Through an examination of six plays by Shakespeare, author Paul Raffield - co-editor of the journal Law and Humanities - presents an innovative analysis of political developments in the last decade of Elizabethan rule and their representation in poetic drama of the period. In the 1590s, the playhouses of London provided a distinctive forum for discourse and dissemination of nascent political ideas. Shakespeare exploited the unique capacity of theatre to humanize contemporary debate concerning the powers of the crown and the extent to which these were limited by law. In the plays considered...

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 The Art of Law in Shakespeare 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,...