAW
Mark Fortier
Routledge Studies in Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s Law
Shakespeare’s Law is a critical overview of law and legal issues within the
life, career, and works of William Shakespeare as well as those that arise
from the endless array of activities that happen today in the name of
Shakespeare. Mark Fortier argues that Shakespeare’s attitudes to law are
complex and not always sanguine, that there exists a deep and perhaps
ultimate move beyond law very different from what a lawyer or legal
scholar might recognize.
Fortier looks in detail at the legal issues most prominent across
Shakespeare’s work: status, inheritance, fraud, property, contract, tort
(especially slander), evidence, crime, political authority, trials, and the
relative value of law and justice. He also includes two detailed case studies,
of The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure, as well as a chapter
looking at law in works by Shakespeare’s contemporaries. The book
concludes with a chapter on the law as it relates to Shakespeare today.
The book shows that the legal issues in Shakespeare are often relevant to
issues we face now, and the exploration of law in Shakespeare is as germane
today, though in sometimes new ways, as in the past.
Mark Fortier is a Professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at
the University of Guelph, Canada. He has published widely on Shakespeare,
Theatre studies, and Law and Literature, including Adaptations of
Shakespeare, Theory/Theatre: An Introduction, and Literature and Law.
Routledge Studies in Shakespeare
The Shakespeare Multiverse
Fandom as Literary Praxis
Valerie M. Fazel and Louise Geddes
Shakespeare’s Returning Warriors – and Ours
Alan Warren Friedman
Shakespeare’s Inuence on Karl Marx
The Shakespearean Roots of Marxism
Christian A. Smith
Shakespeare and Happiness
Kathleen French
Shakespeare and Emotional Expression
Finding Feeling through Colour
Bríd Phillips
Aemilia Lanyer as Shakespeare’s Co-Author
Mark Bradbeer
Shakespeare’s Law
Mark Fortier
Shakespeare and the Grace of Words
Language, Theology, Metaphysics
Valentin Gerlier
Reading Robert Greene
Recovering Shakespeare’s Rival
Darren Freebury-Jones
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Studies-in-Shakespeare/book-series/RSS
Shakespeare’s Law
Mark Fortier
First published 2022
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2022 Mark Fortier
The right of Mark Fortier to be identied as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identication and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-90217-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-25319-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-02320-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003023203
Typeset in Sabon
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
Shakespeare in Law and Literature 2
1 Law in Shakespeare’s Life and Career 17
Law in Shakespeare’s Life 19
Law in Shakespeare’s Career 23
2 General Patterns 32
Status 33
Inheritance 43
Fraud 47
Property 49
Contract 54
Tort 56
Criminal Law 59
Constitutional Law 65
Judicial Procedure 75
The Value of Law and Justice 80
3 Case Study: The Merchant of Venice 90
Contract 90
Inheritance 98
Property 100
Status 106
Trial 108
Marital Rings 115
4 Case Study: Measure for Measure 118
Criminal Law 118
Criminals 122
Policing 125
Judges 127
Remedies 136
Contracts 138
Governance 142
5 Seven Short Readings of Non-Shakespearean Early-Modern
Plays 148
Doctor Faustus: Calvinism and the Principles of Contract
Law 149
The Tragedy of Mariam: Marriage and Tyranny 154
Volpone: Fraud on Trial 160
The Devil’s Law Case: The Legal Profession and Bad
Cases 165
The Old Law: Statute versus Natural Law 170
Swetnam, the Woman-Hater: Law and the Status of
Women 175
The Laws of Candy and The Lady’s Trial: Unhelpful Laws
and Unofcial Trials 180
6 Shakespeare and Law Now 187
Shakespeare as Author 188
Shakespeare as Property 192
Shakespeare and Censorship 194
Shakespeare and Social Justice 196
Shakespeare in Prison 199
Shakespeare and Legal Interpretation 204
Index 213
vi Contents
Acknowledgements
I have to thank the students who over the years have given me the fora to
work on my understanding of Shakespeare and, in the last few years,
especially Shakespeare and law. As usual, Routledge, especially Polly
Dodson, Zoe Meyer, and Bryony Reece, have provided a supportive,
rewarding, and trauma-free publishing experience. The University of
Guelph has given me the time and support necessary to write this book
and a fund to allow Hannah Hodgson to do the index My family is my
bedrock; I dedicate this book to all but want to mention expressly the ones
who are too young to have been named in earlier books: Felicia, Isadora,
Audrey, and Kaden.
Introduction
This book is intended to be a coherent, serious, and relatively accessible
account, even-handed but with an individual critical personality, to an area
of ongoing concern in Shakespeare studies and Law and Literature studies,
an introductory overview of the relations between Shakespeare and law.
What is the point of an interest in Shakespeare and law? Why should a
lawyer be interested in Shakespeare? My limited legal training and en-
gagement with the legal profession do not provide the knowledge to give
that question a serious answer. I leave that to others, especially those
coming to Shakespeare from the legal side. Why anyone who is not a
lawyer, anyone who is interested in literature and Shakespeare, would be
interested in law—this I have thoughts about. Some involved in literary
studies may toy with the idea of getting into law, as I once did, and lit-
erature provides an engaging access point; law is material for interesting
stories and problems and Shakespeare uses it in this way. Most of all, and
despite their acute differences, law and literature are often interested in the
same things—justice, guilt, evidence, property, the agreements we make
with each other, the bias of others and ourselves, our sense of our identities,
freedom and responsibility, right and wrong. The study of Shakespeare
through a Law and Literature lens (I prefer to think of it as a Literature and
Law lens) is not something specialized and esoteric, at least not at its heart,
but is rather a way—one among others—to get one’s mind around things at
the basis of Shakespeare’s work and our own lives. To dispel any sense of
universalist and dogmatic harmony, let me assert that what is at the heart
of people’s lives is a matter of great contention, and often law and
Shakespeare help one to get at the heart of things only by contrasting what
one nds there with what one takes to be most important. I am not claiming
that law gets at everything important in Shakespeare or that Shakespeare
gets at everything important in our lives. But there would be no point in
studying law and Shakespeare if they didn’t resonate with some things some
of us take to be central concerns of human life as we experience it, espe-
cially in its communal aspects.
For a book such as this, there are only so many titles to go around, and
all of them have been taken at least once: there is Shakespeare and Law, at
DOI: 10.4324/9781003023203-1
least three volumes entitled Shakespeare and the Law, The Law in
Shakespeare, and a long while back, Shakespeare’s Law. I have chosen to
borrow this last title for my own book. It hasn’t been used as recently as the
others and it captures the idea that law and the interest in law is not here
independent and free-standing but rather an entity constituted by and
arising in and for all things Shakespearean. This is especially true of the
text-based chapters, where law is not law as it exists in the world but
something imaginary and largely ctional. But even in the rst and last
chapters, where the law discussed is real existing law, it is of interest only as
far as it has relevance to Shakespeare.
Shakespeare’s Law puts the emphasis squarely on Shakespeare. Some of
the Law and Literature studies discussed below, especially those by legal
scholars, are largely concerned with the question what can Shakespeare tell
us about, or help us see in the law. Coming as I do from the literary side, my
primary question is what can law help us see and understand about
Shakespeare. Of course, there is an underlying assumption that the critical
study of Shakespeare and law can then show us something about ourselves.
Shakespeare in Law and Literature
Let me begin with a short review of existing works on Shakespeare and law,
though limited to book-length and relatively current studies and in no way
complete even within those parameters. My aim is twofold: to provide a
brief digest for anyone who seeks a quick take on the eld and to situate my
own contributions with this book within that eld.
There is a lengthy prehistory to the current interest in Shakespeare and
law within the Law and Literature movement and within literary studies
more generally. The 18th-century editor of Shakespeare Edward Malone
used notes from the 18th-century jurist William Blackstone in his annota-
tions to Shakespeare’s collected works. In the later 19th century and early
20th century, there was a renewed interest in Shakespeare’s use of law in his
works, largely as evidence toward the question as to whether a layman such
as Shakespeare could have written the plays or whether it had to have been
a legal professional, such as Francis Bacon, who had been Lord Chancellor
(see Campbell, Davis, Greenwood, and Barton). Inasmuch as Shakespeare’s
ability or inability to have written the plays credited to him is the focus of
these works, their interest is in Shakespeare’s historical moment, and their
approach therefore can be called historicist, rather than presentist, whereby
our interest in Shakespeare arises from what his work means now. This
distinction and tension run throughout my study.
I am not at all drawn to the debate over who wrote Shakespeare. Rather
what I take as most important and enduring in these texts is that, in their
own way, they all address the fundamental and overarching question: given
the striking number of references to law in Shakespeare, what is to be made
of them?
2 Introduction
Turning to our own time, what is the place of Shakespeare in Law and
Literature studies in general and how is his work interpreted? A quick
answer would be that Shakespeare’s place is substantial and that while the
literature is compendious and varied, certain concerns and plays are re-
current, even dominant.
The book most often taken as initiating the current ongoing interest in
Law and Literature is James Boyd White’s The Legal Imagination, rst
published as a massive textbook for law students in 1973, now much more
available as an abridged edition minus most of the cases and supporting
texts. White’s book is an attempt to open up the legal mind to ways of
thinking that have remained outside it, specically humanist and literary
understandings of language, character, and judgement. There is a rather
modest amount of Shakespeare in White’s work, and the Shakespeare re-
ferred to is not what one might have expected. White uses one work by
Shakespeare, among works by many others, in each of the book’s main
sections. The rst section focuses on the kind of language used in different
contexts. In large part this is to expand a law student’s understanding of the
effectiveness, unmarked limitations, and untapped possibilities of legal
language: “Now think about people you know in the law: what relation-
ships do they have with the language of the law? How do these relation-
ships affect their relationships with people? You must know one of two
who seem to be lawyers and nothing else” (46). Legal language works in a
courtroom, usually, but may not be of service in the world at large, where
legal language might be ineffective as a mode of persuasion and through its
terminology may also straitjacket one’s understanding. As an illustration of
the way language systems create and limit understanding, White looks at
Troilus and Cressida (41–46). Troilus uses the language of romantic love,
which denes his being and understanding in the world. Cressida avoids the
language of love but eventually accepts it, even though it doesn’t really suit
her. Ulysses uses language systems interchangeably without being invested
in any or worried about their connection to truth. Each of these approaches
to language constitutes a different kind of failure, a failure to engage fully
with all the possibilities and a further failure in the way different language
systems keep the characters from really hearing each other.
In the second section of White’s book, there is a discussion of Antony in
Antony and Cleopatra (163–65). This section of the book concerns the
presentation of character. Our social and civic life calls for effective ways of
assessing other human beings. Law mostly relies on caricature: a stream-
lined version of a person focussed on only those aspects pertinent to the
legal question at hand. In addition, the legal caricature focuses on guilt or
innocence, fault or victimhood, right and wrong. Antony is a mass of
contradictions and inconsistencies impossible to reduce to a simple judge-
ment. He abandons the masculinist, rational, Roman life for the allure and
pleasures of feminine Egypt:
Introduction 3
There is no single true view of him or Cleopatra; the truth shifts
constantly as they dene themselves anew, for the moment. The play
entertains the most enormous possibilities for both, and what we
perceive at the end is not the death of an understood or comprehended
man, but the extinction of a world of possibilities. (164)
As such, Antony is beyond the purview of a common legal understanding of
character, which constitutes a limitation and potential vulnerability in legal
judgment.
The third section of White’s book concerns, in part, the judge coming to
meaning and opinion. Literary texts can complicate the sense of a conclu-
sion in a way that can trouble the legal imagination and its need for
decision-making. One of the texts he discusses in this section is The
Winter’s Tale, specically the contrast between the ending of the rst half of
the play and the ending of the second half. White writes: “In The Winter’s
Tale Shakespeare qualies the sense of an ending by writing two plays with
inconsistent endings….Which is the ‘real’ ending? The ambivalence is de-
liberate and makes such a question impossible” (257–58).
Three things to note: the plays, or at least the elements of the plays, White
chooses to discuss are not explicitly concerned with law (indeed he says
nothing about the plays and scenes with more obvious legal content), but
they have resonance (albeit sometimes jarring) with legal thinking
nonetheless—thus law can resonate with and learn from literary texts not
explicitly connected to legal concerns; there isn’t that much Shakespeare in
White’s book—less than 10 pages; there is as much Dickens and Conrad
(but no Dostoevsky or Kafka, two of the mainstays of Law and Literature
studies)—somewhat surprising for anyone looking back from the promi-
nence Shakespeare has consequently assumed in the eld; nally, there is
nothing historicist about White’s approach—reading the plays as taking
their meaning from their own past moment—but nor is his approach ex-
plicitly presentist: there are no connections made with narrowly current
issues and mores and the focus is on basic and ongoing issues in law.
Two other foundational texts in Law and Literature make somewhat
more use of Shakespeare. Richard Posner, in the conclusion to his Law and
Literature, lists the literary works he thinks most suitable for the study of
Law and Literature (which are the texts he has tended to focus on himself).
There are ve plays by Shakespeare: Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear,
Measure for Measure, and The Merchant of Venice. No other writer has as
many works on the list, although Kafka has four (547–48). Posner claims
that, unlike White, he is specically interested in plays that deal with actual
legal material, but the plays he focuses on, and the aspects of these plays
that interest him, are not always of narrowly legal concern, although their
import can be applicable to law.
Posner sees Hamlet with its revenge plot and Hamlet’s ambivalence to-
ward revenge as a play about the absence of a working legal system—both
4 Introduction
Claudius and Hamlet are, he surmises, above the law—and revenge as a
problematic substitute for the rule of law. Hamlet’s ambivalence sets the
play against the more enthusiastic revenge tragedies of Shakespeare’s con-
temporaries, and the play is a thought-provoking study of the need for a
valid system of law (103–23). King Lear is an exploration of natural
law—more on that to come—as a basis for law, morality, and judgment
(135–39). Measure for Measure shows how different understandings of law
lead to different interpretations of the actions of the play as founded in
either legal principles or arbitrary lawlessness (154–63). So far, Posner’s
readings deal with general jurisprudence and questions about the nature of
law. More narrowly, the funeral speeches of Brutus and Antony in Julius
Caesar are object lessons in what works or doesn’t work in courtroom
advocacy and persuasion (450–55). The Merchant of Venice shows that law
is not so much about following legal principles or principles of equity (the
loosening of legal rigour), but rather using whatever arguments are avail-
able to win your case (137–63). None of these analyses are historicist, but
Posner returns to Measure for Measure (he could have used a large number
of other plays by Shakespeare) to show the differences between copyright
law and practices in Shakespeare’s time and modern copyright law and how
Shakespeare could not have written what he wrote if he were constrained
by the copyright law we know (526–27). Inasmuch as this leads Posner to
question the efcacy of modern copyright law, this section is both histori-
cist and presentist at once.
Richard Weisberg’s Poethics is another fundamental text in Law and
Literature. Weisberg’s focus is on canonical works of the 19th and 20th
centuries—Dickens, Dostoevsky, Melville, Kafka, Faulkner—and Shakespeare,
most predominantly The Merchant of Venice. Weisberg argues on behalf of
Shylock’s Jewish commitment to law against Christian equity, which Weisberg
calls arbitrariness, playing fast and loose with the rules, often in service of self-
interest, vengefulness—here taking the form of racial animosity—and injustice
(206–10).
As varied as the use of Shakespeare in these volumes is, later general
studies of Law and Literature expand the range of applications. Ian Ward
focusses on Shakespeare’s interest in issues of constitutional law: abso-
lutism or mixed monarchy; legitimacy; succession; the problem of dealing
with ineffectual rulers or tyrants (59–89). Ward analyzes these issues as
they play out in Richard III, King John, and, especially, Richard II,
“Shakespeare’s most compelling investigation into constitutional thought”
(80). Shakespeare’s period was one of great upheaval and confusion in
politics and political theory, and Ward’s conclusion is that “Shakespeare
shared and articulated, many of the uncertainties of his time” (89). This
interest in Shakespeare and constitutional law has since been taken up by
others, most notably by Paul Rafeld in several book-length studies, most
centrally in Shakespeare’s Imaginary Constitution (see also Andrew
Hadeld). Shakespeare is the only canonical writer given an entire chapter
Introduction 5
by Ward, although contemporary authors Ivan Klima and Umberto Eco are
each given chapter-length analyses and substantial space is given to Camus
and Kafka. Kieran Dolan in A Critical Introduction to Law and Literature
discusses the contract and court case in The Merchant of Venice and con-
cludes that contract and law “become the pretext for vindictive uses of
power, an instrument of domination,” a “deployment of legal violence”
(94). Dolan aligns his reading with Weisberg (232n92), but whereas
Weisberg casts the injustice in terms of Nietzschean ressentiment, Dolan
writes of the “ideological interests behind the law” (94), which puts his
understanding in a rather different light, in keeping with the current (for
some time now) literary focus on literature’s examination of and complicity
with social politics. Law is in this way not taken on its own terms but
viewed from without. Both Ward and Dolan’s approaches are pre-
dominantly historicist, locating Shakespeare’s legal interests within the
circumstances and limitations of his own period.
Dolin is the rst author in my discussion whose disciplinary dedication is
primarily to literature rather than to law. From here on this survey becomes
more focussed on literary than on legal scholars.
Elizabeth Anker and Bernadette Meyler’s edited collection New
Directions in Law and Literature features only passing references and short
discussions of Shakespeare, the most notable of which is in Elizabeth
Emens’ chapter on alternative forms of marriage: she illustrates one alter-
native she calls renewable marriage with a discussion of The Winter’s Tale,
which she compares, in a presentist turn, to the complexities of married life
in contemporary America (301–4). A fuller and more historicist account of
Shakespeare and marriage, which has become a major topic for law and
Shakespeare, is B.J. Sokol and Mary Sokol’s Shakespeare, Law, and
Marriage. The collection Teaching Law and Literature, edited by Austin
Sarat and others, includes Elliott Visconsi’s engaging discussion (the rst
piece in the case studies section) of teaching law in Measure for Measure,
which he suggests is more interesting than the standard choice, The
Merchant of Venice. Visconsi focusses on equity, a necessary leeway to vary
from law when law would create injustice, on which he has a more positive
perspective than Richard Weisberg. He argues both for the need for equity
to correct the rigour and severity of Angelo and that the Duke’s concluding
erratic judgments do nothing to provide equity; it is left up to the audience
to gure out what would be equitable (279–87). Both the place of equity in
Shakespeare and his use of the audience as (equitable) jury are important
ongoing aspects of Shakespeare in Law and Literature.
To conclude: Shakespeare appears regularly, more often than other
writers although in no way overwhelmingly, in general studies of Law and
Literature. An abiding set of concerns appears: marriage, contract, the
constitution, equity, judgment, injustice, persuasion, ambivalence, a com-
plexity that outruns simplistic legal reasoning and decision-making. The
understanding of these concerns is developed more fully in monographs and
6 Introduction
collections specically dedicated to Shakespeare and Law. Some works
mentioned above focus on a particular aspect of law—Rafeld on
Shakespeare and constitutional law, Sokol and Sokol on marriage law;
other works are pitched more broadly.
As with Rafeld and the Sokols, books focussed on Shakespeare and law
have had a decidedly historicist slant. Brian Jay Corrigan in his Playhouse
Law in Shakespeare’s World, for instance, sees the goal of his study as “re-
capturing the essence of the time” (17) and “asking what [the legal imagery]
tells us about the play and the world in which the playwright wrote” (19).
Rather than a general overview, Corrigan’s book focusses on a set of varied
but specic concerns. The rst two chapters deal with the theatre industry’s
place in its time, rst the relations of theatre to the Inns of Court, the law
schools of their time where Shakespeare’s company is known to have per-
formed A Comedy of Errors and later Twelfth Night, and then the property
law concerning the ownership and sale of theatres themselves. Corrigan then
focusses on two legal matters that are dealt with in particular plays. First he
looks at trusts in The Merchant of Venice, explaining what transpires with
Antonio and Shylock’s property at the conclusion of the courtroom scene, an
explanation I will turn to later, and in Antony and Cleopatra where the trust
relationship is used metaphorically to allow Antony to give himself to Rome
but have his love remain in trust to Cleopatra (another way of seeing
Antony’s complexity of character noted earlier by White). Corrigan also
examines the somewhat arcane law of marital contracts to elucidate the
status of the betrothals in Measure for Measure. In dwelling largely on The
Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure he maintains a stubbornly
recurrent tendency in the study of Shakespeare and law.
Andrew Zurcher’s monograph Shakespeare and Law is an overview of
the law and/in Shakespeare—“an introduction to this eld of study” (2), he
calls it—structured in a broad sense much like Corrigan’s book. There is
rst a chapter on the law as it related to Shakespeare’s personal and pro-
fessional life and the legal culture, especially the Inns of Court, that theatre
regularly engaged with. Zurcher works by analyzing a range of topics each
through a small number of plays. Most prominent are As You Like It,
Hamlet, the histories, and of course, Measure for Measure and The
Merchant of Venice. One of Zurcher’s ongoing concerns is the tension
between an older order, historically feudal, based on conscience, trust, love,
gift, and inheritance (really somewhat of a fantasy), and a new modern era
founded in contract and self-interest (this tension is mapped in Marxist
terms in Walter Cohen’s Drama of a Nation)—thus Zurcher’s approach is
largely historicist. For Shakespeare and his contemporaries law provided a
way of framing their understanding of this tension through questions of
interest, interpretation, and judgment (3), a tension that manifests itself in
the perplexity and anguish expressed in the sonnets, the tension between
court and Arden in As You Like It, and Hamlet dealing with a world out of
joint. For Zurcher this framing goes some way towards answering “a more
Introduction 7
fundamental critical problem: what was it that attracted Shakespeare to
legal ideas, generally?” (2).
As a collection by a range of contributors, Constance Jordan and Karen
Cunningham’s edited collection, The Law in Shakespeare, is more varied and
incidental, although still widely historicist. Among the plays focussed on are
The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure—hardly surprising—but
also Titus Andronicus (justice and revenge), Richard II (land law), Henry VI
(inheritance; the administration of justice), Othello (the protection of heir-
esses), Much Ado about Nothing (slander), Hamlet (equity), Macbeth (con-
stitutional law), and Coriolanus (Roman law). Allen Boyer explores the
deceptive and conniving aspects of rhetoric in the theatre and the courtroom.
Throughout there is a practice of seeing the plays as echoing particular early
modern statutes and legal realities. Paul Rafeld and Gary Watt’s edited
collection, Shakespeare and the Law, is similarly varied but tries to tie matters
together by grouping the essays around a few topics: contract, women, love,
royal prerogative, violence, and The Merchant of Venice, which is the central
concern of four chapters. Other plays prominently discussed include A
Comedy of Errors, Measure for Measure, The Tempest, Hamlet, King Lear,
and Titus Andronicus (which is the subject of two chapters). Although many
of the essays are decidedly historicist—Carolyn Sale does work tying Hamlet
to statutes and cases of the period in both this collection and Jordan and
Cunningham’s—some of the contributions here open up a history of recep-
tion and ways that Shakespeare’s work resonates with more current concerns.
It is noteworthy that both Richard Weisberg and Ian Ward are contributors
to Rafeld and Watt’s collection; indeed lawyers and law professors join
with literary scholars in both collections, more markedly so in Rafeld and
Watt, thus bringing to fruition the interdisciplinary dialogue that Law and
Literature at its best promises.
This interdisciplinary exchange is even more impressive in Bradin Cormack,
Martha Nussbaum, and Richard Strier’s collection Shakespeare and the Law,
which is subtitled A Conversation among Disciplines and Professions.
Cormack and Strier are English professors and Nussbaum is a professor of
law. Among the noteworthy contributors are four judges, including Richard
Posner, discussed above, and Steven Breyer from the U.S. Supreme Court!
There are also highly respected contributors from English, philosophy, and
classics. Indeed the interdisciplinarity of Law and Literature is an explicit topic
in the collection. At its best such interdisciplinary dialogue leads all sides to
insights and understandings they would not have been able to reach on their
own. Among the plays focussed on are, once again, Measure for Measure and
The Merchant of Venice. From a literary perspective perhaps the most en-
lightening discussion is Posner and Charles Fried’s attempt to render judgment
in the suit of Shylock as if it were an actual legal case, thus bringing a legal
rigour to their analysis that is not always at work in literary discussions
(147–63). They struggle to read the case strictly within a historical context, not
always succeeding. Nussbaum discusses the rule of law in Julius Caesar
8 Introduction
(256–81). The rule of law is so basic that it is often possible to ignore or
overlook it as a topic of concern in Law and Literature, except, that is, when it
is misused or falls apart and absents itself; then it becomes a fundamental
focus. Although some of the contributors do historicist work grounding the
plays in their time of composition—Richard McAdams has a thought-
provoking discussion of early-modern criminal law in Othello that I will refer
to in a later chapter (121–43)—there is also highly presentist work, as when
Dianne Wood draws from Shakespeare lessons for a judge working today
(282–99).
The monographs and collections I have been discussing are scholarly and
academic. Given Shakespeare’s interest to a more general public, there are also
works that take up Shakespeare and law in a more popular and accessible
fashion (though not exactly light reading). Daniel J. Kornstein’s Kill All The
Lawyers?, originally published in 1994, deserves pride of place. Kornstein is a
practicing lawyer and Shakespeare amateur—in the best sense (Shakespeare
“belongs most of all to the educated amateur” [xiv])—with a deep commit-
ment to the humanities and a belief in the wide appeal of Shakespeare.
Kornstein had something of an “epiphany” (xii) watching a Joseph Papp
Shakespeare in the Park production of Measure for Measure:
as the large number of legal issues…began to strike me for the rst time.
I was stunned, surprised, and amazed at how many basic problems that
still face judges and lawyers and everyone else were raised four
centuries ago by the play. (xi–xi)
(Kornstein acknowledges the, probably inevitable and necessary, primacy
of this play and The Merchant of Venice in studies of Shakespeare and
Law.) He lists some of the legal issues addressed in Shakespeare’s plays:
“revenge, equity, government, the nature of the state, the nature and
transfer of power, inheritance, and contracts” (xii). Indeed, Kornstein, as-
serts, “one could well employ the plays’ texts to teach law.”
Kornstein’s interests are presentist rather than historicist: his purpose is
to identify major legal themes in Shakespeare “and their modern relevance
and implications in an attempt to engage current moral and social issues”
(xvi); “I try to connect Shakespeare and law to our contemporary scene.”
His book is lled with engaging contemporary anecdotes. If there is a strong
through-line in Kornstein’s discussions, it can be inferred from the question
mark in his title: his interest is in examining “the role of law in society”
(133), when and how is law a good thing and when and how can it be a bad
thing. The critique of law as sometimes unhelpful and unjust opens up an
important facet in understanding Shakespeare’s representation of law, al-
though Kornstein’s book, with some caveats, is ultimately a celebration of
Shakespeare, law, and Law and Literature.
Kornstein structures his book by chapters each focussed on one of 12
plays and one issue: Much Ado about Nothing and slander, or The Winter’s
Introduction 9
Tale and a fair trial, for instance; like Ian Ward many years later (Ward
2016), Kornstein nds an exemplar of the good judge in the Chief Justice in
Henry IV (135–42). A later book structured in a similar way and that mines
the same more popular vein is Kenji Yoshino’s A Thousand Times More
Fair. Yoshino is a law professor with a BA in English and a “lifelong
Shakespeare devotee” (x)—the reverse of myself, he has a strong training in
law and a more rudimentary training in literary studies. Like Kornstein his
analyses of Shakespeare’s plays make regular reference to our own
time—his chapter on The Merchant of Venice ends with a discussion of Bill
Clinton’s hair-splitting in his testimony in the Monica Lewinsky enquiry
(52–57), and his chapter on Measure for Measure with a discussion of
Barack Obama’s defence of empathy during the conrmation hearings for
Sonia Sotomayor’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court (83–88) (this is
very much an American book). He states, “I am struck by how many
contemporary issues of justice Shakespeare does illuminate” (xiii). Like
Kornstein, Yoshino proceeds through chapters each on a single play and a
single issue. In his Introduction Yoshino provides a sense of the range of
connections he makes:
I look at how Titus Andronicus illuminates our current engagements in
Afghanistan and Iraq because it describes how revenge cycles escalate
when no credible central authority exists. I look at how the white glove
in Othello can be compared to the black glove in the O.J. Simpson trial,
as both forms of “ocular proof” wrongly overwhelmed all other
evidence of guilt or innocence. I look at The Tempest as an exemplary
instance of an omnipotent ruler voluntarily surrendering power…,
asking who is willing to do that for us today. (xii)
What about Shakespeare’s contemporaries? What is their place in Law
and Literature? To sample only book-length studies in this regard is even
more incomplete than sticking to book-length studies of Shakespeare in-
asmuch as Shakespeare’s contemporaries, even as a conglomerate, are much
less likely to be the object of book-length works and more likely to be
studied in discrete journal articles. In the general studies and collections of
Law and Literature discussed above, from White to Sarat, there are next to
no discussions of Shakespeare’s contemporaries (there are a few pages here
and there on Christopher Marlowe and fewer still on Ben Jonson). Of the
books on Shakespeare discussed above, only Corrigan’s has substantial
discussions of Shakespeare’s contemporaries: there are sections, for in-
stance, on Ben Jonson and trust (113–27), Thomas Middleton and trust and
marriage contracts (127–30, 181–87), and John Webster and marriage
contracts (177–81).
There are, nonetheless, a handful of books dedicated to law and early-
modern drama in general. Two of the most noteworthy are monographs
10 Introduction
dedicated to a particular legal concern and the way drama drew upon law
to develop a more sophisticated presentation of human interaction. Luke
Wilson’s Theaters of Intention explores the ways early-modern drama in-
teracts with legal notions of intention. He mentions in passing mens rea,
criminal intention, but his focus is more on contracts and promises: the
contract between playwright and audience at the beginning of Jonson’s
Bartholomew Fair and the contract with the devil in Marlowe’s Doctor
Faustus, each of which is given a chapter. Lorna Hutson’s The Invention of
Suspicion is concerned with the way Renaissance drama takes up forensics,
the sophisticated legal consideration of evidence. She looks at plays where a
crime has taken place or a false accusation has been made: Thomas Kyd’s
The Spanish Tragedy and Jonson’s Every Man In his Humour. In Jonson,
she notes the engagement in the Prologue with the audience over whether a
bombastic rhetoric of persuasion or a careful rhetoric of engagement is the
best way to gure out what really happened (324–25)—a question more
than relevant in our own time. Both Wilson and Hutson deal in detail with
a small number of Shakespeare’s contemporaries but largely still focus on
Shakespeare: Wilson on Hamlet and Timon of Athens; Hutson on Hamlet,
Much Ado About Nothing, and Titus Andronicus.
Inasmuch as the works of Shakespeare’s contemporaries have much less
current popular presence than Shakespeare’s do, there is an even stronger
tendency for the approach to these plays to be historicist.
Although it has explicit connections with Wilson on intention and
Hutson on evidence, Subha Mukherji’s Law and Representation in Early
Modern Drama has a somewhat more general and varied interest in the
relations between law and drama. “Few periods or kinds of literature,” she
writes, “show such a deep and comprehensive engagement with” law (2).
Mukherji here expands what has been said of Shakespeare to include his
contemporaries. Mukherji insists on a complex interplay between law and
drama, as opposed to what one could infer from Wilson and Hutson as a
straightforward inuence from one to the other, and demonstrates both
“similarity and critical distance” (5): one of the representations of law in
early-modern plays is suspicion and disapproval: law is a hydra’s head,
bewildering and dangerous (233), or a labyrinth (239ff); in many plays law
thwarts justice. Mukherji focusses on marriage, adultery, and gender issues
in Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, Thomas Middleton
and William Rowley’s The Changeling, and John Webster’s The Devil’s
Law Case and The White Devil. She also notes the commonplace idea of the
audience as judge or jury: “Dramatists such as Kyd, Marlowe, Shakespeare,
Jonson, and Webster repeatedly open up the action of their plays, explicitly
or implicitly, to the judgement, even ‘sentence,’ of the theatre audience” (1).
Another collection dedicated to law and early-modern drama is Solon
and Thespis, edited by Dennis Kezar. As a collection, this book has no less
of a through-line than the monographs just discussed. Kezar’s starting point
Introduction 11
is an ancient Greek anecdote about Solon the lawmaker calling Thespis the
actor a liar (1). The book’s concerns are largely about the antagonism be-
tween law and literature—theatre criticizes law just as law criticizes
theatre—and also attempts to bridge and reconcile. The rst section fo-
cusses on Jonson, on the representation of a trial in Poetaster and Volpone,
and on the tension between legal rigour and the free-owing fair economy
in Bartholomew Fair. For Kezar Jonson is a critic of theatre and wants to
bring about a new theatre with the discipline and integrity of law. As
theatre critiquing law, Kezar’s essay on the multi-authored The Witch of
Edmonton treats the play as an attack on the legal persecution of witchcraft
and metatheatrically, on the theatre audience’s susceptibility to being car-
ried along in this injustice (124–160). Debora Shuger in a more general and
law-friendly discussion argues that censorship laws of the time were not
politically repressive so much as bona de attempts to keep theatres from
defaming people. In the epilogue to the volume, Deak Nabors argues
through legal theory that what is unsatisfactory in the law is inextricably
connected to what gives law its integrity.
As a nal area of study, there has been a developing movement over the
last few decades—addressed in my last chapter—to think of Shakespeare
not as a particular man or even as the plays he wrote but rather as every-
thing we do in the name of Shakespeare, his own works, derivative works,
criticism, performance, merchandise, and so forth, over time and into the
present. I know of no books focussed specically on law and Shakespeare in
this current, expansive sense, although there are a few articles in collections
and journals referenced in my last chapter that touch upon aspects of law
and this conglomerate. There are also books by Hillary Eklund and Wendy
Beth Hyman and by David Ruiter on Shakespeare and social justice, a
concern both legal and outside law.
What observations are to be made after this review of the literature? An
original interest by legal scholars in Shakespeare and law as something
constructive for lawyers and as part of a larger focus on the interplay of law
and literature has been taken up by literary scholars who have produced
book-length studies dedicated specically to Shakespeare and law. All of
this work arises from a recognition of the striking amount of legal content
there is in Shakespeare (and in his contemporary dramatists). Certain plays
are most often focussed on—The Merchant of Venice, Measure for
Measure, Hamlet, the histories, especially Richard II—but many others are
regularly or occasionally called forth. Certain issues are addressed most
often but not exclusively: marriage, contract, equity, the constitution, trials,
slander, evidence, intention, the reader or audience as jury. The literary
studies are predominantly historicist, exploring the ways Shakespeare’s
plays were situated in and take up as content legal realities of their time.
The studies from the law side are more likely to be presentist in their in-
terests, in the way situations in Shakespeare relate to situations in law
12 Introduction
today, and this is especially true of the more popular studies by Kornstein
and Yoshino. Despite an occasional critique of the law, or of Shakespeare,
most of this work is accepting, even celebratory, of both. There is some
material on Shakespeare’s contemporaries but exponentially less than there
is on Shakespeare.
And what about my book? How does it t in? The only other work that
explicitly presents itself as an introduction is Zurcher’s Shakespeare and
Law. Shakespeare’s Law is somewhat different, in its level of accessibility,
in what material it covers, and how it goes about covering it. Zurcher
doesn’t look at Shakespeare’s contemporaries or at Shakespeare in the
present; my book tries to be more of a big tent. I deal broadly with almost
all of Shakespeare’s plays, though focussing, as most do, on The Merchant
of Venice and Measure for Measure. In its level of accessibility and its
presentist concerns, Shakespeare’s Law has some afnity with Kornstein
and Yoshino’s books, though we differ on many things. Indeed the bulk of
my study is much more presentist than Zurcher’s and most other literary
studies. Let me say a bit more about my presentism. I began this book
thinking that I was swimming against the literary stream in my presentist
focus; I show in the last chapter, however, that literary studies including
Shakespeare studies (and even Shakespeare and Law) have taken a pre-
sentist turn, largely arising from an overarching interest in social justice.
My own presentist tendencies (I have done historicist analysis in the past)
come from my previous work on adaptations of Shakespeare (the whole
point of adaptation is to make something work in a new context) and
theatre—one puts on a play, in the vast majority of cases, because, even if it
is old, it can be made to come alive and speak in the present. So I nd
myself, if out of sync with the Shakespeare and Law studies that have
preceded mine, more in tune with the general presentist moment (for more
on Shakespeare and presentism, see Grady and Hawkes). Like Muhkerji
and Kezar, especially, I treat Shakespeare’s relation to law as somewhat
antagonistic. In this age of striving for social justice, I am less sanguine and
celebratory about law, which in Shakespeare’s time as in our own has been
more than capable of fostering injustice (although I also see in Shakespeare
a deep fear of lawlessness), and even though I have dedicated much of my
career to Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s presentation of law and justice is not
one I could always adopt as my own.
Many of the issues I address are the ones others have addressed before
me, although I hope I give them my own interpretation and provide new
ways of focussing: contract, marriage, constitutional law, slander, in-
heritance, evidence, trials, and judgment. I also contribute a different set of
concerns: status (through class, gender, and family position the most
dominant and controlling legal category in the plays if not in society), fraud
(I think it was an exasperation with our own time that made me so acutely
aware of the ubiquity of lies and fraud in Shakespeare), gift-giving (the
Introduction 13
prime mode of exchange in Shakespeare’s plays), murder (there is so much
of it), nascent human rights (an area of law I am particularly drawn to),
remedies (that’s the point of law, really), and the limits of justice as a value
and law as a solution: like many characters in Shakespeare, I’d rather be
happy than just.
Here is an outline of the chapters that follow. Chapter one provides an
overview of the historical individual Shakespeare’s personal and profes-
sional engagements with law, especially the laws that had a direct impact on
theatre. As such, this chapter is inescapably historicist in approach and
somewhat discrete from the chapters that follow. The next three chapters
present two ways of reading Shakespeare’s play texts, through extensive
and intensive reading. The long overview chapter of the legal interests in
Shakespeare’s work as a whole is an extensive reading, not looking at legal
issues in a particular play but across them all. In proceeding in this way I am
doing something not common in literary studies and I think, therefore,
making a unique contribution. In large part, this long chapter works in the
tradition of Shakespeare as thinker (see, for example, Nuttall, McGinn,
Bevington, Lupton, and Bate), specically a thinker about law. The next
two chapters are intensive readings of the two plays that have been the
primary focus in the study of Shakespeare and Law: The Merchant of
Venice and Measure for Measure. The primacy of these plays and the
wealth of legal issues they raise make it almost essential to write about them
in an introductory volume. My approach to them, however, is somewhat
different from what one might expect in a scholarly discussion: rather than
focussing on a particular legal aspect—contract in The Merchant of Venice
or marriage law in Measure for Measure, for example—I map the breadth
and variety of legal interests in each play. These three chapters move away
from historicism and the particulars of early-modern England to dwell on
legal matters that continue to be relevant, even if Shakespeare’s presenta-
tion of them is in part time-bound and very different from attitudes and
understandings in our own time. In this way, my analysis starts to take a
presentist turn. Shakespeare was not unique or alone in his time in writing
plays grounded in law. Chapter ve consists of seven shorter readings of
plays by Shakespeare’s contemporaries, in an attempt to introduce the
reader to legal interests in other early-modern plays, interests that relate to,
yet are not always the same as, or dealt with in the same way as these
interests in Shakespeare. The sixth and nal chapter deals with Shakespeare
now, what has been called the Shakespeare industry or rhizome, and how
what is done under the name of Shakespeare continues to be affected by
law, but in different ways from in the past. Here my book plants both feet
rmly in presentism. All these chapters taken together are intended to cover
a range of ways of thinking about Shakespeare and law, from the bio-
graphical through textual interpretation to current conditions of reception.
In this way, I seek to introduce not a unied and closed area of study but
rather one open to a wide range of possibilities and approaches.
14 Introduction
Bibliography
Anker, Elizabeth S., and Bernadette Meyler, eds. New Directions in Law and
Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Barton, Dunbar Plunkett. Shakespeare and the Law. Boston: Houghton Mifin
Company, 1929.
Bevington, David. Shakespeare’s Ideas: More Things in Heaven and Earth.
Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008.
Campbell, John. Shakespeare’s Legal Acquirements Considered. New York: D.
Appleton and Company, 1859.
Cohen, Walter. Drama of a Nation: Public Theater in Renaissance England and
Spain. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Cormack, Bradin, Martha C. Nussbaum, and Richard Strier, eds. Shakespeare and
the Law: A Conversation among Disciplines and Professions. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Corrigan, Brian Jay. Playhouse Law in Shakespeare’s World. Madison, Wisconsin:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004.
Davis, Cushman K. The Law in Shakespeare. Second edition. Saint Paul: West
Publishing Company, 1884.
Dolan, Kieran. A Critical Introduction to Law and Literature. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Eklund, Hillary, and Wendy Beth Hyman. Teaching Social Justice Through
Shakespeare: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2019.
Emens, Elizabeth. “Regulatory Fictions: On Marriage and Countermarriage.”
Anker and Meyler, eds. New Directions in Law and Literature. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2017. 294–312.
Grady, Hugh, and Terence Hawkes, eds. Presentist Shakespeares. Milton Park,
Abingdon: Routledge, 2007.
Greenwood, George. Shakespeare’s Law. Hartford: Edwin Valentine Mitchell, 1920.
Hadeld, Andrew. Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics. London: Arden Shakespeare,
2004.
Hutson, Lorna. The Invention of Suspicion: Law and Mimesis in Shakespeare and
Renaissance Drama. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Jordan, Constance, and Karen Cunningham, eds. The Law in Shakespeare.
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Kezar, Dennis, ed. Solon and Thespis: Law and Theatre in the English Renaissance.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.
Kornstein, Daniel J. Kill All the Lawyers? Shakespeare’s Legal Appeal. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2005.
Lupton, Julia Reinhard. Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
McGinn, Colin. Shakespeare’s Philosophy: Discovering the Meaning Behind the
Plays. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007.
Mukherji, Subha. Law and Representation in Early Modern Drama. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Nuttall, A.D. Shakespeare the Thinker. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
Posner, Richard A. Law and Literature. 3rd edition. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2009.
Introduction 15
Rafeld, Paul. Shakespeare’s Imaginary Constitution: Late-Elizabethan Politics and
the Theatre of Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2010.
—, and Gary Watt, eds. Shakespeare and the Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2008.
Ruiter, David, ed. The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Social
Justice. London: The Arden Shakespeare, 2020.
Sarat, Austin, Catherine O. Frank, and Matthew Anderson, eds. Teaching Law and
Literature. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2011.
Sokol, B. J., and Mary Sokol. Shakespeare, Law, and Marriage. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Visconsi, Elliott. “Measure for Measure: No Remedy.” Sarat et al., eds. Teaching
Law and Literature. New York: The Modern Language Association of America,
2011. 279–287.
Ward, Ian. Law and Literature: Possibilities and Perspectives. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Weisberg, Richard. Poethics: And Other Strategies of Law and Literature. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1992.
White, James Boyd. The Legal Imagination. Abridged edition. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1985.
Wilson, Luke. Theaters of Intention: Drama and the Law in Early Modern England.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.
Yoshino, Kenji. A Thousand Times More Fair: What Shakespeare’s Plays Teach Us
About Justice. New York: Ecco, 2012.
Zurcher, Andrew. Shakespeare and Law. London: Methuen Drama, 2010.
16 Introduction
Introduction
Anker, Elizabeth S. , and Bernadette Meyler , eds. New Directions in Law and Literature. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Barton, Dunbar Plunkett . Shakespeare and the Law. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1929.
Bevington, David . Shakespeare's Ideas: More Things in Heaven and Earth. Chichester: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2008.
Campbell, John . Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements Considered. New York: D. Appleton and
Company, 1859.
Cohen, Walter . Drama of a Nation: Public Theater in Renaissance England and Spain. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1985.
Cormack, Bradin , Martha C. Nussbaum , and Richard Strier , eds. Shakespeare and the Law: A
Conversation among Disciplines and Professions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
2013.
Corrigan, Brian Jay . Playhouse Law in Shakespeare's World. Madison, Wisconsin: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 2004.
Davis, Cushman K. The Law in Shakespeare. Second edition. Saint Paul: West Publishing
Company, 1884.
Dolan, Kieran . A Critical Introduction to Law and Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2007.
Eklund, Hillary , and Wendy Beth Hyman . Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare: Why
Renaissance Literature Matters Now. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019.
Emens, Elizabeth . Regulatory Fictions: On Marriage and Countermarriage. Anker and Meyler ,
eds. New Directions in Law and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 294–312.
Grady, Hugh , and Terence Hawkes , eds. Presentist Shakespeares. Milton Park, Abingdon:
Routledge, 2007.
Greenwood, George . Shakespeare's Law. Hartford: Edwin Valentine Mitchell, 1920.
Hadfield, Andrew . Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2004.
Hutson, Lorna . The Invention of Suspicion: Law and Mimesis in Shakespeare and Renaissance
Drama. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Jordan, Constance , and Karen Cunningham , eds. The Law in Shakespeare. Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Kezar, Dennis , ed. Solon and Thespis: Law and Theatre in the English Renaissance. Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.
Kornstein, Daniel J. Kill All the Lawyers? Shakespeare's Legal Appeal. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 2005.
Lupton, Julia Reinhard . Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2011.
McGinn, Colin . Shakespeare's Philosophy: Discovering the Meaning Behind the Plays. New
York: Harper Perennial, 2007.
Mukherji, Subha . Law and Representation in Early Modern Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006.
Nuttall, A.D. Shakespeare the Thinker. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
Posner, Richard A. Law and Literature. 3rd edition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.
Raffield, Paul . Shakespeare's Imaginary Constitution: Late-Elizabethan Politics and the Theatre
of Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2010.
Raffield, Paul , and Gary Watt , eds. Shakespeare and the Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2008.
Ruiter, David , ed. The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Social Justice. London:
The Arden Shakespeare, 2020.
Sarat, Austin , Catherine O. Frank , and Matthew Anderson , eds. Teaching Law and Literature.
New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2011.
Sokol, B. J. , and Mary Sokol . Shakespeare, Law, and Marriage. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003.
Visconsi, Elliott .
Measure for Measure
: No Remedy. Sarat
et al
. , eds. Teaching Law and
Literature. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2011. 279–287.
Ward, Ian . Law and Literature: Possibilities and Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995.
Weisberg, Richard . Poethics: And Other Strategies of Law and Literature. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1992.
White, James Boyd . The Legal Imagination. Abridged edition. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1985.
Wilson, Luke . Theaters of Intention: Drama and the Law in Early Modern England. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2000.
Yoshino, Kenji . A Thousand Times More Fair: What Shakespeare's Plays Teach Us About
Justice. New York: Ecco, 2012.
Zurcher, Andrew . Shakespeare and Law. London: Methuen Drama, 2010.
Law in Shakespeare's Life and Career
Ackroyd, Peter . Shakespeare: The Biography. London: Chatto & Windus, 2005.
Alexander, Catherine M.S. Shakespeare: The Life, The Works, The Treasures. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2006.
Armitage, David . Shakespeare's Properties. David Armitage , Conal Condren , Andrew
Fitzmaurice , eds. Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009. 38–56.
Bate, Jonathan . The Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare. New
York: Random House, 2009.
Bate, Jonathan , and Dora Thornton . Shakespeare Staging the World. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012.
Bentley, Gerald Eades . The Professions of Dramatist and Player in Shakespeare's Time,
1590–1642. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986.
Blau, Herbert . Take Up the Bodies: Theater at the Vanishing Point. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1982.
Blayney, Peter W.M. The Stationers’ Company and the Printers of London 1501–1557. Volume
1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Greenblatt, Stephen . Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. W.W. Norton
& Company, 2004.
Kantorowicz, Ernst . The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2016.
Mullaney, Steven . The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988.
Sale, Carolyn . The ‘Amending Hand’: Hales v. Petit, Eyston v. Studd, and Equitable Action in
Hamlet. The Law in Shakespeare. Constance Jordan and Karen Cunningham , eds.
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 189–207.
Senn, Mark A. Shakespeare and the Land Law in his Life and Works. Real Property, Trust and
Estate Law Journal 48.1 (Spring 2013): 111–216.
Shapiro, James . A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599. New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, 2005.
Wilson, Luke . Theaters of Intention: Drama and the Law in Early Modern England. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2000.
Zurcher, Andrew . Shakespeare and Law. London: Methuen Drama, 2010.
General Patterns
Adelman, Janet . Man and Wife Is One Flesh:
Hamlet
and the Confrontation with the Maternal
Body. Shakespeare's Middle Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays. David Young , ed.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993. 29–55.
Armitage, David. Shakespeare’s Properties. David Armitage , Conal Condren , and Andrew
Fitzmaurice , eds. Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009. 25–43.
Bell, Millicent . Shakespeare's Tragic Skepticism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Bene, Carmelo , and Gilles Deleuze . Superpositions. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1978.
Bloom, Harold . Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998.
Brecht, Bertolt . Brecht on Theatre. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964.
Foucault, Michel . Discipline and Punish. London: Penguin Classics, 2020.
Greenblatt, Stephen . Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics. New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
2018.
Habermann, Ina . Staging Slander and Gender in Early Modern England. Aldershot: Ashgate,
2003.
Heilbrun, Carolyn . The Character of Hamlet's Mother. Hamlet. 2nd revised edition.
Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Signet, 1988. 223–232.
Heinze, Eric . Power Politics and the Rule of Law: Shakespeare's First Historical Tetralogy and
Law's “Foundations”. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 29.1 (2009): 139–168.
Hutson, Lorna . The Invention of Suspicion: Law and Mimesis in Shakespeare and Renaissance
Drama. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Hyde, Lewis . The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. London: Vintage, 1999.
Jenkins, Joseph S. Inheritance Law and Political Theology in Shakespeare and Milton. Milton
Park, Abingdon: Routledge, 2016.
Jonson, Ben . The Alchemist. The Workes of Ben Jonson. London, 1616.
Kantorowicz, Ernst . The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2016.
McAdams, Richard A. Vengeance, Complicity, and Criminal Law in
Othello
. Bradin Cormack ,
Martha C. Nussbaum , and Richard Strier , eds. Shakespeare and the Law. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2013. 121–143.
Mauss, Michel . The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York:
W.W. Norton, 1990.
Nuttall, A.D. Shakespeare the Thinker. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007.
Raffield, Paul . Shakespeare's Imaginary Constitution: Late-Elizabethan Politics and the Theatre
of Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2010.
Ross, Charles. Avoiding the Issue of Fraud: 4, 5 Philip & Mary c.8 (the Heiress Protection
Statute), Portia, and Desdemona. Constance Jordan and Karen Cunningham , eds. The Law in
Shakespeare. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 91–108.
Sohmer, Steve . Shakespeare's Mystery Play: The Opening of the Globe Theatre, 1599.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999.
Sokol, B.J. , and Mary Sokol . Shakespeare, Law, and Marriage. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003.
Tillyard, E.M.W. The
Elizabethan World Picture
. New York: Vintage, n.d.
Ward, Ian . The Image of Power: Shakespeare's Lord Chief Justice. Sidia Fiorato , ed.
Performing the Renaissance Body: Essays on Drama, Law, and Representation. Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2016. 145–155.
Webster, John . The Duchess of Malfi. London, 1623.
Wilson, Luke . Theaters of Intention: Drama and the Law in Early Modern England. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2000.
Works of Mr. William Shakespear , vol. 5. London: 1709.
Case Study: The Merchant of Venice
Corrigan, Brian Jay . Playhouse Law in Shakespeare's World. Madison: Fairleigh Dickenson
University Press, 2004.
Fortier, Mark. The Culture of Equity in Early Modern England. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.
Fried, Charles . Opinion of Fried, J., Concurring in the Judgment. Bradin Cormack , Martha C.
Nussbaum , and Richard Strier , eds. Shakespeare and the Law: A Conversation among
Disciplines and Professions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013. 156–163.
Greenwood, George . Shakespeare's Law. Hartford: Edwin Valentine Mitchell, 1920.
Grigson, Carole . Menagerie: The History of Exotic Animals in England. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016.
Nunn, Trevor . The Merchant of Venice. Trevor Nunn . London: Royal National Theatre, 2000.
Posner, Richard A. Law and Literature. 3rd edition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.
Posner, Richard A. . Law and Commerce in
The Merchant of Venice
. Bradin Cormack , Martha
C. Nussbaum , and Richard Strier , eds. Shakespeare and the Law: A Conversation among
Disciplines and Professions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013. 147–155.
Radford, Michael , director. The Merchant of Venice. Sony Pictures Classics, 2005.
Ross, Charles . Elizabethan Literature and the Law of Fraudulent Conveyance. Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2003.
Ross, Charles . Avoiding the Issue of Fraud: 4, 5 Philip & Mary c.8 (the Heiress Protection
Statute), Portia, and Desdemona. Constance Jordan and Karen Cunningham , eds. The Law in
Shakespeare. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 91–108.
Sokol, B. J. Shakespeare and Tolerance. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008.
Watt, Gary . The Law of Dramatic Properties in
The Merchant of Venice
. Paul Raffield and
Gary Watt , eds. Shakespeare and the Law. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing,
2008. 237–251.
Weisberg, Richard . The Concept and Performance of “The Code” in
The Merchant of Venice
.
Paul Raffield and Gary Watt , eds. Shakespeare and the Law. Oxford and Portland, Oregon:
Hart Publishing, 2008. 289–298.
Yoshino, Kenji . A Thousand Times More Fair: What Shakespeare's Plays Teach Us About
Justice. New York: Ecco, 2012.
Case Study: Measure for Measure
Arnold, Oliver . The King of Comedy: The Role of the Ruler and the Rule of Law in
Shakespeare's Comedies. Genre 31.1 (Spring 1998): 1–31.
Bevington, David . Equity in
Measure for Measure
. Shakespeare and the Law. Bradin Cormack
, Martha C. Nussbaum , and Richard Strier , eds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
164–173.
Bogus Catholic Priest in LA Sold Tickets to See the Pope.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thefreethinker/2016/11/bogus-catholic-priest-in-la-sold-tickets-
to-see-the-pope/
Coldron, Audrey , director. Measure for Measure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oruIqL79spc&list=PL_YkCjxrmFUOksMi2czMZREf3QlrIk0rq
&index=2
Corrigan, Brian Jay . Playhouse Law in Shakespeare's World. Madison: Fairleigh Dickenson
University Press, 2004.
Detmer-Goebel, Emily . Shakespeare's Bed-Tricks: Finding Justice in Lies? Justice, Women,
and Power in English Renaissance Drama. Andrew Majeske and Emily Detmer-Goebel , eds.
Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009. 118–139.
Donnellan, Declan , director. Measure for Measure. Cheek By Jowl.
https://www.cheekbyjowl.com/productions/measure-for-measure/
Doran, Gregory , director. Measure for Measure. Royal Shakespeare Company, 2019.
Dromgoole, Declan , director. Measure for Measure. Opus Arte, 2016.
Dunkel, Wilbur . Law and Equity in
Measure for Measure
. Shakespeare Quarterly, 13.3
(Summer, 1962): 275–285.
Federalist Society, The . Shakespeare and the Law: Measure for Measure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUIhqdPSUpY
Felperin, Howard . ‘Tongue-tied our queen?’: the deconstruction of presence in
The Winter's
Tale
. Shakespeare and the Question of Theory. Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman , eds.
New York: Methuen, 1985. 3–17.
Foucault, Michel . The History of Sexuality. Volume 1. New York: Vintage Books, 1980.
Foucault, Michel . Discipline and Punish. London: Penguin Classics, 2020.
Frye, Northrop . Northrop Frye on Shakespeare. Markham, Ontario: Fitzhenry & Whiteside,
1986.
Greenblatt, Stephen . Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics. New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
2018.
Greenwood, G.G. Shakespeare's Law. Hartford: Edwin Valentine Mitchell, 1920.
Jonson, Ben . Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter: And Some Poems. London: Cassell &
Company, Limited, 1892.
Jordan, Constance . Interpreting Statute in
Measure for Measure
. Bradin Cormack , Martha C.
Nussbaum , and Richard Strier , eds. Shakespeare and the Law. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2013. 101–120.
Komar, Bob , director. Measure for Measure. Press On Features, 2007.
MacAdams, Richard A. Vengeance, Complicity, and Criminal Law in
Othello
. Bradin Cormack ,
Martha C. Nussbaum , and Richard Strier , eds. Shakespeare and the Law. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2013. 121–143.
Majeske, Andrew . Equity in Book V of Spenser's
The Faerie Queene
, Law and Literature, 18.1
(2006): 69–99.
Majeske, Andrew . Equity's Absence: The Extremity of Claudio's Prosecution and Barnardine's
Pardon in Shakespeare's
Measure for Measure
. Law and Literature 21.2 (2009): 169–184.
Man Accused of Fraud in Impersonating Priest. https://buffalonews.com/1995/11/17/man-
accused-of-fraud-in-impersonating-priest/
Marcus, Leah . Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and Its Discontents. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1988.
Marowitz, Charles . Measure for Measure. The Marowitz Shakespeare. New York: Drama Book
Specialists (Publishers), 1978. 181–225.
Mukherji, Subha . Law and Representation in Early Modern Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006.
Pether, Penelope . Measured Judgments: Histories, Pedagogies, and the Possibility of Equity.
Law and Literature, 14.3 ( 2002): 489–543.
Spenser, Eric V. Scaling the Deputy: Equity and Mercy in
Measure for Measure
. Philosophy
and Literature, 36.1 (April 2012): 166–182.
Whetstone, George . The Right Excellent and famous Historye, of Promos and Cassandra.
London: 1578.
Yoshino, Kenji . A Thousand Times More Fair: What Shakespeare's Plays Teach Us About
Justice. New York: Ecco, 2012.
Zurcher, Andrew . Shakespeare and Law. London: Methuen Drama, 2010.
Seven Short Readings of Non-Shakespearean Early-Modern Plays
Alfar, Cristina León . Elizabeth Cary's Female Trinity: Breaking Custom with Mosaic Law in
The
Tragedy of Mariam
. Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 3 (2008): 61–103.
Blasiak, Ewa . A Humor, Didacticism, Characterization and the Criticized Subject: Law
Reconsidered in Ben Jonson's
Volpone
. Explorations: A Journal of Language and Literature 4
(2016): 47–56.
Blessing, Carol . ‘It shall teach all Ladies the right path to rectifie their issue’: Bastardy Law in
John Webster's
The Devil's Law-Case
. ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and
Reviews 31.3 (2018): 161–167.
Bromham, A.A. The Contemporary Significance of The Old Law. Studies in English Literature,
1500–1900 24.2 (Spring1984): 327–339.
Cary, Elizabeth . The Tragedy of Mariam. Stephanie Hodgson-Wright , ed. Peterborough,
Ontario: Broadview Literary Texts, 2000.
Clarke, Danielle . ‘This domestic kingdome or Monarchy’: Cary's
The Tragedy of Mariam
and
the Resistance to Patriarchal Government. Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England 10
(1998): 179–200.
Devil's Law Case, The. Willing Suspension Productions, 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0-0zeMRbHo
Dollimore, Jonathan . Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of
Shakespeare and his Contemporaries. 3rd edition. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.
Fischer, Sandra K. Elizabeth Cary and Tyranny, Domestic and Religious. Silent But For the
Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works. Margaret
Patterson Hannay , ed. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1985. 225–237.
Ford, John . The Ladies Triall. London, 1639.
Ford, John . The Lady's Trial. Lisa Hopkins , ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2011.
Ford, John . The Laws of Candy. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14548/14548-h/14548-h.htm
Griffith, Eva . A Jacobean Company and its Playhouse: The Queen's Servants at the Red Bull
Theatre (c. 1605–1619). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Gruber, Elizabeth . Insurgent Flesh: Epistemology and Violence in
Othello
and
Mariam
.
Women's Studies 32 (2003): 393–410.
Hall, Joseph . Characters of Vertues and Vices. London, 1608.
Holder, R. Ward . Calvin's Heritage. The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin. Donald K.
McKim , ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 245–273.
Hutson, Lorna . ‘
Che indizio, che prova
…?’ Ariosto's Legal Conjectures and the English
Renaissance Stage. Renaissance Drama 36/37 (2010): 179–205.
Jones, Ann Rosalind . Revenge Comedy: Writing Law, and the Punishing Heroine in
Twelfth
Night
,
The Merry Wives of Windsor
, and
Swetnam the Woman-Hater
. Shakespearean Power
and Punishment. Gillian Murray Kendall , ed. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
1998. 23–38.
Jonson, Ben . Volpone. Five Plays. G. A. Wilkes . Oxford: Oxford University Press, ed. 1988.
219–348.
Jordan, Constance . Gender and Justice in
Swetnam the Woman-Hater
. Renaissance Drama
18 (1987): 149–169.
Klotz, Lisa . Ben Jonson's Legal Imagination in
Volpone
. Studies in English Literature
1500–1900 51.2 (Spring 2011): 385–408.
López, Carlos A Matheus . About the Devil, Literature and Arbitration. Law and Literature 27.3
(2015): 383–394.
Luckyj, Christina . Marriage, Politics and Law in
The Tragedy of Mariam
and
The Duchess of
Malfi
. Rory Loughnane , and Edel Semple , eds. Staged Transgression in Shakespeare's
England. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 89–103.
Marlowe, Christopher . Doctor Faustus. Michael Keefer , ed. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview
Press, 1991.
Mukherji, Subha . Women, Law, and Dramatic Realism in Early Modern England. English
Literary Renaissance 35 (2005): 248–272.
Mukherji, Subha . False Trials in Shakespeare, Massenger, and Ford. Essays in Criticism. 56.3
(2006): 219–240.
Pinciss, G.M. Marlowe's Cambridge years and the writing of Doctor Faustus. Studies in English
Literature, 1500–1900 33.2 (1993): 249–264.
Posner, Richard A. Law and Literature, 3rd edition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.
Purkis, James . Attributing Authorship and
Swetnam the Woman-Hater
. Janet Wright Starner
and Barbara Howard Traister , eds. Anonymity in Early Modern England: “What's in a Name?”.
Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011. 113–128.
Raber, Karen . Gender and the Political Subject in
The Tragedy of Mariam
. Studies in English
Literature, 1500–1900 35. 2 (1995): 321–343.
Roth, Jenny . ‘She, was now disgraced’: Doris and the Critique of Law in Elizabeth Cary's
The
Tragedie of Mariam, The Faire Queene of Jewry
. Women's Writing 19.4 (November 2012):
487–506.
Rowley, William , Thomas Middleton , and Thomas Heywood . An/The Old Law Or, A New Way
to Please You. Thomas Middleton .
The Collected Works
. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino ,
eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 1331–1391.
Shannon, Laurie J.
The Tragedie of Mariam
: Cary's Critique of the Terms of Founding Social
Discourses. English Literary Renaissance 24.1 (1994): 135–153.
Sullivan, Ceri . Faustus and the Apple. The Review of English Studies 47.185 (1996): 47–50.
Swetnam, the Woman-Hater, Arraigned by Women. London, 1620.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/58303/58303-h/58303-h.htm
Travitsky, Betty . The
Feme Covert
in Elizabeth Cary's
Mariam
. Carole Levin and Jeanie
Watson , eds. Ambiguous Realities: Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1987. 184–196.
Travitsky, Betty . Husband-Murder and Petty Treason in English Renaissance Tragedy.
Renaissance Drama 21 (1990): 487–506.
Webster, John . The Devil's Law-Case. The Duchess of Malfi and Other Plays. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996. 201–291.
Wilson, Luke . Theaters of Intention: Drama and the Law in Early Modern England. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2000.
Shakespeare and Law Now
Alfano, Chiara . Derrida Reads Shakespeare. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
Atwood, Margaret . Hag-Seed. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2017.
Bate, Jonathan , and Dora Thornton . Shakespeare Staging the World. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012.
Bates, Laura . Shakespeare Saved My Life; Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard. Naperville,
Illinois: Sourcebooks, 2013.
Bishop Strachan School Fires Head and Issues Apology After Production of Merchant of Venice
Criticized for Being Anti-Semitic. Toronto Star (October 29, 2018).
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/10/29/bishop-strachan-school-fires-head-and-issues-
apology-after-production-of-merchant-of-venice-criticized-for-being-anti-semitic.html
Bradley, Jeff . School Board Bans Shakespeare Play After Anti-Semitic Incidents.
https://apnews.com/article/3eaa42ee0fa34236bdbe9da26cc85122#:~:text=Parents%20complai
ned%20and%20the%20local,but%20others%20call%20it%20absurd
Bream, Joseph . Ontario School Board Tosses Shakespeare for Indigenous Writers. National
Post May 11, 2017. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/ontario-school-board-tosses-
shakespeare-for-indigenous-writers
Cohn, Ruby . Modern Shakespeare Offshoots. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.
Desai, Ashwin . Reading Revolution: Shakespeare on Robben Island. Chicago: Haymarket
Books, 2014.
Desmet, Christy , Natalie Loper , and Jim Casey , eds. Introduction. Shakespeare / Not
Shakespeare. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 1–22.
Eklund, Hillary , and Wendy Beth Hyman , eds. Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare:
Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019.
Ekoko-Kay, Evelyna . Queen's Students Forced to Apologize for Casting Othello as a White
Woman Still Don’t Get It.
rabble.ca
. November 15, 2016.
https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/campus-notes/2016/11/queens-students-forced-to-apologize-
casting-othello-white-woman-
Espinosa, Ruben , and David Ruiter , eds. Shakespeare and Immigration. Farnham, Surrey:
Ashgate, 2014.
Faulder, Liane . Controversy Surrounds Walterdale Decision to Cast White Woman as Othello.
Edmonton Sun January 31, 2017. https://edmontonsun.com/2017/01/31/walterdale-theatre-
cancels-othello-production-due-to-threats
Fischlin, Daniel , Tom Magill , and Jessica Riley . Transgression and Transformation:
Mickey B
and the Dramaturgy of Adaptation: An Interview with Tom Magill. Daniel Fischlin , ed.
Outerspeares: Shakespeare, Intermedia, and the Limits of Adaptation. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2014. 152–202.
Foucault, Michel . What is an Author? The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Vincent B.
Leitch , ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. 1622–1636.
Fox, Jan . When the Show Doesn’t Go on ….” “Special Report: Staging Shakespearean dissent:
Plays that Protest, Provoke and Slip by the Censors. Index on Censorship 45.1 (April 2016):
12–17.
Genç, Kaya . When the Dream Upset the Regime.” “Special Report: Staging Shakespearean
dissent: Plays that Protest, Provoke and Slip by the Censors. Index on Censorship 45.1 (April
2016): 48–51.
Gilbert, Sky . Flipping the Line: Cancelling Shakespeare Would Rob Students of a Chance to
Think for Themselves. The Line. April 15, 2021. https://theline.substack.com/p/flipping-the-line-
cancelling-
shakespeare?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo4NTkxODExLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozNTE5MDgzNiwiXyI6Ilg1K
1p0IiwiaWF0IjoxNjE4NDk0Njc1LCJleHAiOjE2MTg0OTgyNzUsImlzcyI6InB1Yi03MDAzMiIsInN1
YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.rj75J7D5z73CYYs1dQdDMPQoPCZVWmsnde5JKOsWPlM&fb
clid=IwAR03VMKtM0_YZoRsT-yyDnxYcLNJB8jx4gqdGJXG6mLe0hKztpFSoE6wENk
Grady, Hugh , and Terrence Hawkes , eds. Presentist Shakespeares. London: Routledge, 2007.
Hahn, Matthew . The Robben Island Shakespeare. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017.
Hamilton, Graeme . Queen's University Stage Production Scrapped Over “oppressive” Choice
of White Woman to Play Othello. National Post November 4, 2016.
https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/theatre/queens-university-stage-production-scrapped-
over-oppressive-choice-of-white-woman-to-play-othello
Hennessey, Katherine . Shakespeare on the Arabian Peninsula. London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2018.
Herold, Niels . Prison Shakespeare and the Purpose of Performance: Repentance Rituals and
the Early Modern. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Holderness, Graham . Preface: ‘All This.’ Graham Holderness , ed. The Shakespeare Myth.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988. xii–xvi.
Iyengar, Sujata . Shakespeare Transformed: Copyright, Copyleft, and Shakespeare After
Shakespeare. Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare. 2017.
http://shakespeare.revues.org/3852; DOI: 10.4000/shakespeare.3852
“Judgments 2003–2004.” Shakespeare Moot Court Project. English Department, McGill
University. https://www.mcgill.ca/shakespearemoot/trials/judges03–04
Kupfer, David C. The Merchant of Venice: Schools, Libraries, and Censors. Library Philosophy
and Practice (2009).
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/234/?utm_source=digitalcommons.unl.edu%2Flibphil
prac%2F234&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages
Lanier, Douglas . Shakespearean Rhizomatics: Adaptation, Ethics, Value. Shakespeare and the
Ethics of Appropriation. Alexa Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin , eds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2014. 21–40.
Leggatt, Alexander . Ben Jonson: His Vision and His Art. London: Methuen, 1981.
Miller, Jacquie . Grade 11 students in Ottawa are Ditching Shakespeare for Canada's
Indigenous Authors. Ottawa Citizen January 18, 2020. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-
news/grade-11-students-in-ottawa-are-ditching-shakespeare-for-canadas-indigenous-authors
Muchemwa, Elizabeth Zaza . Lifting the Curtain on Zimbabwe.” “Special Report: Staging
Shakespearean Dissent: Plays that Protest, Provoke and Slip by the Censors. Index on
Censorship 45.1 (April 2016): 22–24.
Newton v. Indiana. Court of Appeals of Indiana. Opinion 18A05–1612-PC-2817. September 6,
2017. https://cases.justia.com/indiana/court-of-appeals/2017-18a05–1612-pc-
2817.pdf?ts=1504721313
Palermo, Alex . Queen's Vagabond Suspends Production of Othello. The Queen's Journal
November 4, 2016. https://www.queensjournal.ca/story/2016-11-03/arts/queens-vagabond-
suspends-production-of-othello/
Paulson, Michael , and Sopan Deb . How Outrage Built Over a Shakespearean Depiction of
Trump. New York Times June 12, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/12/theater/donald-
trump-julius-caesar-public-theater-oskar-eustis.html
The Royal Shakespeare Company . Report and Consolidated Financial Statements.
https://cdn2.rsc.org.uk/sitefinity/corporate/rsc-accounts-18–19.pdf
Ruiter, David , ed. The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Social Justice. London:
The Arden Shakespeare, 2020. Ebook.
Schalkwyk, David . Hamlet's Dreams: The Robben Island Shakespeare. London: The Arden
Shakespeare, 2013.
Shakespeare Association of America . 2021 Meeting Program.
https://shakespeareassociation.org/annual-meetings/2021-program-2/
“Shakespeare First Folio fetches a record $10m at auction.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-
54544737#:~:text=A%20copy%20of%20William%20Shakespeare's,collected%20edition%20of
%20his%20plays.
Stratton, Allan . Cancel Shakespeare. The Line. March 30, 2021.
https://theline.substack.com/p/allan-stratton-cancel-shakespeare
“US Supreme Court won't hear appeal of man who killed Ball State student in 1994.” WTHR
May 4, 2021. https://www.wthr.com/article/news/crime/us-supreme-court-denies-hearing-
appeal-of-man-who-killed-ball-state-student-in-1994-larry-newton-christopher-coyle-muncie-
indiana/531–35706b58-43c5–43a8–9b54–87629a1eb97f
Taylor, Gary . Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present.
New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989.
University of Ottawa. “Law and Social Justice.” https://commonlaw.uottawa.ca/social-
justice/about
University of Windsor. “Social Justice Path.” https://www.uwindsor.ca/law/544/social-justice-path
Ward, Sophie , and Roy Connolly . The play is a Prison: The Discourse of Prison Shakespeare.
Studies in Theatre and Performance 40.2 (2020): 128–144.
Wilson, Robert J. Censorship, Anti-Semitism, and
The Merchant of Venice
. The English Journal
86.2 (February, 1997): 43–45.
Yachnin, Paul , and Desmond Manderson . Shakespeare as judgment: The Renewal of Law
and Literature. European Legacy 15:2 (2010): 195–213.
