Derek Dunne
Shakespeare, Revenge Tragedy and Early Modern Law: Vindictive JusticePalgrave Macmillan, London, 2016, IX, 229 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-137-57286-8
Revenge tragedies are filled with trial scenes, miscarriages of justice and untrustworthy evidence, yet this is the first study to explore how the revenge plays of Kyd, Shakespeare and others critically engage with their legal system. Featuring groups of citizens taking the law into their own hands, revenge tragedies stage a participatory justice of their own, which problematises the progress of English common law during this crucial phase of English legal history. By connecting English revenge tragedies to major crises within the legal system including the erosion of trial by jury (Titus Andronicus), food riots in the 1590s (Antonio's Revenge), and debates over royal prerogative (The Revenger's Tragedy) a persistent legal critique is revealed to be at work. The book also offers a major new reading of Hamlet that argues against the play's engagement with law, in contrast to the radical socio-legal commentary identified in other revenge plays. Revenge tragedy can thus be understood as an index of early modern citizens' fractious relationship with their law.
Dr. Derek Dunne specialises in early modern literature, with a particular emphasis on Shakespeare’s contemporary dramatists, popular print culture, and law & literature.
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Entre los trabajos más recientes de Dunne se encuentran:
- ‘Revenge Tragedy’, in New Directions in Renaissance Tragedy, ed. by Lisa Hopkins and Daniel Cadman (Manchester University Press, 2016)
- ‘Judge v Jury: Justice in Early Modern Literature and Law’, Literature Compass (late 2015)
- ‘Decentring the Law in Hamlet’, Law and Humanities (Summer 2015)
- ‘Marston’s Challenge to Middle Temple Justice’, in Theatre of the Law: Drama and the Early Modern Middle Temple, ed. by Derek Dunne and Jacqueline Watson (under consideration with Cambridge University Press)
- ‘“Superfluous Death” and The Mathematics of Revenge’, Journal of the Northern Renaissance, 6 (2014)
- ‘“Partialitie in a Iudge, is a Turpitude”: Partial Judges and Impartial Revengers in Early Modern English Drama’, in The Emergence of Impartiality: Towards a History of Objectivity, ed. by Kathryn Murphy and Anita Traninger, Intersections series (Brill, 2013)
- ‘William Bedwell, Mohammedis Imposturae (London, 1615)’, for Reading East: Irish Sources and Resources