Tom Regnier Centennial Presentation, March 4, 2020
May 27, 2020
by Bryan H. Wildenthal May 27, 2020 — The late Tom Regnier’s Centennial Symposium presentation, “Justice Stevens, the Law of Evidence, and the Shakespeare
Shakespeare and the Law
The history of scholarship on the way Shakespeare employs legal terminology and concepts is complex, controversial, and closely tied to the authorship question. Adherents of the traditional view of authorship traditionally deprecate Shakespeare’s alleged knowledge of the law, while often simultaneously invoking all sorts of unsupported theories about how the author might have acquired this knowledge. Legal experts, on the other hand, argue that Shakespeare’s legal knowledge is acutely honed and precise — and that it indicates a mind well-trained and practiced in the idioms and conceptual habits characteristic of lawyers and judges. For example, Shakespeare’s Legal Language: A Dictionary by Sokol and Sokol, published in 2000 in the Athlone Shakespeare Dictionary Series fills over 400 pages with detailed discussion of Shakespeare’s legal terms and concepts.
Browse our articles on Shakespeare and the Law.
SOF Receives New Yorker Magazine Coverage
July 29, 2019
The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship and the authorship question receive lively coverage in the latest issue of The New Yorker, one of America’s more venerable periodical
In Memoriam: Justice John Paul Stevens
July 17, 2019
by Tom Regnier July 17, 2019 We in the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship note with great sadness and enormous respect the passing of retired Supreme Court
The Law in Hamlet: Death, Property, and the Pursuit of Justice
August 17, 2017
by Tom Regnier Originally published in Brief Chronicles, v. 3 (2011), pp. 107–32 (PDF version here); republished on the SOF website Aug. 17, 2017 (updated
The Oxfordian Era on the Supreme Court
August 30, 2016
Justice Antonin Scalia (1936–2016), Justice John Paul Stevens (1920–2019), and Other Authorship Skeptics on America’s Highest Court by Bryan H. Wildenthal Published on the SOF website
The Shakespeare Canon of Statutory Construction
September 26, 2013
Supreme Court Justice Stevens addresses the search for truth and justice by discussing the view that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford is the true author of the Shakespeare Canon and how that view may help understand statutory construction.
Shakespeare’s Knowledge of Law
January 8, 2011
Noted lawyer Sir George Greenwood claimed Shakespeare’s plays and poems “supply ample evidence that their author . . . had a very extensive and accurate knowledge of law.” This essay surveys arguments for and against supposing a legal education for Shakespeare.
Could Shakespeare Think Like a Lawyer? Inheritance Law in Hamlet
May 20, 2007
by Thomas Regnier. Shakespeare’s frequent use of the law is well documented. Whether his legal terms are always used correctly has been a matter of dispute. I examine how accurately legal terms are used in the plays, and how accurately and deeply legal issues are developed.
An Unrecognized Theme in Hamlet: Lost Inheritance and Claudius’s Marriage to Gertrude, Part I
May 11, 2006
by J. Anthony Burton. The subject of inheritance is the principal idea behind several important scenes, including the nature of the disappointed “hopes” Hamlet includes, along with murder, incest, and attempted murder, in his list of justifications for killing Claudius
An Unrecognized Theme in Hamlet: Lost Inheritance and Claudius’s Marriage to Gertrude, Part II
May 11, 2006
by J. Anthony Burton Part II (published in the Shakespeare Newsletter of Claremont McKenna College, Volume 50, No. 4 Winter 2000–01; reprinted on the SOF
Laertes’s Rebellion as a Defense of His Inheritance: Further Aspects of Inheritance Law in Hamlet
May 11, 2006
by J. Anthony Burton. The theme of lost inheritance has a special but limited function within the larger framework of the play. It does not, of course, displace or even compete with the central theme of revenge or, more properly, justice. Inheritance works as a sort of unifying preoccupation
The Myth of Shakespeare’s “Bad” Law
January 8, 2006
by Mark Alexander. A look at the history and scholarship on Shakespeare’s knowledge of the law. Alexander’s analysis reveals Shakespeare’s legal knowledge is sophisticated and deep, and that it is his critics who’ve got it wrong.
The Legally Annotated Hamlet
September 18, 2005
by Mark Alexander. A scene by scene analysis of legal themes and allusions in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
