Legal Language in Coriolanus

Abstract

Nib;& to appear. For example, J. C. Maxwell has discussed the animal imagery' and Maurice Charney what he calls the dramatic use of imagery in the play.2 It is surprising, however, that so little attention has been paid to legal language, both in special studies and in the more general works on imagery, like Caroline Spurgeon's, G. Wilson Knight's, or Wolfgang Clemen's.3 Miss Spurgeon, indeed, makes no reference whatever to legal imagery in her treatment of Coriolanus (pp. 347-349), although is one of the categories of imagery she lists for Shakespeare's work as a whole and although she finds a total of I20 legal images in the plays (Chart V). Paul S. Clarkson and Clyde T. Warren, in their study of property law in Elizabethan drama,,' do discuss Shakespeare's use of legal terms but make citations from Coriolanus only six times. The present authors find that there are at least I94 words and phrases of legal significance in Coriolanus. It is true that many of these cannot be considered images (if imagery is taken to refer only to similes and metaphors); but the presence of so many legal references constitutes a verbal motif-one which must surely be an element of prime importance in the language of the play. One of the hazards of such a study as the present one is that words which now have legal associations may at first be regarded as contributing to the imagery of the play when actually the words did not acquire their legal connotations until after Shakespeare's time. Of course, such words do contribute to the legal motif, but they cannot have been used in this sense by Shakespeare. For example, the word parcels (I. ii. 32),5 which is clearly used in the play to mean