Theaters of Intention Drama and the La in Early Modern England [Hardcover]

Early modern Britain witnessed a transformation in legal reasoning about human volition and intentional action, which contributed to new conventions and techniques for the theatrical representation of premeditated conduct.Theaters of Intentionexamines the relation between law and theater in this period, reading plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe, and others to demonstrate how legal understanding of willful human action pervades sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English drama.Drawing on case law, legal treatises, parliamentary journals, and theatrical account books, the author considers the interplay between theatrical deliberation and legal dramatization of human intention. He analyzes such canonical plays asHamlet,Timon of Athens,Dr. Faustus,Bartholomew Fair, andOthelloalongside less familiar texts, including Barnes'sThe Devil's Charter, Jonson'sEntertainment at Althorp, and the anonymousNobody and Somebody.Notable instances of the new theatrical representation of premeditated conduct include the appearance inHamletof wording from the sensational case ofHales versus Petitand dramatizations of contract law in enactments of demonic pacts in the plays of Marlowe and Barnes. The final chapter examines the iconography of Nobody, an early modern equivalent of John Doe, and features some dozen illustrations of contemporary woodcuts, drawings, and engravings.Tied closely to the convergence of authorial and dramatic forethought, theatrical representation of premeditated action demonstrates the close relationships among purposeful human behavior, fictionality, economic exchange, and the experience of time. This is a provocative book, one that may well repay repeated consulatation. This is a learned, densely researched, and above all weighty book. Scholars of Renaissance drama will want to come to terms with it, and draw upon the wealth of information it contains. Many critics have attempted tlã7