Jessica Winston
Lawyers at Play.Literature, Law, and Politics at the Early Modern Inns of Court, 1558-1581
Oxford. Oxford University Press, 2016, 304 pp.
ISBN: 9780198769422
Many early modern poets and playwrights were also members of the legal societies the Inns of Court, and these authors shaped the development of key genres of the English Renaissance, especially lyric poetry, dramatic tragedy, satire, and masque. But how did the Inns come to be literary centres in the first place, and why were they especially vibrant at particular times? Early modernists have long understood that urban setting and institutional environment were central to this phenomenon: in the vibrant world of London, educated men with time on their hands turned to literary pastimes for something to do. Lawyers at Play proposes an additional, more essential dynamic: the literary culture of the Inns intensified in decades of profound transformation in the legal profession. Focusing on the first decade of Elizabeth's reign, the period when a large literary network first developed around the societies, this study demonstrates that the literary surge at this time developed out of and responded to a period of rapid expansion in the legal profession and in the career prospects of members. Poetry, translation, and performance were recreational pastimes; however, these activities also defined and elevated the status of inns-of-court men as qualified, learned, and ethical participants in England's 'legal magistracy': those lawyers, judges, justices of the peace, civic office holders, town recorders, and gentleman landholders who managed and administered local and national governance of England. Lawyers at Play maps the literary terrain of a formative but understudied period in the English Renaissance, but it also provides the foundation for an argument that goes beyond the 1560s to provide a framework for understanding the connections between the literary and legal cultures of the Inns over the whole of the early modern period.
Introduction: Lawyers at Play
Part I: Society at the Early Modern Inns of Court
1: An Intellectual Topography of the Early Modern Inns of Court
2: 'Minerva's Men': The Inns of Court in the 1560s
Part II: The Translation of Learning
3: Lyric Poetry: Forming a Professional Community
4: Translatio Studii in Early Elizabethan England
Part III: Literary-Political Precedents
5: A Mirror for Magistrates: Political Discourse and the Legal Magistracy
6: Senecan Tragedy in Early Elizabethan England
Part IV:To Fashion an Institution
7: Gorboduc in the Political Nation
8: Marriage Plays at the Inns: Negotiating Professional Jurisdiction
Conclusion: Lawyers at Play Redux
Appendices
app. 1: Literary Men of the Inns of Court, 1558-1572
app. 2: First Editions of Classical Translations, 1558-1581
app. 3: Description of Gorboduc at the Inner Temple
Part I: Society at the Early Modern Inns of Court
1: An Intellectual Topography of the Early Modern Inns of Court
2: 'Minerva's Men': The Inns of Court in the 1560s
Part II: The Translation of Learning
3: Lyric Poetry: Forming a Professional Community
4: Translatio Studii in Early Elizabethan England
Part III: Literary-Political Precedents
5: A Mirror for Magistrates: Political Discourse and the Legal Magistracy
6: Senecan Tragedy in Early Elizabethan England
Part IV:To Fashion an Institution
7: Gorboduc in the Political Nation
8: Marriage Plays at the Inns: Negotiating Professional Jurisdiction
Conclusion: Lawyers at Play Redux
Appendices
app. 1: Literary Men of the Inns of Court, 1558-1572
app. 2: First Editions of Classical Translations, 1558-1581
app. 3: Description of Gorboduc at the Inner Temple
Jessica Winston is Professor of English at Idaho State University, where she specializes in sixteenth-century literature and Shakespeare. She is the author numerous articles are the early modern Inns of Court and, with James Ker, she is co-editor of Elizabethan Seneca: Three Tragedies (Modern Humanities Research Association, 2012).
▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄
Elizabeth I Rainbow
Atribuido a Isaac Oliver (1556–1617) y Marcus Gheeraerts (II) (1561–1636)
Recomiendo consultar 'AN ELIZABETHAN LAWYER. A Reading in the Middle Temple', sobre Edmund Plowden (1518-85), accesible en http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/27th-december-1952/14/an-elizabethan-lawyer
Allí también otros enlaces de interés.
Es asimismo recomendable Wilfrid R. Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts 1590-1640 (Totowa, NJ., Longman, 1972, 263 pp. ISBN: 978-0874710786).
No obstante, desde mi punto de vista y en relación con los estudios interdisciplinares en el tema de 'The Inns of Court', lo mejor en las siguientes reseñas:
The intellectual and cultural world of the early modern Inns of Court
Jayne Elisabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring, and Sarah Knight (eds.)Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2011, 334 pp.
ISBN: 9780719082368
This is a collection of essays on an important but overlooked aspect of early modern English life: the artistic and intellectual patronage of the Inns of Court and their influence on religion, politics, education, rhetoric, and culture from the late fifteenth through the early eighteenth centuries.
This period witnessed the height of the Inns’ status as educational institutions: emerging from fairly informal associations in the fourteenth century, the Inns of Court in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had developed sophisticated curricula for their students, leading to their description in the early seventeenth century as England’s ‘third university’. Some of the most influential politicians, writers, and divines – as well as lawyers – of Tudor and Stuart England passed through the Inns: men such as Edward Hall, Richard Hooker, John Webster, John Selden, Edward Coke, William Lambarde, Francis Bacon, and John Donne.
This is the first interdisciplinary publication on the early modern Inns of Court, bringing together scholarship in history, art history, literature, and drama. The book is lavishly illustrated and provides a unique collection of visual sources for the architecture, art, and gardens of the early modern Inns.
This text presents an interdisciplinary collection of essays on an important but overlooked aspect of early modern English life: the artistic and intellectual patronage of the Inns of Court and their influence on religion, politics, education, rhetoric, and culture from the late 15th through the early 18th centuries.
This is the first interdisciplinary publication on the early modern Inns of Court, bringing together scholarship in history, art history, literature, and drama. The book is lavishly illustrated and provides a unique collection of visual sources for the architecture, art, and gardens of the early modern Inns.
This text presents an interdisciplinary collection of essays on an important but overlooked aspect of early modern English life: the artistic and intellectual patronage of the Inns of Court and their influence on religion, politics, education, rhetoric, and culture from the late 15th through the early 18th centuries.
Contents
List of illustrations Notes on contributors
AcknowledgmentsJayne Elisabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring, and Sarah Knight
Abbreviations
IntroductionPreface:
The third university 1450-1550: Law school or finishing school?:
I. History: Education, Religion, Politics, and the Law Introduction: education, religion, politics, and law at the early modern Inns of Court:
Jayne Elisabeth Archer2. The Inner Temple revels (1561-62) and the Elizabethan rhetoric of signs: Legal iconography at the early modern Inns of Court:
Paul Raffield
3. Gospel, law, and ars prædicandi at the Inns of Court, c.1570-c.1640:
Hugh Adlington
4. The Inns of Court and the common law mind: The case of James Whitelocke:
Damian X. Powell
5. The sinful history of mine own youth: John Donne preaches at Lincoln’s Inn
Emma Rhatigan
6. Readers dinners and the culture of the early modern Inns of Court:
Wilfrid Prest
II. Art, Architecture, and Gardens
Introduction: the art, architecture, and gardens of the early modern Inns of Court:
7. The halls of the Elizabethan and early Stuart Inns of Court:
8. Professional pride and personal agendas: Portraits of judges, lawyers, and members of the Inns of Court, 1560-1630:
Tarnya Cooper
9. The evolution of the early gardens of the Inns of Court:
Paula Henderson
10. The rebuilding of the Inns of Court, 1660-1700:
Geoffrey Tyack
III. Literature and Drama
Introduction: literature and drama at the early modern Inns of Court:
11. Lyric poetry at the early Elizabethan Inns of Court: Forming a professional community:
Jessica Winston12. The evidential plot: Shakespeare and Gascoigne at Grays Inn:
Lorna Hutson
13. Locating The Comedy of Errors: Revels jurisdiction at the Inns of Court:
Bradin Cormack
14. Law sports and the night of errors: Shakespeare at the Inns of Court:
Richard McCoy
15. New light on drama, music, and dancing at the Inns of Court to 1642:
Alan H. Nelson
Select bibliography of secondary criticism
Index.
David Palfreyman
London's Inns of Court: History, Law, Customs, and Modern Purpose Olney, Buckinghamshire, Oracle Publishing, 2011.xvi, 368 pp.
ISBN: 9781907139086
This is the first sizeable and comprehensive study of the Inns (history, legal status, finances, customs, and modern purpose) for over seventy years, since Blackham’s ‘Wig and Gown’ (1932).
As most, but not perhaps all, readers will know there are four Inns that make up London’s Inns of Court (Gray’s Inn, the Inner Temple, Lincoln’s Inn, and the Middle Temple). They probably date from the 1330s or 1340s, and possibly earlier: nobody knows for certain. There are some 25-30,000 members of the Inns: membership figures are not usually made public.
This book answers many of the questions (as detailed below) often asked about these Inns and considers the key issues surrounding their modern purpose in training a branch of the English legal profession as well as providing a work-place (and a social-networking space) for the bulk of the country’s legal experts occupying these historic complexes of buildings located in Holborn as London’s legal quarter.
Just what are the Inns of Court: what do they do or what goes on in them; why and how and when were they created; how have they developed over the centuries; might a new one still be added; were there once more; who joins them and who runs them; what do they own; how are they funded; do they produce publicly accessible annual accounts; are they subject to taxation; what laws regulate them; whom do they benefit, professionally or socially or economically; do they have, or even seek, political influence by way of lobbying; what goes on in their dining halls and do their members drink fine wine at their compulsory dinners; why are the dinners compulsory; who pays for the dinners; when did they get around to admitting female members and how many female members are there now; what sort of image do the Inns and their inmates get in English literature over the centuries; what happened to the Inns of Chancery as once thriving centres of legal education like the Inns of Court; how does the history of both these kinds of Inn fit with the development of the English common law and with the evolution of the legal profession.
Finally, we must try to decide whether, in short, they are 'a good thing' and still 'fit-for-purpose' at the start of the twenty-first century after almost 700 years of existence. Will they survive the implementation of the Legal Services Act 2007 that seeks to deregulate and liberalise the legal profession, and that aims to expose the supply of legal services to competition? Do they continue to have a vital purpose in being a crucial part of legal education and training, or do they risk being a loose amalgam of vague and even conflicting purposes?
The Lincoln’s Inn website describes the Inn as ‘a very multifarious organisation: a collegiate and educational institution, a membership organisation, a professional body, a landlord, a custodian of historic buildings, a banqueting venue and a tourist attraction’.
In the context of reforms of the legal profession playing out over the next decade can these Inns really retain, energetically sustain, and imaginatively enhance the crucial and sine qua non facet of those many functions, that being their role as educational institutions - without which they are a lobby group, a club, a supplier of office premises and posh catering facilities, a film set and a tourist target, but will lack the inner vitality that has seen them survive for almost 700 years as ‘the legal university’.
J.C.G.