Laws and Outlaws in Pastoral Comedy and Revenge Tragedy

Abstract

The two genres of the title are not usually considered a pair. I argue that they share an important concern, namely, the clash between law and outlawry, city life and country life, abstraction and embodiment. The protagonists of both (often forced by the illegal actions of others) live outside the law and have to make their own laws. They often “take matters into their own hands.” Examples: paintings by Titian, Manet, Guercino, Marvell’s “The Garden,” Tasso’s Aminta, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and late plays, Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, the Coen brothers’ “True Grit,” and Jennifer Haley’s The Nether.