Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Raffield, Paul, author.

Title The art of law in Shakespeare / Paul Raffield
Published Portland, OR : Hart Publishing, 2017
©2017

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xiv, 275 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations
Series Human Rights Law in Perspective
Contents 1. ̀Fie, painted rhetoric!' Common Law, Satire and the Language of the Beast -- I. Oratory, Empire and Common Law -- II. Rhetoric, Method and the English Lawyer -- III. Our English Martiall: John Davies of the Middle Temple -- IV. Love's Labour's Lost, the Inns of Court and the Sweet Smoke of Rhetoric -- 2. Princes Set Upon Stages: Macbeth, Treason and the Theatre of Law -- I. Compassing or Imagining Regicide -- II. Of Such Horror, and Monstrous Nature: The Juridical Enactment of Betrayal -- III. Royal Succession as Theatre of the Whole World -- IV. Treason and the King's Two Bodies -- 3. The Winter's Tale: An Art Lawful as Eating -- I. Law, Literature and Genealogy -- II. Horticulture, Transformation and the Artifice of Law -- III. The Nature of Law -- IV. Inheritance, Gender and the Common Law Tradition -- V. The Arts of Portraiture and Politics -- 4. Cymbeline: Empire, Nationhood and the Jacobean Aeneid -- I. Some Footsteps in the Law -- II. A Law Inscribed upon the Heart -- III. Postnati. Calvin's Case and the Journey of Jacobean Law -- IV. The Divine Purpose, Nature and the Equivocal Image -- V. The Nationalist Ends of Myth -- 5. The Tempest: The Island of Law in Jacobean England -- I. Cannibals, Colonies and the Brave New World -- II. Utopia and the Legal Imagination -- III. Enchanted Islands of Common Law
Summary "Through an examination of five plays by Shakespeare, Paul Raffield analyses the contiguous development of common law and poetic drama during the first decade of Jacobean rule. The broad premise of [this book] is that the 'artificial reason' of law was a complex art form that shared the same rhetorical strategy as the plays of Shakespeare. Common law and Shakespearean drama of this period employed various aesthetic devices to capture the imagination and the emotional attachment of their respective audiences. Common law of the Jacobean era, as spoken in the law courts, learnt at the Inns of Court and recorded in the law reports, used imagery that would have been familiar to audiences of Shakespeare's plays. In its juridical form, English law was intrinsically dramatic, its adversarial mode of expression being founded on an agonistic model. Conversely, Shakespeare borrowed from the common law some of its most critical themes: justice, legitimacy, sovereignty, community, fairness, and (above all else) humanity. Each chapter investigates a particular aspect of the common law, seen through the lens of a specific play by Shakespeare. Topics include the unprecedented significance of rhetorical skills to the practice and learning of common law (Love's Labour's Lost); the early modern treason trial as exemplar of the theatre of law (Macbeth); the art of law as the legitimate distillation of the law of nature (The Winter's Tale); the efforts of common lawyers to create an image of nationhood from both classical and Judeo-Christian mythography (Cymbeline); and the theatrical device of the island as microcosm of the Jacobean state and the project of imperial expansion (The Tempest)."--Page i
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Knowledge -- Law
SUBJECT Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 fast
Subject Law -- Great Britain -- History -- 16th century
Law -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century
Law and literature -- History -- 16th century
Law and literature -- History -- 17th century
Law in literature.
DRAMA -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
Law
Law and literature
Law in literature
Great Britain
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2016049829
ISBN 9781509905485
1509905480
9781509905492
1509905499
9781509905508
1509905502