The invention of suspicion : law and mimesis in Shakespeare and Renaissance drama / Lorna Hutson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hutson, Lorna.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Criticism and interpretation.

Shakespeare, William.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Criticism and interpretation.

English drama--Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600--History and criticism.

English drama.

Mimesis in literature.

Law in literature.

Physical Description:

x, 382 pages : illustrations ; cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007.

Summary:

The Invention of Suspicion argues that the English justice system underwent changes in the sixteenth-century which, because of the system's participatory nature, had a widespread effect and a decisive impact on the development of English Renaissance drama. These changes gradually made evidence-evaluation a popular skill: justices of peace and juries were increasingly required to weigh up the probabilities of competing narratives of facts. At precisely the same time, English dramatists were absorbing ideas about to make plays and stories more 'probable' from Latin legal rhetoric, and Latin comedy. The results of this enormously rich conjunction of popular legal culture and ancient forensic strategy was a drama in which dramatis personae 'invent' arguments of suspicion and conjecture about one another, thus prompting us to imagine their private histories and inner lives. In this drama, people act in uncertainty, inferring one another's motives and testing evidence for their conclusions. The book thus offers an overarching account of epistemological change since the Reformation: even elements of Renaissance drama which seem to be 'remnants of the sacred' may be seen to be, crucially, evidential. (Hamlet interrogates Horatio about the ghost, and even tests the ghost's testimony.) The book also offers an entirely new account of the importance of experiments in probabilistic drama in the political circumstances of the 1560s and 70s. It argues that these resulted in a sub-genre of 'civic detective plots' which may be seen to undrlie Shakespeare's early experiments in revenge tragedy, history play, and romance comedy, in Titus Andronicus, Henry VI, and The Comedy of Errors, as well as Jonson's Every Man in his Humour. The book ranges from mid-fifteenth-century drama, through sixteenth-century interludes to the drama of the 1590s. It draws on a wide range of legal-historical sources in print and manuscript.

Contents:

1 From Penitence to Evidence: Drama and the Legal Reformation 12

2 Rethinking Foucault: The Juridical Epistemology of English Renaissance Drama 64

3 Judicial Narrative and Dramatic Mimesis 104

4 From Intrigue to Detection: Transformations of Classical Comedy, 1566-1594 146

5 Forensic Rhetoric on the Popular Stage: Shakespeare's Histories 217

6 Forensic Rhetoric in Early Revenge Tragedy and Early Romantic Comedy: Kyd, Lyly, and Shakespeare 259

7 Jonson's Justices and Shakespeare's Constables: Sexual Suspicion in the Evidential Plot 303.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780199212439

0199212430

OCLC:

185247366