Shakespeare's Imaginary Constitution: Late-Elizabethan Politics and the Theatre of Law

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 here, the autonomous subject of law is represented as a sentient political being, whose natural rights and liberties found an analogue in the narratives of common law as recorded in juristic texts and law reports of the early modern era. Each chapter reflects a particular aspect of constitutional development in the late-Elizabethan state. These include: abuse of the royal prerogative by the crown and