Shakespeare, Revenge Tragedy and Early Modern Law: Vindictive Justice by Derek Dunne, and: Unsettled Toleration: Religious Difference on the Shakespearean Stage by Brian Walsh, and: Staging the Revolution: Drama, Reinvention, and History, 1647–72 by Rachel Willie

Abstract

Reviewed by: Shakespeare, Revenge Tragedy and Early Modern Law: Vindictive Justice by Derek Dunne, and: Unsettled Toleration: Religious Difference on the Shakespearean Stage by Brian Walsh, and: Staging the Revolution: Drama, Reinvention, and History, 1647–72 by Rachel Willie Andrew Bretz Shakespeare, Revenge Tragedy and Early Modern Law: Vindictive Justice. By Derek Dunne. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Pp. ix + 229. $90 (hardcover). Unsettled Toleration: Religious Difference on the Shakespearean Stage. By Brian Walsh. Oxford UP, 2016. Pp. 221. $99 (hardcover). Staging the Revolution: Drama, Reinvention, and History, 1647–72. By Rachel Willie. Manchester: Manchester University Press., 2015. Pp. ix + 242. $90 (hardcover). Correction: Oxford University Press was mistakenly listed as the publisher of Staging the Revolution: Drama, Reinvention, and History, 1647–72 by Rachel Willie. Manchester University Press is the publisher. The online version of this article has been updated. The three books discussed in this review investigate early modern drama in relation to three discourses that have been at the heart of the critical tradition at least since the rise of New Historicism—the law, religion, and the representation of political change—yet, despite the fact that these may seem to be well-ploughed fields, these books prove that there is still exciting new and fertile ground for analysis to be found. The revenge tragedy and examples of revenge tragedy probably have more ink spilled about them than almost any other early modern theatrical genre. Derek Dunne’s Shakespeare, Revenge Tragedy and Early Modern Law: Vindictive Justice, however, provides a unique and clearly thought out, exceptionally well-researched addition to the field. Dunne explicitly builds on the insights of both literary and legal scholars such as Margreta de Grazia, Barbara Shapiro, Lorna Hutson, and C. W. Brooks to develop an argument that often takes to task traditional readings of canonical texts, such as Hamlet. The book argues that the explosion of the revenge genre in the late 1500s and early 1600s can be tracked against the crises in the legal institutions of England over the course of the same period as centralization and professionalization of the judiciary stood at odds with the much-lauded and more participatory jury system. The literary genre both critiqued changes to the law, and reflected the changes in society that led to the changes in the law as the structure of the revenge tragedy suggests the participatory structures of the legal system were under pressure by increasing centralization of authority in the hands of magistrates. The first, relatively short, chapter provides an account of the participatory nature of the legal system up until the last decades of the 1500s. [End Page 167] Here, Dunne suggests how literary and legal historians have tended to represent the relationship of the revenge tragedy to the legal system in simplistic terms, given the sophistication of early modern legal theorists regarding the place of revenge within the law. Drawing on the work of Bradin Cormack, Dunne argues that the period in which the revenge tragedy flourished was a transitional moment in the development of a rationalized legal system, founded on principles of equity and the power of the state or community to punish the bodies of offenders. The second chapter turns to The Spanish Tragedy, generally recognized as the first revenge tragedy. Here, Dunne shows how, although Hieronimo is usually represented as the archetypal lone avenger, in fact vengeance is a communal act taken on in the absence of, not as a result of, infernal divine justice. Revenge is not presented as a “satisfactory alternative to law, yet it is the law’s failure that makes revenge so necessary in the first place” (47). Chapter three investigates Titus Andronicus and the problem of the ambivalence of signifiers within a legal context. Whereas juries could often be led astray by ambivalent evidence, which further encouraged the centralization of the power of magistrates, Titus Andronicus develops the potential of the theater to make the audience mistrust their own senses. The senses of the characters are repeatedly shown to be untrustworthy, through blindness, muteness, or inability to touch, which problematizes the richly evidence-based vengeance of Hieronimo in Shakespeare’s exemplar for Titus. Chapter four examines Antonio’s Revenge and situates vengeance in...