Changing attitudes towards the operations of early modern law in Shakespeare

Johnson, David and Findlay, Alison and Egan, Clare (2025) Changing attitudes towards the operations of early modern law in Shakespeare. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

This thesis examines a selection of Shakespeare’s plays as critical representations of the multiple legal systems and jurisdictions that operated in early modern people’s everyday lives. Through the relationships between law and literature, the thesis reveals the incongruity that existed between the actions of legislators and the ordinary lives of the people as depicted in the plays. Instead of focusing on a single play as a moment captured in history, the thesis tracks the representation of a crime from two Elizabethan plays, 2 Henry VI and The Merry Wives of Windsor, to the Jacobean plays Measure for Measure, Macbeth, Coriolanus and The Winter’s Tale. It focuses on the representation of three crimes: masterlessness, sexual transgression and witchcraft. When taken together, the change in dramatic representation of each particular crime reveals a narrative from which shifting societal attitudes are shown as the theatrical articulation of human anxieties. This thesis compares the plays’ representation of the law’s efficacy, its use of adjudication and punishment, with the real-world outcomes dictated by parliamentary legislation. It investigates how the law is represented as dysfunctional, unfair or inequitable while acknowledging the broader societal contexts in which the law operated. Through the crime of masterlessness, the thesis examines the divergence between an increasingly punitive legislative process and its representation in the plays. The crime of sexual transgression explores the intersections of secular, spiritual, and community self-regulatory jurisdictions. Finally, the crime of witchcraft is analysed in relation to the evolution of legal narratives in law and on stage. The thesis’s main argument reveals different patterns of divergence, intersection and evolution in the legal and theatrical treatments of the three different crimes. It thus demonstrates the need to investigate specific crimes and their temporal trajectories rather than assuming a treatment of ‘the law’ as monolithic and static.