Treason by words: literature, law, and rebellion in Shakespeare's England

Abstract

Treason by Words: Literature, Law, and Rebellion in Shakespeare's England, by Rebecca Lemon. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. Pp. 256. Cloth $45.00. Reviewer: DENNIS KEZAR To mangle Stein on Oakland, there is not always much there here. Rebecca Lemon tantalizes us with what at certain points sounds like a compelling thesis for students and colleagues working with Renaissance English literature (historians, political scientists, and legal scholars are not encouraged by this reviewer to go any further). In its most invigorating formulation (for those of us invested in importance of words), Lemon's advertised thesis seeks to remand study of early modem treason law to language alone. What matters here is words (broadly and finally amorphously defined), and what matters much less is deeds, tyranny of things promoted by scholars such as Chicago's Bill Brown, cultural artifacts, and so forth. There is absolutely no reason I can that scholars of Renaissance literature should not - as I initially did not - find themselves immediately attracted to and sympathetic with such a project, as such a project is very much what our professional lives depend upon. The problem - or, to be more fair, my problem - is how this project of linguistic remanding devolves quickly into plot summary and diacritical recursivity (as opposed to diacritical intervention). I cannot a legal historian worth her or his salt not aware of important (and well re-documented in this monograph) transition from Edward Ill's 1352 statute defining treason as, to use Lemon's language, focused mainly on action (5). Of course this statute itself notoriously deploys problematic language - also well rehearsed in Lemon's whiggish history of what finally (in afterword, which begins with an epigraph from late Justice Rehnquist) becomes a thinly veiled allegory of presidential usurpation of republican rights: When a man doth compass or death of our lord king, of our lady his Queen ... (5). As Lemon dutifully notes, subsequent monarchs (Henry, Elizabeth, James) interpretively burden word imagine with a wealth of allegedly strict constructionist legal freight. But nowhere in this book appears a theoretical dialogue with important legal-historical scholarship on debates over mens rea in early modem common law; nor in this book could I find any evidence on continuing and neglected relevance of speech-act theory to literary scholars working on nexus of law and ethics in Renaissance. What is delivered instead sounds a bit tautological. Lemon wants to talk about the proliferation of materials and textual explosions because, well, she wants to talk about words and texts (see pages 3, 11, 13). Fair enough, but other problems become apparent when she attempts to do so. Theoretical impoverishment (not that there's anything wrong with that) can only be justified by readings of Uterary texts that justify themselves. Structurally and thematically (and effectively) this book revolves around Essex Plot and Gunpowder Plot. Textually (and mostly sensibly) this book concerns itself with Hay ward' s Henry TV, Shakespeare's R ichar d II and Macbeth, 'Donne' s Pseudo-Martyr, and Jonson's Catiline. It is of course unfair to complain about selection, but one wishes Measure for Measure, with its thematizing of mens rea v. actus reus (thoughts are no subjects) had made an appearance. More puzzling is inattention in Lemon's reading of Richard II to Exton episodes (genealogically related, of course, to Marlowe's treatment of treasonous epistolic communication/interpretation in Edward II, also ignored). One frequently gets sense that Lemon's thesis has gotten lost in local readings (again, not necessarily a bad thing). …