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New publication: Shakespeare and the Law

Paul Raffield and Gary Watt eds., Shakespeare and the Law , Hart Publishing, Oxford and Portland Oregon, 2008.

This is an engaging and informative set of essays which explores how law is represented and portrayed in Shakespeare’s plays. The papers included in the volume from analyses of the juristic content of specific plays, as in ‘Consideration, Contract and the End of The Comedy of Errors‘, ‘Judging Isabella: Justice, Care and Relationships in Measure for Measure‘, ‘Law and its Subversion in Romeo and Juliet‘, ‘Inheritance in the Legal and Ideological Debate of Shakespeare’s King Lear‘ and ‘The Law of Dramatic Properties in The Merchant of Venice‘, to more general explorations of Shakespearean jurisprudence, including ‘Shakespeare and Specific Performance’, ‘Shakespeare and the Marriage Contract’, ‘The Tragedy of Law in Shakespearean Romance’ and ‘Punishment Theory in the Renaissance: the Law and the Drama’.

Foreword (Carol Chillington Rutter)
Introduction (Paul Raffield and Gary Watt)
I. Shakespeare, Money and the Law of Contract
1. Mark Fortier, ‘Shakespeare and Specific Performance’
2. Andrew Zurcher, ‘Consideration, Contract and the End of The Comedy of Errors’
II. Shakespeare, Women and the Law
3. Jonathan Bate, ‘The Bawdy Court’
4. Germaine Greer, ‘Shakespeare and the Marriage Contract’
5. Erika Rackley, ‘Judging Isabella: Justice, Care and Relationships in Measure for Measure’
III. Shakespeare and the Law of Love
6. Bradin Cormack, ‘Shakespeare Possessed: Legal Affect and the Time of Holding’
7. Katrin Trüstedt, ‘The Tragedy of Law in Shakespearean Romance’
8. Daniela Carpi, ‘Law and its Subversion in Romeo and Juliet’
IV.Justice and the Royal Prerogative
9. Carolyn Sale, ‘The King is a Thing’: the King’s Prerogative and the Treasure of the Realm in Plowden’s Report of the Case of Mines and Shakespeare’s Hamlet’
10. Giuseppina Restivo, ‘Inheritance in the Legal and Ideological Debate of Shakespeare’s King Lear’
V. Violence, the State and the Citizen
11. Harry Keyishian, ‘Punishment Theory in the Renaissance: the Law and the Drama’
12. Ian Ward, ‘Terrorists and Equivocators’
13. Paul Raffield, ‘Terras Astraea reliquit’: Titus Andronicus and the Loss of Justice’
14. Christian Biet, ‘Titus Andronicus vs Le More Cruel and Les Portugais Infortunés: Humiliation, Punishment and Violence in the Shakespearean and French Theatre of the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century’

VI. The Merchant of Venice and the Infinite Meanings of ‘Law’
15. Gary Watt, ‘The Law of Dramatic Properties in The Merchant of Venice’
16. Istvan Pogany, ‘Shylock in Transylvania: Anti-Semitism and the Law in East Central Europe’
17. ‘Shylock as a Politician’
18. ‘The Concept and Performance of ‘The Code’ in The Merchant of Venice