Introductory description

The one-term (15 CATS) half module will be taught by one 3-hour seminar-workshop per week in one of the studio spaces managed by the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning. It will employ rehearsal techniques, and students will be expected to explore ideas by putting texts on their feet.
This module has been designed to complement, rather than replicate, the themes and methodologies of ‘Law and Literature’ (LA357) and ‘Origins of English Law’ (LA242) and 'The Art of Advocacy: Mooting and Forensic Rhetoric' (LA384).

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1. Shakespeare's Legal Time and Place - from Stratford to London
Week 2. Richard II: The performance of will - early modern transition from tradition to trade
Week 3. Richard II: Throne down - bodies and properties of law
Week 4. Othello: Judging by appearances - questions of evidence and proof
Week 5. Othello: Slander and sound judgment
Week 6. Reading week.
Week 7. The Merchant of Venice: Credit of rhetoric and rhetoric of credit
Week 8. The Merchant of Venice: Laws of dramatic properties.
Week 9. The Merchant of Venice: Shakespeare, theatrical types, and social stereotypes
Week 10. Shakespeare’s Justice and Legal Legacy

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Critical comprehension of the relationship between Shakespeare’s plays and the law, and the performative function of the trial in his dramaturgy.
• Detailed historical perspective of developments in English law during the early modern period.
• Understanding the relationship between history, culture and theatrical performance, including the relevance of the plays to modern social and cultural issues.
• Development of forensic skills of advocacy and rhetorical performance.
• Development of key skills of communication, negotiation, presentation, and performance.
• Ability to make productive links between theoretical ideas and practical applications.
• Ability to identify issues relevant to the lawyer, to formulate questions and engage in problem-solving.
• Ability to use research tools and resources, including specialist archives, and reference material correctly.
• Development of collaborative skills of listening, feedback, and resolution.

Indicative reading list

Brooks, Christopher, Law, Politics, and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Cormack, Bradin, A Power to Do Justice: Jurisdiction, English Literature, and the Rise of Common Law, 1509–1625 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

Corrigan, Brian Jay, Playhouse Law in Shakespeare’s World (Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004).

Curran, Kevin (ed), Shakespeare and Judgment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

Enterline, Lynn, Shakespeare’s Schoolroom: Rhetoric, Discipline, Emotion (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

Geng, Penelope, Communal Justice in Shakespeare’s England: Drama, Law, and Emotion (University of Toronto Press, 2021).

Hutson, Lorna, The Invention of Suspicion: Law and Mimesis in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Jordan, Constance and Karen Cunningham (eds.), Law in Shakespeare, Early Modern Literature in History Series (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

Kerrigan, John, Shakespeareʼs Binding Language (Oxford: OUP, 2016).

Mukherji, Subha, Law and Representation in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Peters, Julie Stone, Law as Performance: Theatricality, Spectatorship, and the Making of Law in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).

Prest, Wilfrid R., The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the early Stuarts, 1590-1640 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Raffield, Paul and Gary Watt, Shakespeare and the Law (Oxford: Hart, 2008).

Raffield, Paul, Shakespeare’s Imaginary Constitution: Late-Elizabethan Politics and the Theatre of Law (Oxford: Hart
Publishing, 2010).

Raffield, Paul, Shakespeare’s Strangers and English law (Oxford: Hart, 2023).

Schwartz, Regina M., Loving Justice, Living Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

Skinner, Quentin, Forensic Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

Watt, Gary, Shakespeare’s Acts of Will: Law, Testament and Properties of Performance (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016).

Watt, Gary, Shakespeare and the Law [Oxford Shakespeare Topics] (Oxford: OUP, 2024).

Wilson, Luke, Theatres of Intention: Drama and the Law in Early Modern England (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000).

Winston, Jessica, Lawyers at Play: Literature, Law, and Politics at the Early Modern Inns of Court, 1558-1581 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

Zurcher, Andrew, Shakespeare and the Law, Arden Shakespeare (London: Bloomsbury, 2010).

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Interdisciplinary

This module explores a selection of the plays of William Shakespeare for their engagement with legal themes, materials, and their enactment of juridical processes. Interested equally in early modern English law and theatrical performance, it considers the laws and rhetorical insights that underpin Shakespeare’s sensational dramatization of themes of law and justice.

Subject specific skills

Textual interpretation; management of legal, historical, dramatic source material; public presentation / performance; attentive listening; respectful dispute; lucid and persuasive drafting.

Transferable skills

The module enhances and consolidates students’ scholarly skills of textual interpretation, drafting, and research as well as performance and presentation, while stimulating team-work and encouraging collaboration; thus creating a pool of transferable skills that students can use both academically and vocationally.