Facing Justice

2019 ◽  
pp. 351-372
Author(s):  
Subha Mukherji
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Imagination ◽  
The Law ◽  
Dramatic Practice ◽  
The Way

Law and the literary imagination in early modern England had shared stakes in the relation between face and intent, surface and significance, truth and semblance, nature and artifice. Using the legally attuned dramatist John Webster’s The White Devil as its central example, this chapter probes law’s preoccupation with legibility and the way in which drama enters into dialogue with it. In the process, law emerges an interface between an expressive mode and a hermeneutic model, and thus an imaginative resource for literary writers interested in selfhood and inwardness. Ultimately, the argument intimates how the gaps and dualities of the interrelation between the theatre and the law are used by early modern dramatic practice to conceptualize the larger interrelation between literary and legal epistemologies.

The Law of Patronage in Early Modern England

1975 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-260
Author(s):  
Rosemary O'Day
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Law ◽  
Patronage System ◽  
The Way

The calibre of the early Elizabethan clergy left much to be desired and much criticism was levelled by contemporaries and near contemporaries at the bishops for their failure to check the flow of insufficient ministers into benefices. While historians have acknowledged the existence of legal obstacles in the way of a firm episcopal policy in this regard, and have come gradually to realise some of the profound implications of the patronage system, no one has charted in detail the law of patronage which so hampered hierarchical attempts to raise the standard of the parochial clergy.

scholarly journals BIGAMOUS MARRIAGE IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
BERNARD CAPP
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Court Records ◽  
The Law

ABSTRACTThough divorce followed by remarriage was illegal in early modern England, a considerable number of people whose marriage had failed or whose spouse had deserted ventured to marry again, either uncertain of the law or choosing to defy it. Bigamy, traditionally a spiritual offence, came to be seen as a significant social problem and was made a felony in 1604. Drawing on ecclesiastical and secular court records and a variety of other sources, this article examines the legal framework, offers a typology of bigamists, and explores the circumstances surrounding their actions. It finds that offenders, predominantly male, ranged from the unlucky or feckless to the cynically manipulative, among them a small number of serial bigamists. It also asks how such offences might come to light in an age of relatively poor communications, and examines the plight of those who had married a bigamist in good faith. Finally it examines the likelihood of conviction, and the punishment of those who confessed or were convicted.

scholarly journals From directions to descriptions: Reading the theatrical Nebentext in Ben Jonson’s Workes as an authorial outlet

Sederi ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 7-26
Author(s):  
David J. Amelang
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ben Jonson ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Miguel De Cervantes ◽  
Stage Directions ◽  
The Way

This article explores how certain dramatists in early modern England and in Spain, specifically Ben Jonson and Miguel de Cervantes (with much more emphasis on the former), pursued authority over texts by claiming as their own a new realm which had not been available—or, more accurately, as prominently available—to playwrights before: the stage directions in printed plays. The way both these playwrights and/or their publishers dealt with the transcription of stage directions provides perhaps the clearest example of a theatrical convention translated into the realm of readership.

FELONY FORFEITURE AND THE PROFITS OF CRIME IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. J. KESSELRING
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
English History ◽  
The Law

ABSTRACTFor much of English history, the law punished felons not just with death, but also with the loss of their possessions. This article examines the practice of felony forfeiture in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, focusing on who profited and with what effects. It argues that recognizing the role such profit-takers played challenges common depictions of the nature and meaning of participation in law and governance. The heightened use of judicial revenues as tokens of patronage under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts impinged upon participatory aspects of the law's operation.

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