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Shakespeare and the Law: A Conversation Among Disciplines and Professions

Shakespeare and the Law: A Conversation Among Disciplines and Professions

by Bradin Cormack (Editor), Bradin Cormack (Editor), Martha C. Nussbaum (Editor), Richard Strier (Editor)

  • New

    Paperback 2016

    $25.26
Synopsis

William Shakespeare is inextricably linked with the law. Legal documents make up most of the records we have of his life, and trials, lawsuits, and legal terms permeate his plays. Gathering an extraordinary team of literary and legal scholars, philosophers, and even sitting judges, Shakespeare and the Law demonstrates that Shakespeare's thinking about legal concepts and legal practice points to a deep and sometimes vexed engagement with the law's technical workings, its underlying premises, and its social effects.

The book's opening essays offer perspectives on law and literature that emphasize both the continuities and contrasts between the two fields. The second section considers Shakespeare's awareness of common law thinking and common law practice, while the third inquires into Shakespeare's general attitudes toward legal systems. The fourth part of the book looks at how law enters into conversation with issues of politics and community, whether in the plays, in Shakespeare's world, or in our own world. Finally, a colloquy among Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Judge Richard Posner, Martha C. Nussbaum, and Richard Strier covers everything from the ghost in Hamlet to the nature of judicial discretion.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 341
 Edition: Reprint
 Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 06 May 2016
ISBN 10: 022637856X
ISBN 13: 9780226378565

Media Reviews
Shakespeare and the Law is true to its word. This collection is filled with captivating and often convincing claims about not just the brooding omnipresence but also the moral necessity of law to Shakespeare s characters, their fate, and the quality of justice depicted and dispensed in the plays, as well as in Shakespeare s own life and in our own world. The essays provide an education, while the transcribed conversation that closes the volume, with a guest appearance by Justice Stephen Breyer, is an illuminating and delightful denouement.
--Robin West, Georgetown University
Shakespeare and the Law is true to its word. This collection is filled with captivating and often convincing claims about not just the brooding omnipresence but also the moral necessity of law to Shakespeare s characters, their fate, and the quality of justice depicted and dispensed in the plays, as well as in Shakespeare s own life and in our own world. The essays provide an education, while the transcribed conversation that closes the volume, with a guest appearance by Justice Stephen Breyer, is an illuminating and delightful denouement.
--Robin West, Georgetown University
This splendid collection of essays embraces dramaturgical, legal-historical, legal-philosophical, and formal and linguistic approaches to the question of Shakespeare and the law. Although the Shakespeare we meet here is suspicious of the law s formalisms, a world without law is no utopia in his plays. Instead Shakespeare seeks out and celebrates the forms of equity that might qualify and contextualize the letter of the law in order to explore the forms of civility and fellowship through which human beings resolve conflicts and build worlds. Funny, informative, fast-moving, and smart, this book is both a pleasure to read and a resource to savor and share.
--Julia Reinhard Lupton, author of Thinking with Shakespeare
Shakespeare and the Law is true to its word. This collection is filled with captivating and often convincing claims about not just the brooding omnipresence but also the moral necessity of law to Shakespeare's characters, their fate, and the quality of justice depicted and dispensed in the plays, as well as in Shakespeare's own life and in our own world. The essays provide an education, while the transcribed conversation that closes the volume, with a guest appearance by Justice Stephen Breyer, is an illuminating and delightful denouement.
--Robin West, Georgetown University
This splendid collection of essays embraces dramaturgical, legal-historical, legal-philosophical, and formal and linguistic approaches to the question of Shakespeare and the law. Although the Shakespeare we meet here is suspicious of the law's formalisms, a world without law is no utopia in his plays. Instead Shakespeare seeks out and celebrates the forms of equity that might qualify and contextualize the letter of the law in order to explore the forms of civility and fellowship through which human beings resolve conflicts and build worlds. Funny, informative, fast-moving, and smart, this book is both a pleasure to read and a resource to savor and share.
--Julia Reinhard Lupton, author of Thinking with Shakespeare
Author Bio
Bradin Cormack is professor of English at Princeton University. Martha C. Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor in the Law School and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Richard Strier is the Frank L. Sulzberger Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of Chicago and editor of the journal Modern Philology.